By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
AN Australian company has produced the catechetical resource to help parishes and communities throughout the English-speaking world implement and thoroughly understand the new translations to the Roman Missal.
The resource, called One body, one spirit in Christ, will be available by April and was produced by Fraynework, a digital media company based in Melbourne and established under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy religious congregation named after the Irish nun who founded the order in Australia in 1846, Mother Ursula Frayne.
Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s National Liturgical Office, told The Record during the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Commission’s 4-7 February national conference in Perth that, given its wide availability, he hopes that “ordinary, computer-literate Catholics interested in the Mass” will buy, read and explore it on their own computer at home.
“When the first Missal was introduced in 1973 there wasn’t any substantial preparation of clergy or the laity,” Fr Williams told The Record.
“So we said, ‘let us do what we should’ve done 40 years ago’ – provide a comprehensive treatment of the Mass so people actually understand what it is they’re doing when they go to Mass, who they are, what their part is, how they’re constituted as a Eucharistic people and what the Mass really means.”
The newly translated Missal also provides adaptations of Gregorian Chant into English, he said, and users can listen to these being sung on the catechetical resource DVD.
“There’s lots of music in the Latin Mass, and we’ve replicated all that in English, with samples of it in the resource,” Fr Williams said.
Fr Williams, a former Anglican priest under whose direction the resource was prepared, said it will cost between AUS$25-30 and is not just for the liturgical scholar, priests and Bishops.
The money will go to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), whose work will continue for at least another 20 years, he said, for other liturgical books that require translation, including rites of marriage, dedication of the altar, ordinations, Baptisms, RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), rite of Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, funerals and the Divine Office.
The resource includes filmed interviews with Bishops and priests from the 11 Bishops’ conferences in the ICEL, and other countries for whom English is the second language, explaining the changes to each section of the Mass, and the music styles recommended for the liturgy. There were about 20 contributors overall.
The resource is an interactive DVD with five main sections: “Celebrating the Eucharist”, “Living a Eucharistic Life”, “Receiving this English Translation”, “Crafting the Art of Liturgy” and “Exploring the Mass through the Ages”. The latter includes a detailed graphic explaining the history and evolution of the Mass. The resource itself is based on five specially-commissioned essays by four people “highly respected in the field of theology and liturgy”, Fr Williams said, but ICEL would not allow the publication of their names.
The resource was reportedly launched in London in December 2009 by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, chairman of the Leeds Group formed in 2003 to develop the resource which consists of Fr Williams, secretary for Liturgy for the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, Fr Allen Morris, USCCB liturgy secretary Mgr James Moroni and Mgr Kevin Irwin, Dean of the Catholic University of America’s School of Theology. Fr Williams had already enlisted Frayneworks to produce the resource in 2001, a year before Bishop Rhodes formed the Leeds Group. The incomplete resource, which is waiting on Recognizio from the Holy See, was also shown at the national conference of the ACBC’s National Liturgical Office and to over 100 priests and liturgists at Perth’s Servite College on 5 February, at which those who viewed it were “completely blown away”, Fr Williams reported.
A committee of 25 liturgical consultants will meet mid-year to devise strategies for implementation around Australia. Fr Williams has already been invited by several dioceses to address clergy and Catholic Education offices, including Geraldton, Cairns, Darwin, Bendigo, Ballarat and Bunbury.