Implementation of the New Roman Missal
Without regard to whether you like or dislike the new Roman Missal, I’m wondering what your parish did in preparation for its implementation beginning next Sunday, the first week of Advent.
For the past six weeks, my pastor conducted a comprehensive catechesis on the new missal in place of his Sunday homilies. He not only instructed us in the new wording, both spoken and sung, but used the opportunity to delve deeper into the history and theology of various elements of the Mass. And, in a gentle way, he also corrected several common mistakes in practice, such as making the sign of the cross immediately after receiving the Body and Blood. It was a wonderful and moving experience for everyone, including our pastor himself, who noted tearfully at the end that he would miss several elements of the present missal, especially the words of the Domine, non sum dignus prayer. It was an important and concordant admission for me, because since my reconiliation with the Church those words – “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” – have been the most meaningful in my own life. They have expressed my profound gratitude at finding the pearl of great price that is the Eucharist, the Mass and the entire Catholic faith. In fact, so meaningful are those words to me that my will instructs my children to inscribe those very words on my gravestone, an instruction I will not be amending regardless of the new translation.
At any rate, I’m interested in what other parishes have done in preparation for implementation of the new missal, if you’d care to share.
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My home parish has had a weeks-long discussion(in the form of an insert in the weekly bulletin) with an explanation of the new translation, going through the Mass step by step. It has been informative, but a bit… remote, I guess I’d say?
I really like the approach taken by your parish: it seems engaging, personal and reassuring. I suspect that more of that back in ’65-’70 might have smoothed some (not all, but some…) ruffled feathers the last time there was a significant change in the presentation of the Mass.
My parish has done very little. Last spring the music composed settings for a couple of the sung response from the new mass. We used them during Eastertide (without being told what they were); she reintroduced them two weeks ago. Our religious ed program (which uses the “Generations of faith” family based model) did one session on the new missal. It was very superficial: not much more than “here is a card with the new responses; don’t worry, the words are changing a little bit but everything is fine.” The pastor has not preached on it at all.
I envy Mark’s parish: whatever you think about the new translation (and I will be frank and say that I have many reservations) this was a golden opportunity for extensive catechesis on the mass, and we missed the opportunity.
At my parish, which is notorious for doing these sorts of things at the very last minute, we’ve had the music for several Sundays, and we had one Sunday (the week before last), in which the priest went over the changes during the homily. We also have had the cards in the pews, which has been causing no end of confusion, since people have already started to use them to try to follow along. What will happen is that we’ll muddle through for a few months. But in fairness to the pastor, my parish is rather unusual — it is a large parish in the midst of literally dozens of very large apartment complexes in an area of the city that serves the tech industry. Preparing for anything too far in advance is wasted effort: the parish population is too large and too mobile, and even if you made use of all four Masses over several Sundays, within six months a large portion of the people in the congregation would have missed it. Doing things the last minute is usually the most efficient way.
I very much agree about the preciousness of the words “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be healed,” which I think will remain as my private spiritual communion prayer at times when I can’t actually receive.
I’ve come across the no-sign-of-the-cross-after-receiving position before, particularly from traditionalists, and I have to say, it worries me. The Sign of the Cross is, among other things, a private prayer approved as such by the Church; as long as it is not disruptive it can be done whenever and wherever one pleases, and forbidding it in the absence of either clear evidence that it is disruptive or an official prohibition strikes me as a straightforward violation of the rights of the faithful. (I do know of one church where the pastor forbade it because it was disruptive; the layout of the church made it so that if people crossed themselves as they were turning away, they would sometimes hit the Extraordinary Ministers with their elbows. That’s a decent pastoral reason for forbidding it before they sit down.) And the old theological reasons usually given for it (e.g., that it is redundant because Christ is inside you now, and thus not doing it is an expression of belief in Real Presence) seem to me to be a paradigmatic case of bad reasoning; the sort of thing that makes my ornery and sarcastic side want to do it more.
My pastor didn’t forbid making the sign of the cross upon reception. He simply pointed out that the liturgy doesn’t call for it and that it doesn’t make much sense theologically. His purpose, I know, is not to bully people into conforming, but to get them thinking about what is really happening in the Mass and what the words and bodily motions we use really mean.
We have substituted 3 of the musical parts already. “Chist has died, Christ is risen” has been replaced by its campy, interminable cousin. We’ve gone over all the congregation’s new mutterings. I like the Barney and Friends song as much as the next guy, but I really don’t think the hymnody needed to riff off it so much. (Ours are Schuette arrangements.) I have heard kindergärtners sing more complexly. Even Taylor Swift might have a couple songs more complex. I’ll have a better idea after Christmas, but at least at our parish, attendance seems down, although that could be due to other issues.
Mark:
Our pastor spoke at length before and during Mass for two Sundays last month. He explained the Latin behind the translations, and some of the motivation for the changes. In addition, he talked about the meaning and purpose of the different parts of the Mass. He took the format of speaking before the Introductory Rites, and again pausing several times during Mass to explain the liturgical purpose of what was coming and how it would change.
The only on-paper announcement is in this week’s parish bulletin: “Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. We will officially begin the use of the new translations in the Mass.”
There’s been no rehearsal or explanation how sung parts of the Mass might change. We usually sing the Gloria and the Sanctus, which means we weren’t reciting them word-for-word in the “old” translation. I’m sure all will work out just fine, and it will be interesting to see how much actually changes.
BTW, the soon-to-be-old translation goes: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” The divine breath of just one “word” is enough in both translations. Will you be updating your will accordingly? ;-)
Frank, that was a typo on my part, which I’ve fixed. Nice catch. My will specifies the singular “word.”
Our pastor has preached on the changes for the last six weeks (I believe it was strongly encouraged by our archbishop). I feel that he did a nice job. The choir I am a member of has been practicing our new Mass setting, The Mass of Christ Our Savior, by Dan Schutte. We have already introduced the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. We sang our St. Louis Jesuit’s Gloria for the last time (Maybe. Unless someone decides to retrofit it.) We’ll be singing the traditional chant Mass for Advent. It’s kind of an opposites sketch. We have only sung it in Latin up to now; now we’ll be using the English words because that it is what is in the music edition the congregation will have.
Just curious, what is wrong with crossing oneself after receiving Communion? I’ve done it that way for 50 years (not planning on changing at this point!)
Melody, the explanation about crossing oneself after receiving is that making the sign of the cross is a way to remind ourselves of our baptism. But in Communion we have the true Body and Blood of Christ inside us. Reminding ourselves of our baptism by making the sign of the cross at that moment is … well, sort of beside the point.
No crossing after communion? Stuff like that just drives me up the wall (even more than our loathesome new translation).
Mark, as a post-communion crosser, I would respond that the sign of the cross is more generally a gesture acknowledging the Triune God made manifest through the incarnation of the second person, Jesus, and his death on the cross. Having just received the body and blood of Christ, this seems to be quite a fitting gesture. But certainly nothing I want to go to the mat over!
The SIgn of the Cross is an important baptismal symbol. This is seen in that the Sign of the Cross at baptism is retained by many Protestants — Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists (Baptism being the only time one finds its use among Methodists). While it can be argued that wider use among Catholic and Orthodox Christians has been an organic development, it does obscure the baptismal connection.
I didn’t want to highjack the thread with it, but since other people are commenting, I think David is absolutely right here. The Sign of the Cross is exactly what common sense would suggest it is: it is a sign of Christ’s Passion as represented by the Cross; even the baptismal connection only arises because we are assimilated to Christ’s Passion by being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Aquinas notes somewhere that the reason for the value of the Sign of the Cross as a prayer is that it brings to mind Christ’s Passion so as both to express and to intensify love of God; surely that is always relevant, at every point in the Mass. But even if baptism were the one and only one thing we were ever supposed to use the Sign of the Cross to remember, our baptism is precisely what allows us to partake in the first place; and it can hardly be redundant to remind yourself that, because you were assimilated to Christ by baptism, being assimilated to Him by partaking of His Body and Blood has become open to you. The suggestion that there’s no theological point to the Sign of the Cross here just does not make any theological sense.
Quite a lot at our parish:
-The bishop has had extensive essays about the the particularities of the translations and about the underlying theology of the Mass in the local diocesan weekly newspaper which every parishioner receives. For probably the last 3 months or so, the bishop’s essays have broken down the Mass into small parts. And longer than that, maybe 6 or 8 or 10 months or more, the bishop has had occasional essays about the upcoming translation.
-In addition, like Matt, our bulletin has had inserts breaking down the Mass part-by-part every week for probably the last 3 months or more.
-On top of that, our pastor has had several teaching sessions and talks for the parishioners during a few weeknights over the last 2 weeks about the new translation.
-And then we’ve got new cards going in the pews, which I suppose is happening in most parishes.
I wonder how many pastors told the truth about the new translation rather than simply than reiterating the party line talking points.
And what is the truth from your perspective?
I saw a pastor who told this truth: The new translation isn’t perfect. Neither was the old one. Translations, by definition, can’t be. But let’s work together to see if we can’t learn something in this process. Fighting it won’t help anyone.
His honesty and candor got the parish on board. Those aware of some of the unfortunate political wrangling felt acknowledged, but without feeling the need to become a thorn in the bishop’s side.
In other news, my own parish just decommisioned the old sacramentary yesterday. That was a nice touch.
My pastor explained that in our diocese the old Sacramentaries have to be either incinerated or buried. They parish is allowed to keep one for its archives. The rest are being incinerated today.
David, sadly my parish has also done little to prepare THE LAITY for the new translation. They did a bare minimum by posting little inserts in the bulletin (of which a friend of mine has observed that very few people read the bulletins), they have not bought pew cards, they did not give us the 10 part series on the New Translation with the changes and the WHY of the changes from the Archdiocese of Toronto, and only 2x do I recall anything being mentioned in the homilies leading up to it, unfortunately by the scholarly type priest of our 3 rotation priests (pastor + 2 assisting Mass priests) whose sermons are better in an academic environment. For me I had to find the Toronto 10 part series online on my own, and my mom had to get a pew card from another parish she attends for me to have that.
The only good thing they have been doing is preparing the laity musically by singing Canadian Mass setting “A” by Fr. Angeles at various parts of the Mass. I’m not suprized they put the musical part of the liturgy over the laity as the parish source of pride are their choirs and cantors. I can only hope that come next week when I attend, someone will announce that there are the responses in the front of the “Celebrate in Song” hymnals. Still I know people will agree that my parish could have done a better job or given more preparation before hand and they will be strugging for the first few weeks. My greatest fear, more for individual seniors is that they will get upset with the sudden changes and possibly like Vatican II, they will throw a nutty over the changes and maybe stop going. Other people may buy the stupid “going back to archaic times” argument (due to lack of education) and also react the same.
Kelly and Brett, perhaps you could add your 2 cents on the Canadian perspective of your diocese/parish’s preparations, being as the other mods here have been from the American perspective?
I’m not too worried about the seniors. Most of the ones I have talked to have been favorable about the changes. My dad is one who had a hard time with the original changes from Latin. He is looking forward to these changes; asked if I had read up on them; said he saved the bulletin inserts and articles from First Things and Sunday Visitor for me if I hadn’t.
However one of my adult sons expressed misgivings; to him the Paul VI Mass is the traditional one. He is of the mind that it isn’t broke, why are we fixing it? Guess I’ll tell him to go talk to Grandpa.
I work in one parish and worship at another and we had different approaches, but both informational. At my work parish the pastor offered a series of workshops that began during the summer and ran into the fall. We began using some of the music settings in September. I happened to worship there the first week it was done and the pastor did offer some catechesis. There have been a series of weekly bulletin inserts, using the USCCB website inserts. This weekend, a blessing was given for the Sacramentary that will no longer be used. Next week the NRM will be blessed. People are very pretty well prepared and it has been nicely done.
As my worship parish we have had about 6 weeks of catechesis and there was also information in the bulletin to supplement what was being said. The music settings changed in early October.
FWIW, while I am not too tied up in the change, for whatever reason, I find myself very wistful about the change. When I was at mass today, I felt very aware of what I would be saying differently next weekend.
In our diocese, we’ve been singing the Gloria since September and Sanctus since October. Our parish has had bulletin inserts, CDs and booklets available, as well as several informational meetings in church with the pastoral assistant. Today before Mass, we practiced singing “And with your spirit.”
Parishes ought to buy several hundred copies of this new pamphlet by Anthony Esolen explaining each of the changes:
http://www.magnificat.com/romanmissal/pdf/MISSAL_COMP.pdf
http://www.magnificat.com/romanmissal/roman_missal_companion.asp
Mark, specifically I am referring to the rather underhanded and secretive process by which Vox Clara was able to undermine episcopal collegiality after the generally well received 1998 translation was approved throughout the English speaking communities but scuttled by Rome. Have pastors engaged the question of the wisdom of so literal a translation as our language of worship? The process by which we have come to the new text has been ideologically charged and highly unedifying. How’s that? You are of course free to agree or disagree.Either way, have a blessed Advent! pb
Three points:
(1) With a couple of minor exceptions, I like the new translations. A lot.
(2) Since my regular Mass is a Novus Ordo Latin Mass, I won’t notice anything different! :)
(3)On those “minor exception” – why did they not take the opportunity to give us a better translation of the Lord’s Prayer? And why is homo/hominibus translasted as “people” in the Gloria and “men” in the Credo? (“people” is far more accurate).
Our parish did a four-week sermon lead up to the change: the first a catechesis on the mass in general and then three on the parts of the new translation that are different. For those who wanted the chance to get a more in depth understanding, they also offered a five week set of classes (one night a week for an hour and a half each session) led by a layperson who has been writing about the translation for the diocesan paper for the last year which went through the translation in great detail, talked about the history, offered time for questions, etc. And then the choir has been doing practices of the new mass parts with the congregation for five minutes before mass each week for the last month. (Our church is so small for the size of the congregation that we tend to actually be pretty full by five minutes till.)
Overall, it seems like they’ve put a lot of work into easing the transition. The new musical settings are, if possible, worse than before, but that’s mostly a result of picking up the standards from OCP. (Seems like this would have been a great chance to simply go back to sung Latin parts all year round rather than just in Advent and Lent — since we do them ten weeks out of the year as it is everyone knows them and then there’d be no change.)
We have had relatively minimal preparation in our parish. There were a few informational sessions given on weekdays when it was too inconvenient to come. The best information I got was from my kid’s CCD class, where the teacher gave out colorful cards with the modified words on them. I have some suspicion that this is an indirect effect of the pastor, who doesn’t seem to be that much on favor of the new translation (he mentioned out the web site whatifwejustsaidwait.org in one of his bulletin editorials).
As a side note, I have to register a complaint with M.Z.’s comment above. I happen to be a big fan of Taylor Swift and am rightfully indignant at her being dissed in this way! :)
My parish has been pushing educational classes and insisting everyone go for a year now. Those who have not gone, have received phone calls of invitation. We introduced the new Mass parts that are sung about 2 months ago so the transition will be seamless.
I am thrilled about the new translation. It puts us in line with every other country’s translation, and in line with the East as well. The “Lord I am not worthy . . . ” part, I always say in Spanish b/c the current English is so butchered that it drives me crazy.
Just a note, however: The Roman Missal has the following text for the prayer before Communion:
Domine, non sum dignus,
ut intres sub tectum meum [enter under roof my]:
sed tantum dic verbo
et sanabitur anima mea [healed shall be my soul].
So the old translation, however attached to it you were, was simply wrong.
I agree with Mark that “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you” is a very nice phrase, but I think that its substitution for “ut intres sub tectum meum” illustrates the larger problem with translating not ad literam but ad sententiam: in this case, the translators replaced a concrete image taken from the lived life of ancient mediterranean peoples with a kind of spiritual abstraction that is meant to “sum up” as it were the meaning of the phrase “sub tectum meum.” However felicitous the result was in this one instance, the method itself is deadly, and deadening to the concreteness and particularity of the actual text—even if that text is ambiguous, not obviously clear, etc. Since I am not a Hegelian (and shame on you in you are!), I much prefer the messy particularity and sometimes disconcerting images of a literal rendering to the smooth, abstracted, and simplified “meanings” that are encoded in the old translation.
The problem, however, with ad literam translations is precisely that they ignore the role of idiom and shared experience in conveying information. My favorite example of this is the German expression “Gleich geht es los” which translates literally into English as “Equal goes it loose.” What it really means, however, is “It is going to start soon.” A good example from scripture is John 1:14, usually translated as “he [Jesus] dwelt among us” or “live among us”. The underlying idiom might be more literally translated as “pitched his tent among us.” This is an image which makes perfect sense to a primarily agrarian society in which semi-nomadic herdsmen were well known; it makes much less sense today and should be translated to convey the meaning.
But in the case under question, and other places in the new missal, the translators hew to a literal reading, one which seems to obscure the sense of what is actually meant.
Well, except that in the Gospel the centurian really is saying that he’s not worthy to have Jesus come “under his roof”. There’s no idiom at play here, the centurian was saying that he wasn’t worthy to have Jesus come into his house.
I suppose we can say that the meaning of the quote when it was included as a prayer in the mass was different from the meaning of the centurian when speaking to Jesus — but then one of the elements of the history of the mass is that there was, especially in the early Church, a tendency to use scriptural phrases in ways that were slightly odd or out of context, almost creating idiom on the fly.
In a sense, the old translation reflections the idiom-like way in which Christians used not-quite-apposite scriptural passages — on the other hand it does so by changing the quote so that it is apposite and thus is no longer reflective of how this kind of thinking/spirituality worked.
I like the old phrases, but overall I think I prefer the way that the new translation preserves the way that Christians have traditionally incorporated scriptural quotes into their prayer even when they don’t quite fit.
Ummm, you made my point by “translating” for me that “under my roof” means “into my house.” It is an idiom.
But it’s a pretty literal idiom — unless one’s house doesn’t have a roof. The centurion quite literally says that he isn’t worthy to have Christ under his roof.
“Receive you” is a pretty vague translation by comparison. Certainly, I wouldn’t have given one of my Latin students very good marks for it back in the day.
But, actually, “dwelt” is far more impoverished than “pitched his tent among us,” occluding as it does the allusion to the tabernacle tent of the exodus. Besides, how do you determine what the “meaning” is that the text is trying to convey? Every translation is an interpretation, but translations that aim to capture the “meaning” of the author often decide in advance (for the reader) what the writer is saying.
Nevertheless, every version which I consulted translated this as “dwelt” or something similar. As the Italians say, a translator is a traitor: every translator must decide on the meaning of the text: claiming to “just” be making a literal translation is really to choose one meaning among several possible.
“claiming to *just* be making a literal translation is really to choose one meaning among several possible.”
There is a sense in which this statement is true, but more or less trivial, and a sense in which it is obviously false.
It is *true* of course that there is no replacement for reading the text in the original language, and that any translation, however much it strives to reproduce in a second language the *exact* terminological and conceptual distinctions operative in the the original language, will not be perfect: there will be some amount of “space”, as it were, between the one and the other. So far, so true. All translators are traitors, etc.
However, from this *it does not follow* that all translators are *just as traitorous* as all other translators. Even leaving aside cases of gross incompetence and/or ideological distortions (which I think we both agree are not relevant here), translators who claim to be giving us an interpreted “meaning” or “significance” *in our language* of the original text are always, in my experience, to be distrusted. And they are to be distrusted in a very different way than the *normal* distrust with which we should approach every translation. The two just are not experientially equivalent. And you can see that they are not by reading, for example, Cornford’s translation of the Republic alongside Bloom’s (and those following Bloom’s example, such as Robin West’s Cambridge Republic).
In general, I am persuaded by Bloom’s claim in his preface that the “greatest vice” of the translator “is to believe he has adequately grasped the teaching of his author.” So, as to the *general* philosophical question about translations, etc., I’m not persuaded that the *literal* translation of a text is just as much an interpretation as any other (responsible) translation is.
Does any of this pertain to liturgy, though? I don’t know. It probably doesn’t make too much of a difference over the long term, and people who are riled up about the present translation (for or against) are often (again, in my experience) using the issue as a pretext for bludgeoning their favorite enemies–the bishops and hierarchy on the one hand, the “moderns” and “liberals” on the other. Most people, during Mass, are probably just trying not to think uncharitable thoughts about the person singing or smelling beside them and/or trying to keep their children from doing cartwheels off the pew.
They’ve had an interesting discussion on this topic over at Commonweal, in a post by Peter Nixon. I particularly like that Nixon suggests the whole exercise may be beside the point:
Like Nixon, I often wonder whether the “sound and fury” over liturgical formalisms masks a deficit in the “passionate and personal” love we ought to have for the Lord (and one another).
Oxes gored! Changes resisted! Party lines parroted! Objections lodged! Yup. I’m just wondering how many pewsitters won’t even notice.