Go to Mass to learn reworded prayers, suggests new cardinal

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Catholic Church will fully implement the new English missal in all Masses starting Sunday, the first in the liturgical season of Advent.

Manila Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said there should be no reason for Catholics to worry about not being able to cope with the new responses and modified portions of prayers during  Mass.

“When there are changes in the liturgy, it takes a long while before one can memorize it. My first suggestion  is that, for those who want to memorize the changes, go to Mass,” Tagle told a press conference last week at Ninoy Aquino International Airport upon his arrival from Rome.

“If a person only hears Mass once a year, you really won’t memorize it. If you go to Mass every Sunday or every day, it would only take two weeks to get used to the changes,” the newest Filipino cardinal added.

Tagle said Catholics should also find time to study the reasons for  and meditate on the  meanings of the changes in the missal, through catechetical publications.

Most prominent of the changes in the missal was the new response to the priest’s greeting, “The Lord be with you,” which would now be, “And with your spirit” instead of “And also with you.” The new response is the more precise translation of  “Et cum spiritu tuo” in the Roman missal, which is in Latin, the Church’s official language.

Writing on “Thinking Faith,” the online journal of the British Jesuits, Fr. Jack Mahoney SJ, author and professor at the University of London, said “With your spirit” is frequently used in the Bible. The phrase, he added, is used to place person “within a reflective religious context” and commend him to God.

“[H]ere we have a partnership between priest and people, a partnership with a purpose: each praying that the Lord will be ‘with’ the other in their shared act of worship. This Eucharistic act is something they would not dare to consider themselves adequate to undertake,” he explained.

The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, composed of representatives from bishops’ conferences in English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, began work on a new English edition of the missal following instructions from the Vatican.

The new translation was presented to and approved by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and started to be implemented the following year.

In the Philippines, dioceses adopted the changes by stages, with full implementation on Sunday, the beginning of the new liturgical year.

At the Manila archdiocese, the “And with your spirit” response was adopted beginning June this year. Changes in the Confiteor (I confess), Gloria and Apostle’s Creed were adopted the following months.

Tagle said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines was still forming teams of experts to translate the Roman missal into local languages, but there was no timetable yet when the new translations would be finished and implemented.

“The implementation of the New English Translation of the Roman Missal is an opportune moment of grace for the Church in the Philippines not only to appreciate the changes but deepen, nurture, and celebrate our faith through the renewal of our worship,” Tagle said in his message last June.