People are posting accounts of their first encounter with the Missal translation on various threads, but I thought it might be useful to have a single thread that could collect the reactions in one place.
I am not particularly interested in rehashing complaints about either the old translation or the new, and not even complaints about the process. What I am interested is how it felt in actual practice. Was anything better than you expected? Was anything worse?
Better: People seemed in good spirits about the whole thing, willing to give it a go and laughing at their own stumbling. Having responded loudly and clearly with “and with your spirit” at the opening, only about half the congregation got it right at the Gospel, so I said, “let’s try that again.” They got it the second time.
The orations sounded better than I had feared, in part because the pastor had been practicing them all week.
And in EPIII there was one paragraph, which I had not particularly noticed when reading through the prayer, that struck me as quite nice when I heared it proclaimed: “Listen graciously to the prayers of this family, whom you have summoned before you: in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.” I liked the concreteness of “this family” as well as the language of God’s “compassion” (rather than simply God’s “love”).
Worse: Apart from this, EPIII sounded clunkier than I expected, as did the preface. Maybe with time the priest will get a bit better with his pauses, but I couldn’t help but agree with the parishioner who said to me afterward that it sounded as if it had been written by a lawyer.
Since the point of this post is to report impressions and not to debate them, how about if folks limit themselves to one post.
So, what was better? What was worse?
P.S.
Any personal attacks, particularly suggestions that people leave the Church if they are unhappy, as tempting as they may be, will be deleted.
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