A liturgical deviant scrutinises the New Missal…
By Fr Laurie Bisset
I was born and ordained a son of the Tridentine Mass and lived 45 years a struggling presider of the New Ordo. Now with our New Translation, in the soon to be 47th year of my priestly life, I feel I have been born again.
The blood of love, devotion, reverence, God orientation and humility is once again flowing in my veins. 
Thank God I did not die, run home to mother – now in heaven – or marry the five women I fell madly in love with. I praise God I have stuck with it long enough to see a possibility of rebirth, not only for myself but for our whole Church.
And I owe all this and more to the New Translation.
Up until not too long ago I thought the Mass was about me (may God please forgive me). What did it was that tempting, neon lit, wine-to-an-alcoholic, direction for the adventurous: ‘or in similar words’.
It took a while for me to be daring enough to believe I could deviate from the safe and newly ordained printed word.
I was young and struggling enough to keep my head above water in my to-the-death classroom, teaching subjects I knew nothing about to students who did not want to know the little I did manage to remember from my schooldays.
My only release was my weekly excursion to parishes in the ‘bush’, or in my case the ‘Downs’ (those living in Toowoomba might guess).
Here I could escape and BE ME. The real Laurie Bissett, set free from the classroom, and finding for the first time real people whom I thought actually liked me; I am told I was good looking and had great hair!!
So at first it was a liberation and a platform to launch out into five sermons per Mass, to make a quip here, a ramble there, to keep the congregation guessing and on their toes: ‘What is he going to say next to make us laugh’.
Yes, I was one of ‘those’ priests who thought I had to do it all, be spontaneous, inventive, smart, funny, daring and all the time dreading I would not be loved, understood, admired and thought of as innovative and creative.
But the effort nearly killed me, as did the need to be loved and admired and needed. I was coming dangerously close to believing people needed me more than God. I was almost imagining myself to be God in human form … TRUST me!!!
When I first heard about the ‘New Translation’, I was concerned and worried.
Without reading it, I heard frightening tales and read scary articles on outdated and unintelligible words like ‘consubstantial’ (although ‘substantial’ plays quite a substantial role in our everyday language and I was almost ‘conned into believing all the hoo-ha), and ‘grievous fault’ (which amazed me, having gone into prisons and facilitated groups of ‘druggies’ who were often hung up on GBH (‘Grievous Bodily Harm’).
There was ‘And with your spirit’ (amazing once again as the modern world is often absorbed in the Spirit world), and lack of consultation especially from us priests who (or is it just me!!! Horror, it might be!!) do many things for the good of the parish without real consultation, and I am sure most businesses run that way; you can consult forever and never get anything done.
Now I like the words, am glad I was not asked as I could not have come up with the beauty and solemnity and wonder and awe of what we have. I am wrapped in the New Translation.
I feel my spirit soar and I hear the congregation answering with fervour and gusto. THEY like it (I have five Church communities of mixed Aussie, Aboriginal, Torres Strait, Filipino, Chinese, English, Irish, Polish).
I feel our Masses have taken on a new life. Whereas before I could roll off every Eucharistic Prayer and other parts of the Mass by heart and everyone answered by heart, it became rote and my heart was not in it.
It lacked something.
And now I know what it is; the Masses lacked God, reverence, awe, beauty, mystery, and humility. At last I feel humble as I pray. At last it is not about me but about God. At last I am praying the Mass, not ‘saying’ it; at last I have been reborn!!
Thank you God and that Cardinal or Archbishop or petty Curia official who got it all going and gave it to us who did not know what we wanted but, speaking for myself, know what it is when I have it!!
Fr Laurie Bissett MSC is the parish priest of Thursday Island.