on the website of The Tablet today:
CTS bars US missals as UK stocks run low
The Catholic Truth Society (CTS) has blocked attempts by bookshops and parishes to buy chapel editions of the new English translation of the Missal from America after its own supplies sold out. The CTS told Columba Press and Books Services in Ireland that they were forbidden from selling an American version of the chapel edition of the Missal – which is half the price of the £230 altar version – in the UK. CTS has sole authority to supply the altar and chapel editions in Britain and Australia but it has run out of the chapel version and will not have copies available until February.
The decision to restrict the publication of the new text to one publisher has caused some ill feeling: see here. CTS’s justification arises from the quite extraordinary care being taken with a book designed to be physically durable (in a way that it’s UK predecessor notoriously was not): see here and here. One suspects that the price and weight of the altar missal caused more people than anticipated to settle for the chapel edition.
CTS may be able to stop Veritas in Ireland–but they surely won’t be able to prevent UK and Australian purchasers from going to Amazon.
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