Good morning to you, Brother Ruff!<\/p>\n
I want to give you a little feedback from outside the liturgist community. I am a laywoman, mother of six including one daughter who is gay and has left the Church, another daughter who is committed to the Church to the degree that she is paying her way through night school at the local seminary. Over the last 30 years I have taught Faith Formation, led Children’s Liturgy of the Word and sung in choir, so I guess I fall into the category of active laywoman.<\/p>\n
Here is what I wanted to say to you: the introduction of the new translation is going to cause yet another fault line in the Church.<\/strong> Many\u00a0(most?) pastors,\u00a0liturgists, choir directors, music leaders, etc. seem to be making a good faith effort to bite the bullet and put a good face on things. Despite what personal reservations they may have, they are doing what they can to ease the transition. I realized this morning my irritation at this, a feeling that they have capitulated too soon.\u00a0Coming from a large family, I’ve learned to keep my irritations to myself. Other people will not. To be quite clear,\u00a0I expect we will not only see a split among parishes, as in, these parishes follow the new translation and those parishes don’t, but also within<\/em> parishes. <\/strong>Some people will resent those seen as foisting the new translation upon them. Others will insist on respecting the authority of the Vatican. Pastors and staffs will be caught in the middle.<\/p>\n Most of what I’ve read on the Pray Tell<\/em>\u00a0 site seems to have focused\u00a0on the actual translations with additional discussion of the politics behind the translations.\u00a0I think your contributors and readers are very sensitive to the concept that words have meaning. I believe that the switch to the new translation will be much more traumatic than the switch from Latin.<\/strong> For most people, the switch from Latin to the vernacular was a switch from pious gibberish (sorry \u2013 most people did not and do not understand Latin!) to a clear proclamation of the Good News. The message overrode any clumsy or ugly words.\u00a0 I’m afraid that the switch to the new translation will be seen as a distortion of the Good News meant to prop up the power of the\u00a0clergy.<\/strong>\u00a0I think that many people will not tolerate a perceived attempt to twist the liturgy to this purpose.<\/p>\n My own large, vibrant Vatican II parish was merged with a smaller, failing\u00a0parish under the leadership of a priest dedicated to the \u201creform of the reform.\u201d The result is an ongoing disaster.\u00a0I fear the implementation of the new translation will be another, much larger disaster. Thank you for all your good work.<\/p>\n Brigid Rauch “The introduction of the new translation is going to cause yet another fault line in the Church. Many (most?) pastors, liturgists, choir directors, music leaders, etc. seem to be making a good faith effort to bite the bullet and put a good face on things.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-new-missal"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n<\/strong>
\nI don’t know what I expect you to do with this observation. I guess I’m just hoping that some additional early warning of the oncoming disaster <\/strong>might help some people prepare.<\/p>\n
\nFulton, New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"