A dozen priests say no to new missal translation

At least a dozen Australian priests have indicated they will refuse to use the new Mass translation which comes into force later this year, and hundred more are angry about the lack of consultation over the translation, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The new, more literal translation of the 400-year-old Latin text is to be gradually introduced from June. 

The new Mass will be the compulsory version of the English mass by November.

The chairman of the National Council of Priests of Australia, Father Ian McGinnity, said hundreds of its 1600 members were ''pretty steamed up'' at the Vatican's lack of consultation but most had not yet decided how to respond.

At least a dozen had indicated they would not use the new English translation, he said.

''We're also very concerned that the language, the idiom, might perhaps estrange more Catholics from participation in the Eucharist,'' he said.

Asked what sanctions a local bishop could apply to defiant priests, Father McGinnity said: "I really don't know. I suppose he could suspend a bloke. But given the [priest] shortage, it's unlikely."

Father John Crothers, the parish priest of St Declan's parish in Penshurst, said he could not in good conscience use the text, which he believed to go against the 1960s Vatican Council's spirit of ''aggiornamento'', meaning ''up-to-date''.

''I've no problems with changing things - it's part of my philosophy that you've got to change and grow and develop. It's the fact that this is going backwards instead of going forwards,'' he said. 

''I won't be saying the priest part. If the people wanted to do the responses in the new translation, it's up to them.''

Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, the vice-chairman of the international translation committee, said consultation had been extensive but there would have to be ''dialogue and encouragement'' with opponents. 

''I think a lot of the criticism is really a fear of what we think the thing is, and when we get to the reality, it's not like that at all.''

The executive director of the National Liturgy Commission, Peter Williams, who has spent the past year travelling the country to explain the new Mass, said it had already been successfully introduced in New Zealand.

''I think that's what's going to happen here. Of course there will be some irritability, but in due course people will have made the change."

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