Different English Mass liturgies in different regions?

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

There is much discussion of the different Catholic Mass liturgies in different periods.

But I have a query about whether the sequence and history of the different Mass liturgies was different from one part of the country to another.

From about 1964 till about 1970, we had a certain English Mass in my old diocese. Then in 1970 we got a different one (which I didn’t appreciate so much, as it happened - I was still rather young at the time incidentally).

In 1980 I moved to my present diocese and the Mass was the same as I had had since 1970. In 2011 it got changed to the present one.

My VG - who is younger than me, and was born abroad - and some lay folks - some of whom are older than me and come from different parts of England again - tell me that the Mass before 2011 was the first English Mass.

Are people trying to pull a fast one over on me because they know I am vulnerable, because they don’t care, because they feel sheepish and guilty, or is it that there has been a different progression of liturgies in different localities?

I wasn’t that stupid and have always been alert about points of fact and format, I remember a change being talked about round about 1970, and I remember badly missing the old wordings that had been such a revelation to me at a formative age.

(Before about 1963 or '64 I sat through Latin Mass following an English version in my book as was usual and this is not what I am talking about. I was quite little then and as it happens I didn’t mind it, but that is not what I want discussed.)

 

[ProVobis]

I don’t think anyone is pulling a fast one on you. Indeed they did introduce vernacular into the liturgy after the Vatican II. The ICEL decided on their own English translation in the New Mass in 1970 (some say officially it was in 1973). It was again revised in 2011 for all English-speaking countries. Vernaculars which were based on the English translations were/are also being revised.

 

[Phemie]

You’re not wrong. Between 1965 and 1974 different countries used different amounts of vernacular (English in your case) and different provisional translations until Pope Paul VI’s First Typical Edition of the Roman Missal was completed 1969, released in 1970, translated and finally implemented in English around 1974 (at least that’s the copyright date of both the US and Canadian Sacramentaries I have rescued from the flames just so I’d have a record).

The Second Typical Edition, with minor changes, came in 1975 but that one was not translated. Oh, they worked on it but the translation was rejected by Rome in 1998.

Third Typical Edition, completed in 2000, appeared in 2002. It was amended (Third Typical Edition, Amended, 2008) and, as I understand, that’s the final product we saw translated and implemented into English in 2011 (we’re still waiting for the French translation).

All that to say that, while there have been Masses with more or less English since ~1965, the Mass we had prior to 2011 was the first official English translation used world-wide since 1974/75.

 

[Vico]

There is much discussion of the different Catholic Mass liturgies in different periods.

But I have a query about whether the sequence and history of the different Mass liturgies was different from one part of the country to another.

From about 1964 till about 1970, we had a certain English Mass in my old diocese. Then in 1970 we got a different one (which I didn’t appreciate so much, as it happened - I was still rather young at the time incidentally).

In 1980 I moved to my present diocese and the Mass was the same as I had had since 1970. In 2011 it got changed to the present one.

My VG - who is younger than me, and was born abroad - and some lay folks - some of whom are older than me and come from different parts of England again - tell me that the Mass before 2011 was the first English Mass.

Are people trying to pull a fast one over on me because they know I am vulnerable, because they don’t care, because they feel sheepish and guilty, or is it that there has been a different progression of liturgies in different localities?

I wasn’t that stupid and have always been alert about points of fact and format, I remember a change being talked about round about 1970, and I remember badly missing the old wordings that had been such a revelation to me at a formative age.

(Before about 1963 or '64 I sat through Latin Mass following an English version in my book as was usual and this is not what I am talking about. I was quite little then and as it happens I didn’t mind it, but that is not what I want discussed.)

Pope Pius XII in 1955. (Includes revised Holy Week and calendar changes)
Pope John XXIII in 1962. (Approved for E.F. Pope Benedict XVI - 2007)
(Vatican II 1962-1965)
Orders for Missal changes March 1965 (vernacular, option to face congregation). *
Communion under both kinds 1965.
Second instruction 1967 (English canon, simpler rubrics)
Additional anaphora 1968
Pope Paul VI Novus Ordo Missae on March 22, 1970. *

• Second revision 1975
• Third revision 2002,
• Third revision emended 2008
  (Approved USA Missal changes effective Nov 2011)

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

• Some of you are calling what was brought into use before the Council finished and was evidently planned before the Council started - indeed I often read the date 1962 as date of publication (in other words it was planned in the 1950s) - as “provisional”
• Pro Vobis is denying that this existed altogether, like my unreliable acquaintances including the VG (he made this statement in print for public “information”).
• If it was so good, why did it have to be put out of use around the phase 1969-75?
• Pro Vobis, why are you and my VG - not an ordinary parish priest, but the no. 2 of my whole diocese - pretending that “the Council gave us the English Mass” when ordinary children in the pew were already given a fine one planned and published for us in the years prior to 1962.

Where are you Pro Vobis in terms of ecclesiatical territory (you don’t have to name a town or diocese) and where were you prior to about 1969 and 1962?

My VG is from Ireland (probably southern).

I am originally from part of England, UK, and now (since 1980) in another part of it. In other words, the change was while I was still in my old region. The Mass liturgy I most appreciated was brought in when I was a big enough child to start appreciating it and it was thrown out while I was growing to appreciate it more and more.

Did other parts of England (like my present part) not have the same Mass as me prior to 1970? And other English speaking countries? (The VG was probably too young to care but ought to have looked it up by now.)

If Mass is supposed to catechise the precious souls of the young and if the practice of the faith is supposed to exist and be valuable, I’m fed up with the Church saying "pretend that didn’t exist because it was ‘provisional’ ". It has played that underhand trick on me once too often!

Why not be honest and say “the one we threw out in 2011 was the second and not the first”?

The mismatch might be that Pro Vobis’s locality and the VG’s part of Ireland and various parts of England didn’t have an English Mass but that doesn’t excuse people’s not doing homework about those of our localities that did.

The rest of those places should have adopted ours because it was good.

As understanding of format has been a strong point with me from an early age, acknowledged by teachers and my parents, it’s not good enough to imply we didn’t have it. Also I remember that both changes - earlier sixties and around 1970 - were discussed by those around me, so others (more grown-up than me) were noticing something too.

Are they trying to “airbrush it” because they are ashamed they abolished something so good, as well as up-to-date?

 

[Phemie]

I’m in Canada and I can remember to the day when we first heard a Mass with anything in English or French (other than the homily and the re-readings in the vernaclar). I was in grade 6 so it had to be the winter of 1965 – First Sunday of Lent, IIRC. There was no such thing as a Mass in English or French in Canada prior to that. We’d spent weeks of lunchtimes with the Sister who taught grade 7 practicing the responses.

My most vivid memory of that day is my mother tugging on my sleeve and hissing, “Not so loud!” as I did my darndest to lead the assembly who, to my young ears, was simply mumbling. You have to understand that for our parish this was not simply the first time hearing a Mass in our language, it was also our first time having to respond out loud. Unlike other areas, we had never experienced a dialog Mass. Speaking in church in that fashion was totally foreign to our experience and for the adults it felt totally wrong. This explains their reluctance to do anything but murmur, if they responded at all.

 

[ProVobis]

• Some of you are calling what was brought into use before the Council finished and was evidently planned before the Council started - indeed I often read the date 1962 as date of publication (in other words it was planned in the 1950s) - as “provisional”
• Pro Vobis is denying that this existed altogether, like my unreliable acquaintances including the VG (he made this statement in print for public “information”).
• If it was so good, why did it have to be put out of use around the phase 1969-75?

As I understand it the Missal of 1962 was intended to be the reformed missal and by the issue of the Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia was to be said or sung in Latin only. People of course were allowed to follow in the vernacular if they wished, and in whatever translation they wished.

• Pro Vobis, why are you and my VG - not an ordinary parish priest, but the no. 2 of my whole diocese - pretending that “the Council gave us the English Mass” when ordinary children in the pew were already given a fine one planned and published for us in the years prior to 1962.

People were using various handmissals with different translations of the pre-Vatican II Latin missal. The one which was immediately used after the council, which allowed for the vernacular by the priest, was the St. Joseph’s Missal, I believe.

Where are you Pro Vobis in terms of ecclesiatical territory (you don’t have to name a town or diocese) and where were you prior to about 1969 and 1962?

In the US and prior to that in the U.K. In all places the Mass was said totally in Latin prior to 1964 or so. After then and prior to 1969 the amount of English said by the priest from the pre-Vatican II HAND missal varied from place to place. (The whole 62 Missal was being dismantled during that time but that’s not what you asked.)

If Mass is supposed to catechise the precious souls of the young and if the practice of the faith is supposed to exist and be valuable, I’m fed up with the Church saying "pretend that didn’t exist because it was ‘provisional’ ". It has played that underhand trick on me once too often!

Many share that sentiment, I suppose.

Why not be honest and say “the one we threw out in 2011 was the second and not the first”?

The mismatch might be that Pro Vobis’s locality and the VG’s part of Ireland and various parts of England didn’t have an English Mass but that doesn’t excuse people’s not doing homework about those of our localities that did.

The rest of those places should have adopted ours because it was good.

As understanding of format has been a strong point with me from an early age, acknowledged by teachers and my parents, it’s not good enough to imply we didn’t have it. Also I remember that both changes - earlier sixties and around 1970 - were discussed by those around me, so others (more grown-up than me) were noticing something too.

Are they trying to “airbrush it” because they are ashamed they abolished something so good, as well as up-to-date?

From what I understand and remember the 1970 promulgated a new Mass and different translations of the Gloria, Creed, Sanctus, etc from what was said prior to that. Technically the 2011 was the second English translation of the 1970 Missal. But if you count the pre-1969 Missal, I suppose you could call it the third English translation. I have no problems with whether it was the second or third (or fourth or fifth, for that matter.)

I gather from all this you were happy with the 1964 changes?

 

[malphono]

People were using various handmissals with different translations of the pre-Vatican II Latin missal. The one which was immediately used after the council, which allowed for the vernacular by the priest, was the St. Joseph’s Missal, I believe.

The St Jospeh’s Missal predates 1962 by many years. I have a St Joseph’s Sunday Missal, which was my late mother’s, from the early 1950s, and it wasn’t wasn’t the first edition. And I have a St Joseph’s Daily Missal from 1963 which still expected Mass in Latin. I don’t know (and don’t care, really) if there was a vernacularized version of it after the 1965 “interim Missal” (or any subsequent form) came into use.

 

[SMHW]

I am American so I’m not sure what I can bring to an international discussion. But here is the copyright page from the brand new missal I used when I was 8 years old in the 3rd primary grade in California. (This was school year 1966-1967.)

Our daily school Masses were usually in English. On Sundays most Masses were in English but I believe there may have been one or two in Latin.

Just for reference, all school Masses in my first primary year were in Latin, but by the time I finished the second primary year (in June of 1966) almost all school Masses were in English. When I made my First Communion in 1966 we practiced all responses in both Latin and English since we wouldn’t know the language for the Mass until that day. (Our First Communion Mass turned out to be in English.)

 

[Phemie]

• Some of you are calling what was brought into use before the Council finished and was evidently planned before the Council started - indeed I often read the date 1962 as date of publication (in other words it was planned in the 1950s) - as “provisional”
• Pro Vobis is denying that this existed altogether, like my unreliable acquaintances including the VG (he made this statement in print for public “information”).
• If it was so good, why did it have to be put out of use around the phase 1969-75?
• Pro Vobis, why are you and my VG - not an ordinary parish priest, but the no. 2 of my whole diocese - pretending that “the Council gave us the English Mass” when ordinary children in the pew were already given a fine one planned and published for us in the years prior to 1962.

I don’t doubt that you had an English Missal prior to Vatican II but Mass was not allowed to be said in the vernacular until after Vatican II. Missals could be published in any language at all and the translations they contained were not in any way official. You could put three different publishers’ missals side by side and the English would not be identical. The first official translation of the Mass was the ICEL translation that used dynamic equivalence rather than direct equivalence method of translation. That’s the translation that Rome wanted changed. ICEL worked on it for years but it didn’t pan out before a new Latin edition was published.

If you experienced an English Mass prior to 1964, I would seriously question its liceity, if not its outright validity.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

So they were out to bamboozle us, and to make sure we all got bamboozled in different ways so we could be at cross purposes ever after.

Because of this shallow, arbitrary attitude to liturgy, simultaneously claiming that they have not got it, church authorities have no grounds to complain about, for instance, a priest who says Latin Mass “without permission”, or the “kikos” who say “we are not a bunch of weird, that make strange long thing in the night” (that’s a verbatim quote) (I am against them incidentally for completely different reasons).

The complaints about these two examples ought to be based on practical grounds around how people are affected - but citing “norms” is weak.

Why can Latin Mass - both Old and New Ordo - be wangled with some effort, but in English, Old Ordo is never, ever, allowed, at all?

At least protestants are honest about their relative flexibility.

In answer to your question, it was brought in in about 1964 but it was published in 1962 and was specially planned in the fifties. Was it not supposed to mean something to a young boy? What’s so special about specially replacing it with something worse, and at the same time pretending you are not doing so? It’s unrespectful. Why did God want me born then? We had no other source of catechesis in my family.

 

[Phemie]

So they were out to bamboozle us, and to make sure we all got bamboozled in different ways so we could be at cross purposes ever after.

Because of this shallow, arbitrary attitude to liturgy, simultaneously claiming that they have not got it, church authorities have no grounds to complain about, for instance, a priest who says Latin Mass “without permission”, or the “kikos” who say “we are not a bunch of weird, that make strange long thing in the night” (that’s a verbatim quote) (I am against them incidentally for completely different reasons).

The complaints about these two examples ought to be based on practical grounds around how people are affected - but citing “norms” is weak.

Why can Latin Mass - both Old and New Ordo - be wangled with some effort, but in English, Old Ordo is never, ever, allowed, at all?

At least protestants are honest about their relative flexibility.

In answer to your question, it was brought in in about 1964 but it was published in 1962 and was specially planned in the fifties. Was it not supposed to mean something to a young boy? What’s so special about specially replacing it with something worse, and at the same time pretending you are not doing so? It’s unrespectful. Why did God want me born then? We had no other source of catechesis in my family.

I am really confused by what you are asking and am really sorry that you are so upset. Why do you think you were “bamboozled”? What were you taught through that Missal that the Church changed?

I don’t think anyone I know would say that the ICEL translation of 1970 was better than what we could find in our hand missals at the time. But again, the hand missals were not put out by “the Church”, they were put out by publishing companies or religious organizations, with the intent to allow us to more closely follow a Mass that for many of us was practically silent.

The translations that were used before the ICEL ones were not official either. Who published the Missal you have that you say was prepared in the 50s? Does it contain an approval from a Bishops’ Conference? A Nihil Obstat? Who it was prepared for? Is there anything to indicate any of that?

 

[Dmitri77]

So they were out to bamboozle us, and to make sure we all got bamboozled in different ways so we could be at cross purposes ever after.

Because of this shallow, arbitrary attitude to liturgy, simultaneously claiming that they have not got it, church authorities have no grounds to complain about, for instance, a priest who says Latin Mass “without permission”, or the “kikos” who say “we are not a bunch of weird, that make strange long thing in the night” (that’s a verbatim quote) (I am against them incidentally for completely different reasons).

The complaints about these two examples ought to be based on practical grounds around how people are affected - but citing “norms” is weak.

Why can Latin Mass - both Old and New Ordo - be wangled with some effort, but in English, Old Ordo is never, ever, allowed, at all?

At least protestants are honest about their relative flexibility.

In answer to your question, it was brought in in about 1964 but it was published in 1962 and was specially planned in the fifties. Was it not supposed to mean something to a young boy? What’s so special about specially replacing it with something worse, and at the same time pretending you are not doing so? It’s unrespectful. Why did God want me born then? We had no other source of catechesis in my family.

I’m going to be honest I’m not following what your problem is. Who are you charging was being dishonest and how? The explanation seems to me to be pretty straight forward and easy to understand.

 

[SMHW]

The US Confraternity of Christian Doctrine published the English text that was used in the United States from about 1966 until the ICEL translation was implemented.

This is the copyright page from a 1966 St. Joseph hand missal.

 

[ProVobis]

I don’t doubt that you had an English Missal prior to Vatican II but Mass was not allowed to be said in the vernacular until after Vatican II. Missals could be published in any language at all and the translations they contained were not in any way official. You could put three different publishers’ missals side by side and the English would not be identical.

Exactly. Take ten different translators and you get ten different translations if not more. The Creed alone would print as a translation either “consubstantial to” “consubstantial with” “one substance with” and eventually all would become controversial in favor of “in one being with” as the spoken word(s).

 

[Vico]

The US Confraternity of Christian Doctrine published the English text that was used in the United States from about 1966 until the ICEL translation was implemented.

This is the copyright page from a 1966 St. Joseph hand missal.

The orders for Missal changes were in March 1965 to allow English, and it was published after that. I was an altar boy then and used Latin, so this was a big change for us. The Canon was still in Latin then.

 

[Chatter163]

The interim translations (yes, they were indeed provisional because they were only intended to be temporary, until the revisions of the Roman Missal were completed and translated) were made by the various bishops’ conferences in each country or region and used between late 1964 and late 1969, with the vernacular used to varying degrees during that period. Meanwhile the Order of Mass was being revised by the liturgical commission in Rome, which was charged with the reforms.

Then the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), composed of bishops, priests and a handful of educated laymen from all English-speaking nations, made its translations of the revised Roman Missal, with the initial volume released in late 1969 and early 1970, and slightly revised in 1973. This commissions was appointed by the Holy See so that all English-speaking countries would use the same translations. The first ICEL translation is the translation that most English speakers recall. Few, except the most liturgically-minded, recall in detail the interim translations used between 1965-1969, and these varied by country, since the bishops of each country made them.

Ironically, the current translations, which began to be used in late 2011, resemble the interim translations more than they did the ICEL version of 1970-2011, as well as the versions in people’s hand missals in the 1950s and 1960s, because they were made with a greater eye toward literal renderings of the Latin, than was the original ICEL version, which relied on a method called dynamic equivalence, which was much looser. (Some would say more ecumenical, as well, since those translations in turn impacted the liturgies of the liturgical mainline Protestant denominations.) This method was dropped after 2001, when the instruction *Liturgiam Authenticam * laid out new norms and guidelines, and ICEL’s membership was scrapped and new members appointed, and the decade following was spent re-translating the Missal according to the new document.

 

[ProVobis]

The first ICEL translation is the translation that most English speakers recall.

Right. The most notable part of this translation was the “for you and for all [men]” in the consecration. (The “men” was dropped in 1973(?))

And it wasn’t only the English but Spanish and other languages as well.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Phemie and Dmitri,

The VG and Pro Vobis - and my friend (who is English) - made it sound as if they didn’t hold the liturgy sacred.

I have always been close to Protestants including non-conformists, but I have appreciated both attitudes as long as they are fair and square. (Many Protestants vary their liturgy precisely so that the officiant can spontaneously “catechise” the congregation thereby on an ad hoc basis.)

None of this explains why the Mass had to be extensively rewritten when the version you are calling unofficial already served us. To satisfy themselves, they had simply to re-dub it “official”. It sounds hypocritical. It sounds like the Church doesn’t really believe the Mass has a catechetical role. It’s only saying it believes it.

Between the ages of 10 and 31 I asked two dioceses repeatedly for more and they said there was nothing more for me. No wonder I was a cult victim.

There should be many belts and braces! If Mass has to be the way they have decided at various times, well then they should roll out more catechesis in different forms!

 

[ProVobis]

None of this explains why the Mass had to be extensively rewritten when the version you are calling unofficial already served us. To satisfy themselves, they had simply to re-dub it “official”. It sounds hypocritical. It sounds like the Church doesn’t really believe the Mass has a catechetical role. It’s only saying it believes it.

Maybe Veterum Sapientia has a better answer than mine.

“Modern languages are liable to change, and no single one of them is superior to the others in authority. Thus if the truths of the Catholic Church were entrusted to an unspecified number of them, the meaning of these truths, varied as they are, would not be manifested to everyone with sufficient clarity and precision. There would, moreover, be no language which could serve as a common and constant norm by which to gauge the exact meaning of other renderings.”