Peace Be With You...I Think

               I have been a part of the Catholic Church since I was a baby. I was confirmed last fall and became an adult of the Church. When I was younger, as a Catholic child, I attended religious education. At religious ed. we were required to learn and memorize certain prayers. These prayers that we learned were the ones that were recited during a regular church mass. As a child and an older sister, when I was younger I had this sense of satisfaction when I could go an entire mass without glancing at the prayer book and recite the whole mass with the adults.

                My grandparents, my mother’s parents, are both deeply religious. They both grew up going to church and sitting through a Latin mass, as opposed to the English translated mass; that most Catholic Churches practice today. My grandfather attended Loras College and majored for a while to be a Priest in the Catholic Church. He had to do extensive studies on the religion and the practices that we do in a service.

                Two weekends ago, I went to church with my family, as usual. When we got into church, we grabbed our hymnals and continued into the sanctuary. As we entered the doors, we were handed a prayer card. Normally, we do not get a prayer card unless it is a special day and we are doing something different in mass. When I looked at my prayer card, I found, to my surprise, the entire mass in a packet. As I started reading through the packet I noticed that the prayers that I have grown up with were now different. I didn’t recognize some of the songs that are a part of our everyday mass.

                As the mass proceeded, the Father presiding explained that from now on every Catholic Church would be doing things a bit differently. I did some research and this is a process that has been going on for some time now. The new text is supposed to be “closer” to the Latin text. Different little things have changed For example, when the priest says, “the lord be with you,” instead of saying “and also with you,” the new response is “and with your spirit.” I understand that this is something that is closer to the original text, but I am not the one this is making problems for. The people these changes are affecting are the older Catholic generation, my grandparents.

                My grandpa, who studied to be a priest, was lost the entire mass. Things are completely different. I just wish that the Vatican would have considered this before they changed everything. The new translations are not even much different. In the Apostles’ Creed there is a line that used to be recited, “…all things seen and unseen…” the new translation reads, “…all things visible and invisible…” these are the exact same thing. Are they not? I just don’t understand why we have to go and change something that has been set for generations.