New translation in the UK on BBC 4 "Sunday Worship" show
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Till next Sunday in the UK (or longer, if you use Radio Downloader or other aggregators), you can listen to BBC 4's broadcast of the new translation in action, at the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs, in Cambridge. (Click on that pink "Listen Now" thing.)

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnds

    Shucks, it's real purty.

    The homily is pretty good too.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,151
    Very moving, thank you for pointing us to this celebration. The homily is indeed very good - and germaine.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,151
    The Homily
    Fr Alexander Master:

    Words matter. They always have, and they always will. When Moses encountered God in the Burning Bush and asked his name, the answer he was given became the most sacred word in the Hebrew language, so sacred that it could never be uttered, and is only referred to in the Hebrew Bible by a sort of code. When the dreadful events we saw in our cities a few weeks ago were at their height, whether the protagonists were described in the media as ‘protestors’ or as ‘rioters’ justifiably aroused considerable emotion.

    When it was announced that the Roman Catholic Church in this country would start to pray the Mass, the central act of worship, using a new and more faithful translation from the original Latin, there were many reactions: some positive, some less so. And that in itself is a mark of the esteem in which so many Christians hold the Mass: the Mass matters, and how we use language to give ourselves a glimpse of the divine is more than important.

    This weekend, the process of introducing that new translation is beginning. Yes, it will take some adjustment: unfamiliarity is always awkward. The nineteenth-century churchman and Cardinal, Blessed John Henry Newman, knew his fair share of upheaval over the course of his long life, yet was able, in the end, to see the value of that upheaval as he famously noted that ‘to be perfect is to have changed often.’

    Yes, familiar words are changing. But we need to keep a sense of perspective about what is changing, and what is not. This week as last, it is the same Mass we celebrate; it is the same Jesus Christ whom we seek to worship. ‘For where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them’, he says in the Gospel reading we’ve just heard. These things have not changed, and they never will.

    In daily life, the words we choose can dictate whether we make someone angry, or joyful – or simply indifferent. The words we choose at an interview can determine if we get a job, or not. And if a fresh choice of the words we use in our prayer, as individuals or together as a Church, can help lead us to a greater awareness of the presence of Christ, and to witness with greater commitment to the faith we profess, then that is something for which we should offer profound words of thanks to God.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    outstanding. What a relief to be done with that old Missal. Such a brilliant and wonderful relief from the dreadful tedium of the plain.

    However:

    Mass begins not with the introit but with a song based on a text that is not part of the liturgy
    The celebrant evidently refuses to sing anything in the Kyrie and so the penitential rite goes back and forth between speaking from the altar and singing from the loft
    Credo is not sung even though there are two excellent settings in the new Missal
    The Offertory chant is replaced by a hymn with non-liturgical text
    The preface dialogue before the Sign of Peace should be sung to encourage more decorum
    Communion chant dropped and replaced by a motet.

    On the plus side

    The Gloria is fantastic.
    The celebrant sings the preface and does a great job
    The Eucharistic Acclamation sung without accompaniment: excellent
    Our Father sung with outstanding melody, one that should be immediately adopted all through the English-speaking world.
    Agnus Dei sung properly with cantor only on each "Lamb of God" - not one in one hundred parishes will get this right.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    It is also possible that the propers were sung but not recorded for the show.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    At NLM someone suggested that the choice not to sing the propers might have been influenced by the 40 minute time constraint. Choosing hymns here might have been done to provide a familiar wrapping to better sell the Missal texts.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,151
    It seemed to me when I listened to this service that there were some breaks due to part of the actual service being excised to make it fit the 40 minute window.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    I would be truly fascinated to know how the celebrant somehow managed to read the alternate Opening Prayer (sic) from the 1973 Missal. How does that even happen? Did he write it on a post-it note and paste it in over the actual Collect in the Missal?

    Edit: I see people have noted this over in the NLM comments too. I only noticed it because I heard the same collect myself on Sunday, and the priests at my parish use the alternative collects exclusively. "Circle of life"? Wasn't that from The Lion King?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    I've heard that the new propers are not in use yet in England, only the Order of Mass. They may be using a transitional Missal for a few months.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    How awkward. Does that mean that everything is the new translation, except the collect, super oblata, and postcommunion? What's the point?
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