The news of what exactly would be in the new Roman Catholic missal preceded the initiation of its use. That news arrived in something that should sound quite familiar to anyone listening to political news in the U.S. lately: through a wiki, in this case Wikispooks, a web site hosting files said to be from the new missal.
Last Sunday was the first Sunday for using the now-leaked missal in some parts of the globe. The honor fell to New Zealand, as it quite often does, for events involving the international date line. Liturgy-aware blogger Bosco Peters collected some responses from the faithful:
…. As a matter of conscience will not attend this weekend.
…. I’m not a fan, for the record. The very base reason for the whole change, to me, is just, well I could use a lot of words, but not worthy of the whole mess – let’s say that. “To get back to a more accurate translation of the original Latin” – whaaat?
…. The collegiality of Vatican II has gone out the window, the ‘literal’ translations from the latin are in no way our vernacular, some of the words used are difficult to understand, much less pray. In our congregation, there was a burst of laughter at the word ‘consubstantial’ in the Creed. With any luck, commonsense will prevail and the changes will be ignored. The new translation is an object lesson in how to retreat into an esoteric ghetto and lose any young people. I cannot believe that the Holy Spirit is involved.