Some national conference updates UPDATED 9-22

I talked to folks in several national conferences today. Missal implementation plans vary from place to place.

Australia has slowed things down a bit. They want to know whether the final text really is the final text. (Pray Tell ‘s sources have revealed behind-the-scenes shennanigans and pressure on Rome to deal with problems in the final text. Obviously folks in Australia are getting similar info from their sources.) Unlike the US, the Australian conference president has not set the  implementation date. The entire conference will vote at its November meeting on the proposal to begin phasing in the missal in June 2011. Meanwhile they’re seeing whether it’s still possible to get the books produced in time.

New Zealand is going forward with partial implementation beginning in Advent 2010. (Yes, you read the year correctly.) They’re starting with the entire Order of Mass this November, and they’re already rehearsing the English chant settings (they’re all at the ICEL website) with congregations. They’ve talked to the U.S. Big Three publishers about getting their new Mass settings in time for use this November. Meanwhile, they’re introducing a local Mass setting. UPDATE: New Zealand has not received its final text with recognitio, but it is nonetheless going forward with implementation of the entire Order of Mass this Advent.

Another conference is upset about the final text (the product, the process) and is not setting an implementation date now. They’re putting it on the agenda for discussion at their plenary meeting later this fall.

Yet another conference is upset about the final text (the product, the process) and is not setting an implementation date now. They’re putting it on the agenda for discussion at their plenary meeting later this fall.

The United States, as far as we know, is still in what Cardinal George calls its “joyful time…of preparation.” I expect some of the joy comes from Cardinal George’s strange impression that the final translations “have been made with singing them in mind.” Pray Tell will report on the joy as it continues to break out in the U.S.

awr

Anthony Ruff, OSB

Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB, is a monk of St. John's Abbey. He teaches liturgy, liturgical music, and Gregorian chant at St. John's University School of Theology-Seminary. He is widely published and frequently presents across the country on liturgy and music. He is the author of Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations, and of Responsorial Psalms for Weekday Mass: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter. He does priestly ministry at the neighboring community of Benedictine sisters in St. Joseph.

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13 responses to “Some national conference updates UPDATED 9-22”

  1. Paul Inwood

    As far as I am aware, the only conferences who have received any sort of recognitio are the US, England & Wales, and Canada. And only the US so far has received its National Propers.

    If England and Wales, Scotland and Australia (who are sharing the same altar missal) all receive the Congregation’s thumbs-up for everything — Missal, National Propers and adaptations requested by episcopal conferences — before Christmas, then England and Wales can feasibly roll out its two-stage plan, as previously suggested:

    (1) Implement Order of Mass on September 4th 2011, retain euchological texts from current Missal (because the new Missal will not be printed until mid-October).
    (2) Implement full Missal on 1st Sunday of Advent 2011.

    There is of course a full national formation programme accompanying this, being worked on at this very moment. The programme is scheduled to begin in February 2011 and proceed in clear phases until Advent. It takes into account dioceses, parishes and groups within parishes, each of which have their distinct needs.

    If the before-Christmas date is not met for all three conferences, then everything is up in the air. It seems clear that implementation of the full Missal at the Easter Triduum 2012 is the least desirable option: Pentecost would be a better choice.

    We sit and wait.

    Reply
  2. Lynn Thomas

    I find myself wondering how Cardinal George defines the word ‘joyful’. What I understand that word to mean is not breaking out in notable amounts anywhere around my part of town.

    Reply
    1. RP Burke

      Irony alert: Probably the same definition that the liturgy theorists use when they talk about “joyful singing in the procession for communion.”

      Reply
      1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
        Anthony Ruff, OSB

        How true!
        awr

  3. Tom East

    Br Ruff – who wrote the chants for the new English texts which you mention are now being sung (i.e. rehearsed) in New Zealand?

    Reply
  4. Sean Whelan

    What file extension are the ICEL chants in? I can’t open them on my computer.

    Reply
    1. Anthony Ruff, OSB Avatar
      Anthony Ruff, OSB

      ICEL prepares chants for the conferences. They’re found here: http://www.icelweb.org/musicfolder/openmusic.php
      They’re PDF files.

      awr

      Reply
      1. Sean Whelan

        Must be an issue with Macs, the file extension is .php and just opens up into jibberish.

  5. Robert Barden

    The National Liturgical Music Board in Australia is also supposed to be announcing at the end of this month which locally composed Mass settings will be recommended for use across the country. The hope is to have several Australian settings which can form a core repertoire across the country.

    Reply
  6. Chris Grady

    What a disaster.

    From the first nasty acts by the bitchy, ambitious men who arranged the death of the 1998 translation, through their authorship of Liturgiam Authenticam, the lies told to bishops’ conferences to get them to vote things through with a minimum of fuss, the great Vox Clara hijack, right up to now, and, it seems, more of the same nonsense to come.

    Absolute disaster.

    Reply
  7. Thomas Strickland

    Perhaps the U.S. should set implementation for Easter Sunday, so we can celebrate the “Pashal” feast of our Lord Jesus Christ! (See chant for The Announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts.)

    Reply
  8. Alan Smith

    Sean Whelan :

    Must be an issue with Macs, the file extension is .php and just opens up into jibberish.

    It works fine on my Mac, opening in my browser as a page of links to the various PDF files.

    Reply
  9. Sebastian Pollock

    UPDATE: New Zealand has not received its final text with recognitio, but it is nonetheless going forward with implementation of the entire Order of Mass this Advent.

    How bizarre!

    Do the NZ bishops live in the real world? Have they, for example, received any response from Rome about adaptations to the Ordo Missae? (The American bishops have, but no others have, I think.)

    Or is someone desperate for ecclesiastical preferment?

    Going ahead without recognitio is very dangerous, as the South African bishops discovered (things are still in a state of ferment there, I am told). I wonder what the South Africans are going to do when they receive an Ordo Missae which is different from the one they have been using (in defiance of Rome’s requests that they withdraw).

    Reply

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