A First Time for the New Roman Missal

Last Sunday, we used the new translation of the Roman Missal for the first time.    For many months, we have been preparing to celebrate well with this new text.   Most people reacted positively to the new translation, and made earnest attempts to learn the prayer responses.   Father George Kane, Father Scott, and I met long ago to discuss how we could implement the new texts in the best way.   I would like to thank them for their expertise and their pastoral sensibility.  We all tried to be as positive as possible about the translation and did our best to present these new texts and prayers to you.   That does not mean that the new missal is without problems.  I do have some serious reservations about the texts on a number of different levels.

First of all, reading the texts is not easy when the major concern of the translations was fidelity to Latin syntax and sentence structure.  The awkwardness of the text became clear to me when I read the opening prayer for the First Sunday of Advent:  “Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they (I am not sure if this refers to the faithful or the prayers) may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, on God, forever and ever.”   The nuns who taught me in grade school would have probably given me an F if I turned in a run-on sentence like that one.

The Opening Prayer or Collect for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reads:  “O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament, have left us a memorial….”   When you read this passage, you will notice that God and have do not agree in number.  Once again the nuns who taught me would have circled this grammar error in red.   In the new Roman Missal, sentence structure like this example is intentional if you can believe it.   Rome thought adherence to the Latin syntax of the sentence was more important than using correct English sentence structure.  That is really awful.  Please understand that this type of mistake is plentiful in the new translation.    I told Fr. George that we have to adopt a new English concept – the concept of the understood “you.”   When the presider adds “you” before the verb “have,” the English is now supposedly correct.  I am saddened over the fact that a correct grammatical translation was not done  the first time.

The Prayer over the People for Ash Wednesday reads:  “Pour out a spirit of compunction, O God…”  I had to look that one up in the dictionary and I have been speaking English for a long time.  Compunction means sorrow or guilt.

The missal also eliminates some of the inclusive language we previously had, but we can fix that on our own.  The very formal language will be hard for us to utilize. 

Don’t get me wrong, the text is not all bad.  Some of the language is beautiful and much more scripturally accurate. 

The new Missal is not a very good prayer text.  A prayer text should be understandable and accessible to the people who are using the text as prayer.  It should allow people to voice praise and thanksgiving to God in an easy and conversational.  A  better translation of the missal could have made our formal conversations with God much more accessible.

We will continue to struggle with this text, as imperfect as it may be, as we use it to show our unity with Catholics all over the world.

I invite your comments.