Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Reform of the reform, or re-inventing the wheel: step one

Recently I received two attractive, clearly-written booklets by Edward Sri, sent to me by the publisher for personal review and promotion:These booklets, just published by Ascension Press in West Chester, Pennyslvania, are targeted at lay audiences facing the forth-coming introduction of liturgical changes to the Novus Ordo Missae scheduled for U.S. parishes November, 2011.

There is no question the newly translated portions of the liturgy, few in number though they be, are a significant improvement over the existing translations. They are more faithful to the Latin original or the Novus Ordo Missae. In fact, at points, they are nearly an exact translation of the Latin in the usus antiquior, as in the Confiteor, where the new translation reads: "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault," or in the Credo, where the new translation has: "Was incarnate of the Virgin Mary." Shades of Trent! They might even re-invent communion rails and kneeling next!

The really amazing thing is the huge impact these relatively minor adjustments in translation is having on the Catholic music and missal publishing industry. Liturgical music composers, publishers, ministers of music, choirs, liturgical ministers, etc. are reved up and running full bore in preparation for all the forthcoming adjustments these new translations will call for in the parishes across the country. When all is said and done, one would like to hope that it will have been much ado about something, at least.

6 comments:

  1. Jimmy Akin has another one, "Mass Revisions," over at Catholic Answers. All these on the heels of Wuerl and Aquilina's new book 'The Mass." Would be nice to have someone do a survey and say, "Plunk your $ and time." or no...

    Of the older things, Sheen's "Mass & Calvary" and Dunney's "The Mass" have helped me. Also really good with the bonus of being the most accessible are the intro notes to the 62 Missal put out by Angelus Press (foreswearing sedevacantist oaths as I type!)

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  2. Anonymous11:50 AM

    I like the title of this. It does seem the reform of the reform is a reinvention of the Wheel. I just don't get why we are trying to bring the NOvus Ordo back in line with Tradition. I mean it would just seem that if the goal is to have a Traditional Novus Ordo why don't we just restore the TLM?

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  4. People are used to the NO as it exists, in a perpetual state of revision and renovation. Never mind that the Council fathers, except for maybe Bugnini and a coterie of his revisionists, wouldn't have recognized it as anything envisioned by Sacrosanctum Concilium. This is the pope's quandary.

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  5. Ralph Roister-Doister2:32 PM

    "This is the pope's quandary."

    Is it? When has Benedict so much as hinted at a desire to do away with the NO liturgy? As far as I have seen, that has never been an option for him. He lacks the sneering elitism of the celebrated Archbishop of Teheran, but Benedict is totally committed to the primacy of a well-scrubbed and cologned NO, with the Gregorian Mass as a legitimate option that most bishops choose to ignore or actively discourage, and that the pope himself does not say on the conspicuous occasions when doing so would speak volumes.

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  6. Anonymous9:33 PM

    The Pope has recommended a number of things that he has not had the fortitude or will to enact himself, including the consistent adoption of an ad orientem posture in the liturgy. What he has insisted upon, that his communicants receive kneeling upon the tongue, seems liturgically fitting and proper but lacks any canonical means of enforcement, especially since the INDULT for receiving in the hand while standing has been mainstreamed by the USCCB as normative. There is little we can do other than to pray for him, which he has asked us to do, so that he has courage to stand against the "wolves," as he called his enemies.

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