Gotta Sing, Gotta Pray reports that some publishers have at last received the Missal text files they need in order to start constructing materials for liturgy with the new text that is implemented this coming Advent. I have not seen them and I’m waiting on some judgement concerning the final text on the orations and propers. I’m thinking too of those who intend to set the Missal propers to music, just how much work they have on their hands to adapt the final to what they had prepared after the 2008 Gray Books had appeared stable. This problem does not affect the English Propers Project because the project uses the propers from the Graduale Romanum, which, if you consider the history of these texts carefully, are the ones intended for the sung Mass in any case. If that sentence makes no sense to you, it’s ok and you are hardly alone.
3 Replies to “Publishers Receive Missal Files”
Comments are closed.
So when can the rest of us expect them on Wikispooks?…
That sentence makes sense to me, I'm just not sure I agree with it.
Whatever one's feelings on the job done in selecting the texts for the Missal Propers in the Latin Missal of Paul VI, it seems to me that when the Graduale diverges from the Missal Propers, it is to use a text that has traditionally been set to chant and is also appropriate — not necessarily the one that was envisioned by the Church in the reforming of the Missal.
I have posted on the CMAA forum about how the Missal propers for the weekdays from December 17-24 make immensely more sense than those in the Graduale, which seem arbitrarily set according to day of the week, while the rest of the the Masses for those days are proper according to day of the month! Obviously then, if using the Graduale, the proper chants would correspond with different proper orations and readings every year!
I do not have a strong problem with the Simple Propers being set to Graduale texts vs. Missal texts, as it certainly seems like a perfectly legitimate option. And it appears through this twist of fate (i.e., the English translation debacle), it was a fortutiously expedient choice. I'm still not convinced that, aside from that, all things being equal, it really is the mind of the Church to choose the Graduale texts over the Missal texts for the Propers in every instance.
Not to worry, for I know a number of clergy who intend to substitute the 1978 collects and other propers for the "final" version of the 2010 missal. Yes, an act of defiance and disobedience to be sure, but it has reached a point of, "damn the torpedoes".