2012-05-09  Adjusting to the new Missal is no easy ride  - from  letters to The Tablet

It's now five months since the change to the new translation of the Missal and I have looked back with a degree of sadness on how it has affected me and my prayer life. Mass attendance has dropped from 100 per cent to around 20 per cent. The voice of my conscience has been telling me it might be worth looking elsewhere for God, seeing as he's now been so successfully obscured in church.

Venturing out of the proverbial window opened in Vatican II has brought me fresh air, particularly as I've been able to join in the long Sunday cycle rides with my triathlon club. During these rides, friendships have developed. Perhaps these will help offset the loss of the reminder of the friendship God has for us (cf. Eucharistic Prayer III).

On Ash Wednesday my parish priest said he'd missed me. We'd had a long chat several months earlier on the new translation. I think he knows why I haven't been there much.

And on Easter Sunday, in the grounds of the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, I felt at home for the first time in months. The Anglican Eucharist at the end of the Student Cross pilgrimage was just like Mass used to be, not only in terms of words used, but in the ideas those words put across. The hierarchy would do well to take note (and take action). If they need an envoy to go to the Vatican, I volunteer.

The current translation of the Mass, apart from being a "pastoral disaster" as Fr James Hawes says (Letters, The Tablet, 21 April) would also seem to be illegal. Maurice Taylor, who chaired ICEL when the 1998 text was produced, notes in his book, It's the Eucharist, thank God! that Vatican II gave Rome the right to authorise bishops' conferences to embark on vernacular translations but did not give Rome the right to decide whether such translations were acceptable or not (Liturgy Constitution n.36). This latter aspect is usurped. Six weeks after the Constitution was passed the Holy See issued a motu proprio (Sacram Liturgiam) which wrongly asserted that the Council had given the Holy See the authority not only to permit a translation but also to vet it. The Council did not accord the Holy See this right to vet. It is therefore arguable that the 1998 translation, which was endorsed by all of the English-speaking bishops' conferences, is the authentic text which we should now be using.

This being the case, could this legal 1998 text be made available and authorised for use by our Bishops' Conference of England and Wales on the basis of the Vatican II collegial Constitution?

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The letters from Fr Kenneth Payne (The Tablet, 28 April) and Fr James Hawes (21 April) gave expression to the sad lack of enthusiasm for celebrating the new Mass texts. I do a lot of supply work these days and it appears to me that the heart has also been ripped out of parish liturgical music. Overnight on the first Sunday of Advent we were expected to drop 40 years' development of post-Vatican II English Mass settings, simply because the words had been tinkered with! Many of these settings had great beauty combined with a ready ability to be sung by untrained parishioners (though I acknowledge not all were that beautiful!)

I have seen parishes where a familiar tune for the Gloria has been adapted to the new words, and it sounded awful; or where a brand-new setting was in use but (in contrast to my previous visits) only the choir now sang it, and rather slowly. Frankiy, if you wanted to take the heart out of Catholicism, you couldn't have gone about it in a more effective way!

My opinion is that many of the parishes which still maintain something of the 'soul' of the Mass are those where, in contravention of the rulings, musicians and the bulk of the Massgoers continue to sing late 20th century Mass settings with enthusiasm!