We have the St. Isaac Jogues Missal and the St. Michael Hymnal.
The St. Michael Hymnal has all the Mass dialogue, as well as many Mass settings; including traditional chants, missal chants and Missa Simplex and some more modern "choral Masses" and such.
The St. Isaac Jogues Missal has the lectionary and propers (English & Latin, side-by-side) for years ABC (and its corresponding psalm book also contains the full 3-year cycle), as well as all major feast days for the Ordinary Form. It also contains some Ordinary chants at the back of the book.
These 2 books make great companions, and having the full 3-year cycle in 1 book and 1 psalm book (without specific Sunday dates to force you to buy a new book, each time) saves time, money, and shelf/pew space.

As a small first step, what about getting OCP's hardbound hymnal. You'll maintain much of your current repertoire but transition away from the disposable missalettes. You'll also save a lot of money, so in a couple years you can then purchase a better pew missal. Then a few years later you can upgrade to a better hymnal.

Journey Songs has plenty of solid hymns without the shock of St. Michael. While heretical hymns should be purged immediately, the 2nd rate hymns can be weaned over time. Introducing a pew missal allows you to introduce better settings of the ordinary and using the two books in tandem helps to lessen the shock.

Help With Ditching Breaking Bread

Pick a windy day, place Breaking Bread in your hand with a slight upward tilt to the front edge - enough to gain a bit of lift - use an underhand toss, and aim it at the open dumpster doors. Worked for me with Glory & Praise.

Pick a windy day, place Breaking Bread in your hand with a slight upward tilt to the front edge - enough to gain a bit of lift - use an underhand toss, and aim it at the open dumpster doors.

Alternative Method: Gather all the missalettes and place them in your canoe for a nice day-trip on the lake. Have an unfortunate Canoe Accident (where YOU are the only survivor.)

Alternative Method: Gather all the missalettes and place them in your canoe for a nice day-trip on the lake. Have an unfortunate Canoe Accident (where YOU are the only survivor.)

I may have told this story before. I don't remember. A good friend, a DM and organist in a Methodist church packed up materials to vacate the choir room for renovations. She put all the cheesy anthems she hated in a box by themselves. During the move, she conveniently lost that box. After the renovations were complete and they had moved back into the choir room, members were saying, "I wish we could find that box with our favorite pieces."

There is no such thing as a "transitional" hymnal. If you spend that much money on permanent books, they will need to hold on to them for a while. You might consider just getting the license from onelicense.net and printing everything in worship aids. That way, you can transition with the balance you see fit.

@Matthew - this is what was done before I arrived at my current parish. While I love the idea and it would help me a lot; for me it is simply not practical. I have a normal full time job and am part time at the church. There is not enough time in the day for me to do this properly, print, etc.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Printing worship aids is not a viable option at this time. I will be leaving the area for a bit and the current person in charge of music at the most-attended Mass is retiring. The parish will be in a state of flux and finding (and hiring) a musical director is a whole other matter. Odds are whoever they can get won't be as invested as the people on this forum. In my mind this is a good time to get a permanent hymnal, preferably with hymns that aren't heretical. However, I'm afraid purchasing separate hymnals and missals isn't an option either.

Right now the options that sound the best (of the worst) are Worship IV and the Catholic Community Hymnal, because both contain readings for all three years. These are at least hardcover, permanent books with readings and are conducive to cherry-picking solid hmyns. If there's another volume out there which has both hymns and missal, I'd love to hear about it.

A few hardbound books in the back fo the church will suffice for those who insist or, through disability, must be able to read.

in the "old days", those who wanted to follow the Mass would purchase their own missals, saving the parish thousands of dollars a year that today is wasted and in most cases recycled or fuels the fires for the scout group hot dog roasts.

Save a tree, Save the Mass.

Why are we saddled with modern expenses just because people want them?

Carpet, pew cushions, sound absorptive panels and ceilings.

Thanks dad29. I have to agree. Chaswjd and Noel, in an ideal world maybe everyone would be able to bring their own missal and follow along with the perfectly-declaimed Word of God, but that doesn't happen in many parishes. Please keep in mind my other comments in this thread. This is a parish which has basically had Breaking Bread for the past however many years OCP has been publishing it. Getting the pastor to agree to a new hymnal will be difficult enough, without the added ire of parishioners who won't know what to do without reading along. Again, if anyone can recommend any solid hymnal/missal alternatives to CCH and Worship IV, I'm all ears.

My prior parish spent over a year investigating hardbound hymnals to replace "Breaking Bread." While my first choice was St. Michael (which my current parish is planning to get within the year), the pastor selected ILP's Credo and the ILP Book of Divine Worship; he felt Credo included many more traditional hymns than Breaking Bread while still including a functional selection of the other repertoire they had sung in the past. The addition of the Book of Divine Worship was so that people who wanted to follow along with the readings could do so; quite frankly, I was surprised that we were able to budget for both a hymnal and a missal, but the long-term savings over a disposable annual hymnal is significant and I believe ILP did offer payment plan options. Although I was there less than a year with the new books, the transition seemed to be going well.

Again, if anyone can recommend any solid hymnal/missal alternatives to CCH and Worship IV, I'm all ears.

Ignatius Pew Missal

“If anyone can recommend any solid hymnal/missal alternatives to CCH and Worship IV, I'm all ears.”

Unless you think your pastor and congression would be prepared to take on St. Michael Hymnal, Worship IV is probably your best option, since the traditional-leaning hymnal market is already a pretty small one. My parish uses W4, and we’re actually pretty happy with it. There are definitely songs we avoid, but on the whole it’s a good hymnal and our priests, musicians, and congregants all seem to like it. If you think pew readings will still important in your parish’s post-Breaking Bread world, I’d recommend getting either the pew readings edition or the standard edition paired with GIA’s Sunday’s Word, which comes with just what you need and nothing more ($2 a year per copy, not bad).

IMHO either of these options are much better both musically and financially than Breaking Bread. It boggles my mind how many parishes spend an ungodly amount of money every year on disposable missalettes that have basically the same material year to year. Investing in a good hymnal like Worship or SMH will literally pay off within a few years, and congregations get the added benefit of having a stable and familiar resource that can last up to two decades. I know GIA has fairly reasonable financing options, and as someone else said you could also turn it into capital campaign, especially if it eliminates a big yearly expense. Well worth it if you ask me.

Gosh, I hope so, too

If the Parish is steeped in OCP, then as I said above the logical first small step would be to buy the hard bound Journey Songs with the readings. You will start saving money and they will get used to the new format without loosing the readings or their favorite songs.

After a few years of saving money from not buying disposable missalettes, you could by a better pew missal and focus on improving your ordinary settings and introducing proper chants in conjunction with hymns and songs from Journey Songs which will still be in the pews. Only after a long time of steady improvement will you be ready for a better hymnal.

I don't like Journey Songs either. But given the situation described by the OP it seems to be the logical option. If one were to switch from Breaking Bread to Saint Michael or something similar then people will complain about nor having enough contemporary songs. I once switched a parish from BB, actually it was Music Issue, to Gather Comprehensive and even the Haugen Haas stuff was unfamiliar to them along with most hymns we would consider standards.

Printing custom worship sheets (or whatever you want to call them) may be ideal but not always possible in each situation. My point was to invest in a solid Pew Missal and to make chant a priority without giving people a cause to complain about popular song choices. Even if one of GIA's hymnals may be technically better, why fight that battle when it's not essential to the ultimate goal? Journey Songs will fall apart in less than a decade and hopefully in that time enough progress has been made to invest in a real hymnal.

Another option is One in Faith by World Library.