A question

This is for those of you who are Catholic. (Or, I suppose, if you're Jewish, as well: though I know far less about how those services are conducted). You sing hymns or songs in the service, right? (And I mean other than the sort of response-songs like what we Prods call "Doxology" or "Gloria Patri")

Has there been a move afoot to "gender neutralize" some of the traditional hymns? I mean, do stuff like change "man" to "human" or "son" (except when referring to God's Son, of course) to "child"?

The congregation I belong to now is pretty old-school and conservative and the hymnbooks we use have the original traditional words. But my parents' congregation recently got new hymnbooks...and what seems like a distressingly large number of the hymns have the little abbreviation "alt." after the author's name, indicating the words have been altered. Usually it's a gender neutralization thing, but also references to warfare were removed as much as possible (so they said in the introduction, which I flipped to after finding one of the familiar hymns to me was no longer quite so), as were references to royalty (apparently that last because it seemed somehow classist to the editors. So a lot of the Christ the King references were changed, as were references to Lord)

Now, I won't go so far as my brother does and pronounce it "kind of Orwellian" (and yes, he said that), but it bugs me. I learned the hymns one way and it's jarring to sing them another. (And in some cases I didn't.)

I realize that there are some people who really have a hard time with "man" being the general form of "men and women" or who feel excluded or troubled or something like that. But I guess the updaters do not consider those of us who are troubled to think that Charles Wesley's (or whomever's) original intent has been slightly changed. Or that their art has been altered - while it might not rise to the level of putting boxers on Michelangelo's "David," it is still changing what someone else made.

In some cases the changes are not a big deal. In a few they may even sound better. But in a couple - they were just jarring and uncomfortable and didn't scan right any more. (And yes, scansion sort of matters to me).

I don't know. I realize this is the wave of the future but sometimes I wonder if trying to update too much either amounts to whitewashing the past or to failing to give people credit for seeing the word "man" and mentally figuring that women are included as well.

I do wonder what some of the old-time hymnwriters would say about it - Wesley, and Fanny Crosby, and Isaac Watts. Would they not mind, as long as their music was still being used to praise God? Or would they feel a certain discomfort, perhaps even annoyance, that their words were altered?