Monday, September 07, 2009

New English Translation of the Roman Missal

I haven't been hearing much about it, but it looks like the advent of the new English translation of the Roman Missal is just around the corner. The link I provided to the revised text about a year ago doesn't work anymore, but the USCCB website has samples of the changes, with handy side-by-side comparisons.

Overall, these changes look to me to be a huge improvement. The texts we have gotten used to are pretty rinky-dink, pedestrian in style, shorn of many Scriptural allusions, and seem calculated to help keep us firmly rooted in our drab earthly existence. The changes will take some getting used to, but I for one look forward to them.

I hope one of these days they also get around to renovating the English translation of the Liturgy of the Hours. That would be a massive undertaking, so I won't be holding my breath; but it really needs to be done.

3 comments:

  1. Speaking of the LOTH, I found I just couldn't take the vacuous language and kept at it for a time chiefly for those passages of readings written by various saints and popes and doctors of the Church found through history. Eventually that didn't hold me because what I really wanted was the Office - but not lame.

    What I am eagerly waiting for is the soon to be published Latin-English 1962 Breviary http://www.baroniuspress.com/index.php?wid=12 I am not a reader of Latin but just to have the English text in the richness of the 1962...oh boy.

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  2. The silly alliteration in Thursday, Week I Evening Prayer ("so my soul sings psalms to you unceasingly") has seldom failed to attract a giggle from me or my children... how long will we have to put up with this? I'm with Owen: as soon as it's out, everyone in the family is getting the new Baronius Press LOTH for Christmas, birthday, whatever.

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  3. Of course, the new Latin-English Roman Breviary will be just that and not at all an new form of the LOTH which is a thing unto itself. Notably, the one thing I like about the LOTH, those previously mentioned historic writings, will not be included. However, what is gained, I think, is much greater than what is lost.

    And speak of that comment I need to correct an error: I noted 1962, which refers not to the new Latin-English Roman Missal (1963) to another Baronius Press edition already published 1962 Roman Missal; highly recommended by me :)

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