Scottish Catholic Observer

It means that we are still growing, also that the bad times will not last forever—something the family and friends of murdered South Lanarkshire Catholic teenager Reamonn Gormely may, God willing, one day be grateful for.

It also means that the possibility of greater good lies ahead.

Yet the Catholic Church’s greatest strength is being a constant in an uncertain world. News that change is coming to the part of life in which we aim to have greatest faith, the way we celebrate Mass, is unsurprisingly challenging.

After 40 years of using the new rite of Mass (Novus Ordo), introduced after the Second Vatican Council, a new English translation of the Roman Missal is to be phased into parishes in the English-speaking world by Advent 2011. There have been strong articles by Bishop Peter Elliot, auxillary bishop of Melbourne, and Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson in northern New Jersey in the US, on the new Missal.

“Is the text we currently use not good enough?” Bishop Elliot has asked. “No, it is not good enough because it is not particularly good—and ‘good enough’ is not the way to describe the language we should use in the worship of God.”

In the US parishes have met the changes ‘with much enthusiasm and wide acceptance by both clergy and laity,’ according to Bishop Serratelli, the outgoing head of the US bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship.

In Europe, however, concerns have been raised about the new translation, which was prepared by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) under the guidance of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) through the Vox Clara committee. The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Ireland are lobbying the Irish Bishops’ Conference to delay the introduction of the new Mass there, fearing the translation to be sexist, elitist and obscure, saying: “Many women will be rightly enraged by the continued deliberate use of non-inclusive language.”

But what of the UK? Parishes in England and Wales are planning three months of preparation ahead of the introduction of the new translation and resources are being made available. In Scotland a pastoral letter on the new translation is imminent.

The question that we need to ask of ourselves, however, is: Are we facing real issues with the new Mass or do we simply fear, or are suspicious of, the unfamiliar? Do the actual words we say in Church matter as much as our willingness to say them, together and regularly, as congregations free to gather?

Ask anyone within your own, your parents’ or your grandparents’ generation if their Faith was irreparably shaken when Mass was first celebrated in English instead of Latin and you will find your answer. Our Faith is, and must always be, more than words.