One word: wait. We have a real opporunity here as a community to endorse a unified setting of the new English text. A CMAA hymnal sounds like a great idea, but I wonder what it would contain....

In the meantime, with a little creativity (and initially a good amount of work) you can do a lot better by printing worship aids. If it's too much to do this weekly, you could print a booklet seasonally, varying ordinaries. Of course if you're doing the four hymn sandwich every week, this might be a lot of music. But if you have short antiphons (such as from BFW) for the congregation and a motet or chant (or two) by the choir (in which case you'll only need to print the translations) this won't take up too much room.

To the OP: Wait until the new translation comes out to buy a hymnal. Make due with what you have to in the mean time.

I find Ritual Song to be decent, but it has WAAAAY too much in it where I flip through and think "why does this deserve to be in here?" Worship III is better, but I think it falls short of its goal of providing "traditional hymnody" because it's lacking in so many hymns that Catholics don't know but deserve to be in a hymnal anyway. Lead Me, Guide Me is a good hymnal as well, AND it contains 4 part harmony if you can pull that off.

Well, the one thing we do know that's positive is that the BCL/USCCB panel is, at least, compiling a "white list" of (it is assumed) 200 approved hymn/song texts that would have to be in the contents of any publisher's hymnal/aide printed after the list's promulgation. I would also like to see the panel tackle the problem of settings of the Mass Ordinaries and other liturgical service music. But the reality is that few of us can agree on which are the worthiest already in use for 4 decades. I personally believe that none of the so-called "default" settings, ie. MoC; StLJ, Community, MoLight, Celtic and so on will be found unanimously worthy. Of course, new settings out there are moot at this point.
As regards two things Charles mentions: RITUALSONG was meant to be, and in fact is, the 50/50 style "type" hymnal alternative to either WORSHIP or any of the GATHER series. It does succeed in being the most balanced of all. In an "all things to all folks" era, it has a place.
The editorial staff of OCP has much too answer for in terms of repertoire manipulation over the years. Great material has been summarily executed while re-introducing more of the Landry-esque pap into its yearly hymnals. It's service music choices are abominable. That said, there is still a great deal of worthy individual works in those collections that shouldn't be summarily dismissed simply because it came from the Evil Empire in Portland.
I think the intellectual dishonesty built into their yearly music survey is obvious. I'm sure that this "popularity contest" approach is then adjudicated by the editorial panel. But both of those assessments are based upon insuring the buying publics' thirst for new product, not necessarily quality (duh!) I think that OCP could easily assemble a "third branch of government" of long term subscribing professional DM's (like a supreme court) who would ratify the choices of the people and the oligarchy. It also might enable OCP to actually lead the publishers' interest in restoring propers and chant in their mainstream hymnal lines.
Just a thought.

Well, maybe there is so semblance of hope on the horizon. I found a very old copy of 'Glory & Praise' in the choir room garbage can. (I pulled it out for my 'museum' since I missed that whole era TBTG) They also threw out 'Our Parish Prays and Sing' (1965). Now I remember that hymnal and it wasn't all that bad. (Added it to my museum).

>>And those pitiful old folks with the guitars and gray pony tails, still trying to be "relevant" for the young people. They are still around, as well. It's too bad they don't seem to realize that the young people laugh at them.

I would wait for a new translation. But for what it's worth, I think my favorite in print hymnal would be the St. Michael hymnal, oringinal texts for the most part and I think probably one of the best selections of service muisc.

I would be curious to know what hymnal your parish uses now. I find a good way is to actually sit down with a hymnal and go page by page, because I think otherwise, you may overlook things.

As for the music aids... our parish recently purchased a Risograph and a folding machine (Hassler, I think). We also paid the copyright fee to use printed songs on the sheets for the parishioners each week... then the music aid is simply printed on 11 x 17 paper each week so that the parishioners have one sheet to look at and no public service announcements are necessary from the cantor.

For our schola, we have one sheet that includes Latin responses and ordinaries for the season that is re-used. We only have to print out the text and translations of the propers on a smaller sheet when we have a Latin Mass. It seems to work pretty well. It would be a lot smaller initial cost outlay than hymnals for the parish and could certainly tide you over until you decided at some point to order hymnals...

I would be happy to email you a pdf of our Latin Mass program for Easter if you are interested to see what it looks like...

I'll second Jeff in saying that if one does a bit of the propers in some form or another, you only need 2 or 3 hymns per Mass, which even a small hymnal can provide for. We use the WLP "We Celebrate", which I earnestly condemn for its lack of options. Yet most of the time we get by since we at most use 3 hymns per Mass.

Has no one here heard of the St. Michael Hymnal? It is the best hymnal I have found yet! plus, it's the same cost as Adoremus hymnals but with a much greater selection of music. It includes music suitable for a parish with a sizable spanish congregation and has the whole ordinary of the mass in latin and english at the beginning, and a fairly good selection of chant mass settings and others. Go to www.stmichaelhymnal.com