"New missal deals blow to ecumenism, Catholic liturgist says" - From the Catholic Register.
A real stretch - since the "blow to ecumenism" is that some Catholic, Protestant and Jewish scholars were left out of the re-translation process. You call that a blow to ecumenism? That a few hundred Ph.D's couldn't get their academia on with the new Missal?
He does manage to say one thing productive: “The words will be an improvement as a whole.”
One key point of the interview - it's going to be very tough to get US Church goers over the hump of the new translations. Expect mucho grumbling, but also pray for better musical settings of the prayers and acclamations that will be in a new translation.
One has to wonder what certain Protestant communities will do: the ones who updated their services and used texts similar to ICEL's. For example, the Episcopal Church, in its Holy Eucharist Rite II, adopted "And also with you" as the response to "The Lord be with you."
When the new English Mass texts come into use in the Catholic Church, those communities will lose an "ecumenical" justification for using the liturgical texts we left behind.
How could you fail to blog this gem?
"The opening liturgy for the scholars remembered the lives of liturgical scholars who have died in the last year. It featured a jazz music presentation of the Book of Genesis."
I leave things like that out to make it more exciting for you, Gordon!
Good to see you on the blog.