I’ve heard from various sources, including folks who were at the recent Societas Liturgica congress, that Rome is moving toward having the Revised Grail Psalter be used in all the English-language editions of the Liturgy of the Hours. This translation is the work of Abbot Gregory Polan, OSB, of Conception Abbey.
This article on the Grail Psalter by Paul Inwood, which Pray Tell ran in March, helpfully summarizes the history of Grail psalm translations.
The entire history is fascinating, but the most relevant part for forthcoming English-language Office concerns what Inwood calls Grail IV. When this careful work of Abbot Gregory came back from Rome with approval (“recognitio”), it unfortunately had over 100 changes to the text. This approved version became known as the Revised Grail Psalter (RGP), and it is published and in use in some places.
But then the U.S. bishops, having heard that Rome was now open to undoing its past mistakes and working more collegially with bishops’ conferences, approved revisions to RGP last November that make it more like Grail IV but don’t exactly line up with Grail IV either. Meanwhile, Grail IV (not RGP) has been approved for the Liturgy of the Hours in Africa. Rome has not yet acted on the U.S. bishops’ revisions.
If the most recent Grail psalter will be used in all English-language editions of the LoH, it will be interesting to see what version it is. I think the best solution at this point, though it will mess up things for those already running with RGP, would be for Rome to approve of Grail IV and have that be the standard.
It would have been handy if Rome had done that the first time and not messed up what bishops’ conferences submitted, but we can’t change the past. We can only move forward with the best solution in an imperfect world.
I’m hopeful that a good spirit of collegiality, and appropriate decentralization in liturgical matters, will serve the Catholic Church well in coming years.
awr
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