Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Maurice Timothy ReidyJanuary 03, 2011

Beginning in Advent of 2011, the U.S. church will be using a new English translation of the Roman Missal. The current translation was promulgated in 1973, and for the past past several years the International Commission on English has been working on a new text. The controversy surrounding this translation, including the decision not to use a text proposed by an earlier iteration of ICEL, has been well documented in America. Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli, the chair of the USCCB Committee on Divine Worship, offers the bishops' case for the new translation in March.

Though the full translation will not be available until late 2011, the Order of Mass is online and can be downloaded here as a pdf. The U.S. bishops' conference has also posted a special Web page on the new Roman Missal, including this helpful FAQ page.

Examples of the coming changes are also available from the USCCB.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Leonard Villa
13 years 11 months ago
You actually can get the full translation online from wikileaks. It's out there. Unfortunately I could not get it as one pdf file.  It's a series of pdf files.  For example files 8 and 9 have the prefaces in the new translation.  Check out this link:

http://www.chantcafe.com/2010/11/received-text-on-wikileaks.html
David Smith
13 years 11 months ago
Thanks.  The questions in the FAQ are good, but the answers seem out of sync with the questions - perfunctorily bureaucratic, for the most part.

In the examples I read of the new Order of the Mass and the first few examples on chantcafe.com seem clear improvements.  No doubt there are changes that aren't improvements.  On the whole, it all seems rather academic, and I wish the bishops had provided a more cogent answer to their first question:  "Why was there a need for a new translation?"

The latest from america

In this episode of Inside the Vatican, Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell discuss the 2025 Jubilee Year, beginning on Christmas Eve 2024 and ending in January 2026.
Inside the VaticanDecember 26, 2024
Pope Francis gives his Christmas blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world) from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 25, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
Pope Francis prayed that the Jubilee Year may become “a season of hope” and reconciliation in a world at war and suffering humanitarian crises as he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve.
Gerard O’ConnellDecember 25, 2024
Pope Francis, after opening the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, gives his homily during the Christmas Mass at Night Dec. 24, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
‘If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!’
Pope FrancisDecember 24, 2024
Inspired by his friend and mentor Henri Nouwen, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., invites listeners in his Christmas Eve homily to approach the manger with renewed awe and openness.
PreachDecember 23, 2024