Priest: 'New Missal should be allowed to stand on its own'

The British Catholic journal The Tablet has an article by Father Michael Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, who famously urged in an America magazine piece that the Church hold off implementing the new English translation of the Roman Missal until it could undergo some "market testing."

Though his America article inspired the creation of a website, www.whatifwejustsaidwait.org (and — as we told you about in an earlier post — an opposing website, www.whatifwejustsaidpray.org), Father Ryan writes in his Tablet column that he finds himself "posing quite a different question: What if we just said 'Yes'?"

The reason isn't so much a change of heart or a coming around to a greater acceptance of the Mass revisions. Rather, Father Ryan proposes that he and fellow priests who are critical of the new translation celebrate the revised Mass exactly as written without edits beginning Nov. 27, so that the people in the pews can make an honest assessment of the new translation.

Father Ryan writes:

This is another way of saying that the new Missal should be allowed to stand on its own and be judged for what it is, not for what we priests decide to make of it. I am of the opinion that the Missal will in time – I’m guessing not a long time – be judged deficient, but an informed judgement will never be made if we priests, even for the best of motives, give our people not the new Missal but our version of it. So we should do whatever is necessary to prepare our people for the new Missal but not take on the responsibility for making it work by doctoring or diluting it.

Maybe the new translation will receive a tepid response from the faithful. But maybe as they celebrate the revised Mass, Father Ryan and others who oppose the new translation will come to appreciate it, like those priests, music directors and parish ministers who have attended Father Bill Burke's workshops on the revisions, which he has conducted in 27 Canadian dioceses so far. Father Burke recently spoke with The Catholic Register, Canada's national Catholic newspaper, about the reactions to the new Mass:

During his workshops, Burke gives attendees copies of the collects for Advent and Christmas according to the new translation and asks them to follow the new turns of phrase while he reads aloud the current translation.
“The reaction was incredible,” he said. “People were saying ‘You’d almost say this wasn’t coming from the same source. The translation of 1975 left so much out!’ ”
In every case, not only are people saying “this is not so bad,” but are also realizing “there is a lot of good stuff here.”

Read here why Father Burke believes the new translation represents a deepening of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.