I'm trying to understand why the changes were needed?!??!?!?!
18 months since I 1st started attending Mass in my life and I have yet to get the Creed memorized--now they go and change it?
Next thing you know, they'll be making you memorize extra rosary decades. ;^)
Since these "new changes" make the creed almost exactly the same as the English translation in my 1962 missal, I'm trying to understand why they ever instituted to the form you memorized.
Calm down ... they are trying to restore it. The Creed is a personal statement - "I believe", not "We believe", right. This is good news.
The whole Mass is in the process of being retranslated, because the current English translation (which, with minor alterations, dates back to 1970, meaning that I've been using it for 34 years) is, well, awful.
If you want to get an idea of how awful, subscribe to The Wanderer and read the column "What Does the Prayer Really Say" by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, where he analyzes and rigorously translates the actual Latin text -- and then compares it to the icky official translation.
18 months since I 1st started attending Mass in my life and I have yet to get the Creed memorized--now they go and change it?
The Nicene Creed (really the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) was originally written in Greek. I don't know the Greek, but I do know the Latin, and I can tell you that this English translation is a much more careful rendering of what the Latin text actually says than is the current official English version.
You know that cross you're supposed to carry every day? No one mentioned the irritating splinters, did they?
Personally, I like this phrase from the Catechism: 170 We do not believe in formulas, but in those realities they express...
Don't worry. There are people who have been attending Mass for decades who don't have it memorized. And when the ICEL is approved, we'll all be in the same boat.