Replies

AnAmericanMother:

No doubt the Liturgical beauty of Crammer’s translations puts the ICEL translations from the 1970’s to shame. However, slowly but surely, our English translations of the Latin Rite are coming around, thanks be to God first and foremost and thanks be to God for sending us Pope Benedict who has a great respect for Liturgical Tradition.

Also, I too am a fan of Fr. Z at What does prayer really say. It is on my Catholic blog daily checklist.

A woman at church today said she had seen some of the new translations for Mass and was not very happy about them.

I guess there will be some who will fight it or grumble about it.

I haven’t seen anything so I don’t know what’s coming.

Oh, the Episcopalians got stuck with almost the identical translation in the 70s. Cranmer was jettisoned in '79 and something suspiciously close to the ICEL translation was instituted. Everybody hated it except the usual suspects, but the hidden grace was that it made it that much easier for us to shake the dust of the Episcopalians from our sandals.

Thanks be to God, the new translation looks like an enormous improvement.

And again, a hidden grace: those horrible Haugen and Haas Masses are rendered useless at a stroke. We went to a music conference on the New Translation and got advance copies of several rewrites of 'popular' settings. The publishers and 'composers' thought they would be sneaky and just tweak the music a little to fit the new words. BIG mistake, as any singer could have told them. Everybody's automatic habit is going to take over and they will sing right over the 'tweaks' before they realize they were there. The publishers will be happy because they will sell lots and lots of revised settings before people realize they are un-singable.

Our parish isn't participating. We will use the Missa de Angelis in Latin once a month, and our Music Director is composing two new Mass settings, one for penitential seasons and one brighter one for festivals and ordinary time. He has done a test drive of the first and it sounds good. And our rector is thrilled by all the money he's going to save!