Parishes across the country have been getting ready, in one form or another, for the release of the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which happens officially this coming Sunday. Like many Catholics, I’ve been dreading this for awhile, but unable to really figure out why. After all, change is inevitable and it isn’t like Holy Mother Church has said we have to go back to actually celebrating the Mass in Latin (although some fear this may be the next step), simply that the wording needs to more accurately reflect the original Latin translation. My writer’s ear and publication background are offended by the violation of a cardinal rule of writing – don’t use a fancy word when simple will do -  since this translation moves us from clear, certain, understandable language to more obtuse, complicated, awkward language. But, overall, will those wording changes seem so convoluted a year from now? I’m not so sure.

Still, there was an upset in my heart and not simply because of the homilies I’ve heard in different parishes over the past month or the reports from friends of the homilies they’ve heard — homilies where not one positive word was said about the gift of Vatican II, the simple joy of being able to come to a Church and actually understand what the heck was going on. The fact that many priests (and/of bishops) are using this time of change in translation to issue, in one priest’s unfortunate choice of words, “a corrective” in liturgical habits of particular parishes, has also been more than a little irritating. (One very active, faithful mid-20-something Catholic said hearing her pastor’s sermon condemning her parish’s habit of holding hands during The Lord’s Prayer felt hurtful and she couldn’t understand why he felt the need to – in a time of translation shock – take away something most in her community find unifying in prayer. “It isn’t ‘My father,’ it’s ‘Our Father,‘” she said, explaining why it make sense to the laity to hold hands.)

That said, I didn’t think it was the homilies per se that were upsetting me until I read the thoughts of Fr. James Martin, S.J. today. One of my favorite Jesuits (and definitely Colbert’s favorite), Martin said he was sad about losing the Sacramentary, or the book of Mass prayers the priest uses to celebrate Mass. Those prayers are being part of the new translation and he said there’s been no real mention of the “appreciation for the riches it brought to the church for the last few decades.”

Ah, there it is. I’m sad because what we’re losing with this translation is just as important as what some people say we are gaining and I’ve not heard that from any priest. Our grief over the loss of the words that brought us to God (or kept us there) has not been acknowledged. Instead we’ve heard that this change is necessary because what we had before was wrong. We went too far astray. We got too familiar with God, too familiar with the Mass, too familiar with each other (all that holding of hands!). The message many Catholics have been getting from the “instruction” on the new translation is that Rome needs to rein us in with more high-minded language so we’ll remember what we’re doing and how important the Liturgy is – intimating that we haven’t recognized the importance of the Liturgy all these years.

These messages  have had the effect of a kick in the stomach to most of the people in the pews. Martin’s piece is the antidote to that. A snip:

It would be odd, therefore, not to acknowledge some sadness over the passing of something so central to Catholic life as what will soon be called the “old” Sacramentary.  Even if you are eagerly anticipating the new translations, something significant is moving into the past, and is being lost.

And loss requires some acknowledgement. It seems most of the clergy are intent on ignoring the sadness many of their parishioners feel in this moment, so busy are they kow-towing to the group that thinks these changes are long overdue or using it as a moment to make “correctives.” (Or maybe, as some Catholics have suggested, they’re just clueless.) Surely there is a balance between who-hooing the changes and recognizing the gift that they were to the Church. It is not that the old translation of the Mass prayers was horrible; it wasn’t. Indeed, as Martin so honestly writes, those prayers were full of language that was “simple, clean, clear, direct, unadorned, beautiful.”

It is language that resulted in thousands of conversions to Catholicism in the past four decades in the U.S., conversions were not wrought in a Latin-speaking Mass setting. There should be some acknowledgement of that fact, and so I say, “Amen, brother,” to Fr. Martin for giving voice to what many of my Catholic friends and I are feeling. And, I’m glad you’re keeping your Sacramentary. May you be able to pray the old as you get used to the new.

Folks familiar with Godblogging’s normal proclivity to have an opinion on all things Catholic have been nagging me to comment on the upcoming ta-da moment of the new translation of the Roman Missal. I’ve declined up until now for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that writing a coherent, cohesive and educational post about something that includes the words “consubstantial” and “Liturgiam” takes a good chunk of time (read: my entire Sunday afternoon and part of my evening).

Nonetheless, here we go. First, this isn’t the end of the world or a complete reversal of the Second Vatican Council’s original reforms on the missal, which called for the Latin-worded Mass to be translated into the vernacular of each country. Neither is it to be conflated with power-grabs by certain priests or bishops to turn back the clock and rein in the Holy Spirit  (although those issues are massively troublesome by themselves) nor does it portend, as this not-quite-complete article suggests, ritual whiplash is in the offing.

That said, the new translation is more of a big deal to some clergy and laity than the official church would have us believe, partially because the document that demanded the new translation (Liturgiam Authenticam, 2001) was the Vatican’s rather loud hand-slap to national and regional conferences of bishops – including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – which had, heretofore, been allowed by the 1969 document Comme le prevoit to approve liturgical translations.

Additionally, there was no input from the laity, who are, after all, the folks most affected by the wording of the Mass and whom, Rome’s assertions aside, want a say in the Church. (For a humorous look at the translation – we all need some good humor at this point – and the lack of lay input, see this over at PrayTell.)

Finally, people are upset because many of the changes seem unnecessary and one of them – to the Confiteor – actually is a direct and firm step back to pre-Vatican II theological thought (something, by the way, I would’t have known if I was raised in a pre-Vatican II Church because I wouldn’t have been encouraged to read the Bible, much less join study sessions on the Vatican II documents.)

On the unnecessary side, one can look at a change to the Nicene Creed, where we used to say “…begotten, not made, one in being with the Father,” and now will say, “… begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.” Does Rome really think most people will know what “consubstantial” means? (I can hear the homilies and reactions even now: Priest: “So, consubstantial means to be the same as, in other words, Jesus is God.” People in the pews: “Well, why don’t we just say ‘We believe Jesus is God’ then?” Sigh.)

On the march-back-to-pre-Vatican II side we have an important addition to the Confiteor, what many Catholics know as the “I confess” prayer. Before Vatican II, the emphasis in that prayer – and much of Catholic life – was placed on the unworthiness of a person instead of the grace and mercy of God. After Vatican II, the emphasis was changed: Yes, we were sinners, but God was loving and merciful and that mercy became the focus.

I was only 3 years old when the Vatican II Council was first called, so I do not remember the days of “Catholic guilt” that many of my older friends and relatives recall in the pre-Vatican II Church. I do remember relatives and friends telling me they left the Church because of that guilt. As one aunt – now in her late 80s – said to me a few years ago, she had enough pain in daily life, she didn’t need to go to Church “and feel horrible there, too.” So the fact that the Confiteor adds the words “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault” to the confession is a turn for the worse, IMHO.

If Holy Mother Church really wanted the Confiteor to be honest and reflective of real life, even if it didn’t match the original Latin text, it should be “I confess to Almighty God, and you by brothers and sisters, that I have sinned, sometimes with full thought and intent – and thus through my grevious fault – but many times through human weakness, confusion and, some times, just plain stupidity.”

Because that’s what we humans are much of the time: weak, stupid and confused. Luckily, God loves us anyway, even if the translators (or original writers) of the Catholic Missal don’t seem to understand that.

As you can read in this great collection of opinions in the Adoremus Bulletin, a number of clergy have taken issue with the translation (or need for one), so it isn’t just laity that have frustration or concern over what is behind these changes. While I tend to agree with my pastor at Tucson’s St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center that the changes in liturgical wording might wake up Catholics who have long mumbled their way through memorized Mass parts, I also think the assessment of Father William J. O’Malley, S.J. makes a point:

“… the changes are palliatives to the specialist minds of theologians, liturgists, and church historians. In a conversation with several priests, I was dimwitted enough to ask, “But what about the audience?” And one said, pretty intensely, “The audience doesn’t matter. It’s the message that matters!”

The message will matter little if people aren’t there to hear it – and O’Malley argues these changes are the opposite of what is needed to reach disenfranchised Catholics. A few 20-somethings I spoke with after Mass today seemed to agree. They didn’t much care that the wording would change (“Oh well,” one said, “I guess they have to have something to keep them busy in Rome.”), but they feared that this reach from the Vatican was a harbinger of things to come.

One said the Church may state that She wants the “full and active participation” by the laity in the liturgy, but what She really wants “is the laity following around men in dresses doing exactly what they say, never having an opinion and only being involved to a certain point.” In other words, please fully participate in the prayers we, as the Church heirarchy, say that you, as laity, may say and nothing more, even if you erroneously believe the Holy Spirit is moving you to pray a certain way. Pretty pointed, and, sadly, pretty accurate. Another said, sighing with resignation, “It doesn’t matter what we think. We have no voice. This is just one more thing making me wonder why I stick around.”

There are those who argue that the way they feel close to God is by having a giant wall of separation brought about through more “spiritual” language and a highly defined boundary between clergy and laity (see: clericalism.) You can find plenty of these folks at the St. Gianna Oratory, where Mass is said in Latin, there are no female altar servers (or lectors) and the priest faces away from the congregation as he celebrates Mass – just as it was done for centuries before Vatican II.

But there are other Catholics who discovered after Vatican II that they get closer to God by actually understanding what was being said during Mass. You’ll find these people at just about every other parish in the United States. To them, the clarity the Vatican says will come with the new translation may be elusive. And for the young (and perhaps not-so-young) Catholics who already feel the Church is keeping them at arms length when it comes to active participation in liturgy, the renewal Rome hopes they feel with the change in liturgical wording may be hollow. Then again, a year from now, many (if not most) Catholics will not even remember the difference. Those will be the Catholics who stayed. We won’t know – and I fear the Church won’t care – about the ones who leave.

Yesterday, U.S. Catholic’s Bryan Cones pointed out the obvious in a blog on the election of NY archbishop Timothy Dolan as president of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops: This is a really big deal and, shockingly, some really good religion reporters seem to be missing that fact. Cones doesn’t mince words:

This is truly unbelievable. Catholic right-wing bloggers pull off nothing less than a coup, and the bishops claim it was all about the “election process,” that is, the assumption that the vice president would become president. There can be no doubt that the pastoral voices in the conference are now silenced, and the more confrontational figures appointed by Pope John Paul II are in the driver’s seat. The election of a conference president may seem like so much “inside baseball,” but it is of profound significance.

The person doing the best reporting and analysis of this is probably Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia, a guy who was never trained professionally as a reporter but has access to inside sources in the Church that no one else seems to have and built his blog-for-three into one of the most respected sources on Catholic news around. (You have to love his headline for yesterday’s story and a latter post’s headline is equally funny.) So not only do we have a story about a religion story that isn’t being reported real well by the traditional press, we have a story about how a blogger is doing a better job than traditional reporters. Sigh.

And what about Dolan’s attitude in this whole thing? It smacks of arrogance – something no one would ever accuse Tucson’s bishop of having. (Maybe that’s the problem: Maybe Kicanas is just too dang nice. Too darn pastoral. Too thoughtful and not enough hellfire and damnation.) While Dolan said the vote came as a shock, the picture in the New York Times of him laughing with another bishop shows something a little other than shock – especially considering the apparent blogosphere campaign to keep Kicanas from being elected – especially reporting the Rainbow Sash Movement’s endorsement of Kicanas.

(Note to Rainbow Sash folks: You need a to hire a proof-reader before you send out a press release and, outside groups don’t endorse bishops to lead the conference.)

Then there’s the statement Dolan made about his standing in the election three year’s ago when Kicanas was elected VP:

When asked to accept a nomination as one of 10 candidates for president, (Dolan) said that “in all candor you automatically think in terms of being vice president. How to interpret that? I don’t know. I do know that the bishops hold Bishop Kicanas in the highest esteem. It was hardly like a landslide election.” Three years ago in the USCCB election for vice president, Bishop Kicanas “beat me by one vote,” he said, adding that nobody is “a shoo-in.”

Why would he add that last sentence? Who would even remember what happened three years ago – unless, of course, you’ve got a little bit more politician in you than you’d like the faithful to recognize. Then again, maybe Dolan’s going to be a great Church leader. We’ll have to wait and see, but one thing is for certain: As Cones said – this is a big deal.