Repeated Pronunciations of Guilt!!!

Oh, no, we can't have that!

Not when we've come to Mass to be affirmed our Okayness!*

A new translation of the Roman Catholic Mass that is to be introduced worldwide in a few years is getting an accidental trial run in South Africa, where some parishioners are complaining it's too hard to understand.

..."I am resistant to change and I think the older community in my parish will feel the same," he said. "I can accept change when there is a good reason but I cannot see one."

His daughter-in-law, Anne Armstrong agrees: "We are all familiar with the liturgy we have used since we were children. Why is there the need to say Mass differently?"

The Rev. Efrem Tresoldi warned in The Southern Cross, a regional Catholic weekly: "I've heard it said that younger people are leaving the Church because, among other things, the language used in our liturgy sounds foreign to them. I think this new version of the order of the Mass is even more alienating."

Lay leader Paddy Kearney also points to the theological implications in the "mea culpa." The new translation reverts to repeated pronunciations of guilt emphasized by beatings on the breast reflected in the Latin Mass: "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

Under Vatican II, the breast-beating was abandoned and people pronounced only once on grievous sinning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the rubrics (oh, no, not THEM!) still call for a solitary blow to the breast. I believe even when the "new" Missal came out, (the one that the quoted elderly people are clinging to like iceboxes and victrolas,) it specifically said "only once" as opposed to the 3 blows that had been prescribed previously.

*Do I owe Mark Shea royalties on that phrase? if not civilly, morally?
I need a ruling on that from JT....