Worship Times

Breath of fresh air

ML had been holding its breath for so long waiting for the revised lectionary that it was starting to turn blue. We all remember the highlights of this story, right? Several years ago, the U.S. Bishops approved the revised Lectionary for Mass with the NRSV translation. They sent that to Rome, and Rome approved it also. Then the bishops sent the revised Lectionary for Mass that employed the 1986 revision of the New Testament of the New American Bible translation. The NAB is the translation used in almost every parish in the United States. Rome rejected this version of the lectionary and unapproved their earlier approval of the NRSV version. (They subsequently reapproved their unapproval for Canadian parishes.)

So a bunch of U.S. bishops got together with some of the Vatican bishops and they hammered out a compromise version of the NAB lectionary that everybody could live with. The U.S. Bishops approved the compromise version for Sundays and Solemnities last October. So everybody could move ahead and get the new lectionary out, right? Wrong.

Turns out Rome didn't like the introduction to the lectionary. They wanted the bishops to make about 400 changes to it. So the bishops had to think about that. Meanwhile, ML's shade of blue was beginning to turn sort of purple. Then at their June 1998 meeting, the bishops okayed the changes. So ML is breathing normally again, and by the time you read this, you should be able to stroll down to your local Catholic bookstore and pick up a copy of the new lectionary. Right? After all, what else could go wrong? Just to be safe, however, ML does not recommend holding your breath.

Clearing the confusion

While ML is happy to be breathing again, it is a little worried about some members of the faithful who seem to be waiting for the return of the pre-Vatican II church before sampling another whiff of air contaminated by that council. Note that Bishop James C. Timlin of Scranton recently presided at a Tridentine liturgy at which he read a decree establishing a society of priests dedicated to the old Latin Mass.

Father Carlos Urrutigoity, the 34-year-old superior general of the new Society of St. John, said, "The faithful have suffered through decades of commotion and confusion" and his group was one of the many new seeds being planted amid the confusion of the modern age.

No doubt, having a bishop of the post-Vatican II church give his approval to a group of young men who want to return to a church they never knew will go a long way toward clearing up any "commotion and confusion" among the faithful.

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