LORIE CREPEAU (Director of Faith Formation, St. Edna’s Church): My name is Lorie Crepeau. I’m the director of faith formation here.

JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: These parishioners at St. Edna’s Church in suburban Chicago got a crash course on the changes in the Catholic Mass.

CREPEAU: I don’t want you to think of this as, “Oh great, come Advent I’m going to walk into church and the communion rail’s going to be back and ladies are going to have to wear Kleenex on their head and oh me, oh my.” That is not what is happening here.

VALENTE: What has happened is that the words to some of the prayers and music these people have known for the past 40 years have changed. It’s the most significant retooling of the Mass since 1973, when it went from Latin to English.

CREPEAU: We wanted to make it simple for the people to understand, so we didn’t stay true to the actual Latin translation. We wanted to find words that people felt comfortable with. Well, now you’re comfortable. Forty years later you’re comfortable. Now we’re going to try to make you uncomfortable by going back to where it should have been, alright?

VALENTE: The Vatican says the Mass is now more authentic, more accurately reflecting the meaning of the original Latin.

ARCHDIOCESAN DVD: Will the changing of this frequently used dialogue be easy? Certainly not.

CREPEAU: In the current translation we say that “I have sinned through my own fault.” Now I’m going to say, “I have greatly sinned,” but then they want to reinforce this, obviously, because now they’ve added “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” and you say, “I get it! It’s my fault! I get it!”

VALENTE: Some of the changes don’t fall trippingly off the tongue. In the Creed, for example, the part about Jesus being one with the Father becomes “consubstantial with the Father.”

CREPEAU: It is a $50 word. Now imagine a third-grader trying to do this, because third grade is where they teach the creed.

ARCHDIOCESAN DVD: “Dominus vobiscum,” and the response, “Et cum spiritu tuo,” presently translated as: “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.”

VALENTE: “And also with you” becomes “and with your spirit.” Other changes are more extensive.

ARCHDIOCESAN DVD: Indeed, as you can see, the entire hymn is reimagined and restructured…

VALENTE: For priests, the Mass becomes quite different.

ARCHDIOCESAN DVD: The new translations of the Roman Missal involve a new way of speaking for the priest at Mass.

VALENTE: But many priests are not happy with the changes. They’ve criticized the new translation as archaic, ugly — even wrong.

REV. LARRY JANOWSKI: I haven’t met a priest yet who feels that this is a good thing, that this is an improvement in the liturgy.

VALENTE: Father Larry Janowski is a Franciscan priest in the Chicago diocese who objects to the literal translation of words from the original Latin.

JANOWSKI: From what I’ve seen they’re like sawdust in the mouth. They’re difficult to say.

VALENTE: For example, this prayer:

JANOWSKI: (reading) “Therefore, Lord, we pray, graciously accept this oblation of our service, that of your whole family, which we make to you also for those to whom you have been pleased to give the new birth of water and the Holy Spirit, granting them forgiveness of all their sins. Order our days in your peace and commend that we be delivered from eternal damnation and counted among the flock of those you have chosen.” That’s quite a mouthful.

VALENTE: Janowski was so concerned that he wrote a letter to Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, which said in part:

JANOWSKI: (reading from letter) English has the greatest vocabulary of any living language on earth, yet the prescription is that we not only adhere to a stiff, ugly, nonvernacular translation, but actually delights in convoluted sentence structure and anachronistic language, and then calls it reverence.

VALENTE: The retranslation process began in the 1980s with a group of theologians working in concert with linguists, writers, even poets. But the Vatican rejected that translation and instead decided to rewrite the entire Roman Missal or prayer book, of which the Mass is only a part.

REV. EDWARD FOLEY: Then, in 2000, Pope John Paul II announced there would be a new missal, and if there was going to be a new missal you had to start the entire translation process all over again. So it began again.

VALENTE: Father Edward Foley is a professor of liturgy and music.

FOLEY: I think the most problematic part of the whole thing has been the process. I think it was much more secretive than the previous translation process. We knew who the translators were in the previous process. Here, we did not.

VALENTE: In an open letter to the US bishops, Father Anthony Ruff, a liturgist who had been heavily involved in the new translation, refused to promote it, saying “The Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is….how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.”

Eucharistic Prayer: “When supper was ended, he took the cup…”

VALENTE: The consecration is the holiest part of the Mass. Even a small change here—from the word “all” to the word “many”—has proven controversial.

Eucharistic Prayer: “He gave the cup to his disciples and said, take this all of you and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven.”

JANOWSKI: Our understanding of the sacrifice of Christ in the world today is that it is for all people, and to say “for many” is a very difficult thing for a priest to even get out. I know priests who say it violates their conscience to say that.

THERESA WATKINS (Parishioner): Change is always hard. So I think there will be some pushback from some people, especially because we’ve been doing it for so long.

KATHY KEMNETZ (Parishioner): I think they’re good, I think they’re good. Some will take getting used to.

ERNIE KEMNETZ (Parishioner): I lived through Vatican II and all of that change, and that was something else, and like she was saying, there were a number of pastors who were not fully involved. They fought it.

VALENTE: Despite the controversy, the Mass remains the heart of their faith to most Catholics.

CREPEAU: Remember, the Eucharist is who we are. It is everything that we do. It’s the center of what we are, and everything else comes out from that.

FOLEY: The Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy, and we do have a pope and we do have bishops, and they are the arbiters. The Mass does not belong to me. The liturgy belongs to, the Mass belongs to the church, and I have been called to be an official representative of the church, and it’s not for me to change. It’s for me to do it as effectively and as well as possible.

VALENTE: In a statement, the US bishops said there is “an openness and readiness to receive the new text.” Some priests clearly aren’t ready yet.

JANOWSKI: At some point, I will be required to teach the congregation about what is coming, and I cannot lie to the people. I cannot pretend to be enthusiastic about a translation that I don’t believe in. I will say what needs to be said, but I will have to say to those people whom I love that my heart isn’t in it, and I dread saying that.

VALENTE: But for now, it seems, Catholics will have to learn to live with the changes, whether they like them or not.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Judy Valente in Chicago.

One day a year we make a journey in the company of the whole community of Israel—all of us together, each of us alone. That day is “The Day,” the Day of Atonement, the day that is deathlike. It is the day we wear the kittel, the white gown that will one day be our shroud. It is the day when eating and drinking cease. It is a day when the world recedes and we are set free to uncover the true meaning of our lives.

—Jonathan Magonet, British rabbi and theologian

Faith is not something that we acquire once and for all. Faith is an insight that must be acquired at every single moment. Those who honestly search, those who yearn and fail, we did not presume to judge. Let them pray to be able to pray, and if they do not succeed, if they have no tears to shed, let them yearn for tears, let them try to discover their heart, and let them take strength from the certainty that this too is prayer.

—Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), rabbi and theologian

Emotions ebb and flow throughout these holy days. Paradoxes swim in the stream of prayer. At one moment, we believe our deeds to be of such import that the world stands still so that we may take account of them. At another moment, we imagine ourselves so small, so insignificant that our lives are like a passing breath. We are great; we are small. We are the center of the universe; we are nothing at all. And yet, not matter how large we imagine our sins to be, and no matter how puny we imagine ourselves to be, God will never forsake.

—Nina Beth Cardin, rabbi and director of the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network

I am grateful for this, / a moment of truth, / grateful to stand before You / in judgment. / You know me as a liar / and I am flooded with relief / to have my darkest self / exposed at last. / Every day I break my vows— / to be the dutiful child, / selfless parent, caring friend, / responsible citizen of the world. / No one sees, no one knows / how often I take the easy way, / I let myself off the hook, / give myself the benefit of / the doubt— / every day, every day. / On this day, this one day, / I stand before You naked, / without disguise, without / embellishment, naked, /shivering, ridiculous. / I implore You— / let me try again.

—Merle Feld, poet, playwright, activist, and educator

Most of us prefer to deny the unruliness of our fragility. But the facts … are inescapable: some will get sick; some will be born; there will be deaths by hunger and in wars. The liturgy begs us to pay attention to these plain facts. And we all know that if we haven’t yet suffering an unbearable loss, one year, such a grief will permanently scar our hearts, or we will suffer yet another death that we cannot bear. We hope that we will live to see another year, but we know that without a doubt, certainly, definitely, and absolutely, a year will surely come that will break the pattern. That destiny is mysterious in its details, but death is our destiny, the fate of every person we know and love. Everyone dies, somehow and some time. We are not praying to be spared an ending in death. We are not even asking that death be postponed. Rather, after reminding ourselves relentlessly of the many ways that life might end, we tell ourselves that the way to come with ultimate vulnerability is through t’shuvah, t’fillah, and tz’dakah [repentance, prayer, and charity]. Our goal is not security but a life of meaning that recognizes our vulnerability but rises beyond it.

—Leonard Gordon, rabbi of Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Each morning You restore consciousness to my sleep-filled body, and I awake. Each spring You restore vitality to tress, plants and animals that have hibernated through the winter, and they grow once more. Each day I remember those who have died; they live on beyond the grave. Each moment I contemplate the rebirth of our people; I recall that You put the breath of life into dry bones. Praised are You, Adonai, for planting immortality in my soul, in my people, and in our world.

—Robert Scheinberg, rabbi of the United Synagogue of Hoboken, New Jersey

For 25 hours we have prayed from our hearts and minds on the Day of Atonement. Now that evening approaches and the long fast draws to a close, tens of thousands of words must have been spoken and sung. And yet somehow we still feel that we have not penetrated to the heart of the matter; there are further unspoken feelings buried in us and interior courts in God’s palace which we have not yet entered. Therefore, we must muster the remaining physical and spiritual forces left under our command, and make one last desperate effort to descend into the human depths and to climb to the divine heights. But words have earlier proved futile. We cry out the Sh’ma—we repeat “praised be the name of the One whose glorious sovereignty is forever and ever” three times—and we stammer, each time at a higher and, as it were, more urgent pitch seven times the Hebrew words: “Adonai is God.” No longer is it the meaning of the words but rather their rhythm, the scream of the soul that squeezes through them, the hammering of their insistent repetition, in which we place our hope. And as if even this last resort had failed, finally we abandon the human voice and verbal expression altogether. We reach for the shofar and blow one long, piercing shriek: t’kiah g’dolah. This surely must rend the heavens!

—Steven S. Schwarzschild (1924-1989), rabbi, philosopher, theologian, editor

BOB FAW, correspondent: For people of faith, services which acknowledge, indeed commemorate, death can bring comfort or anguish. Thomas Beveridge’s Yizkor Requiem recognizes both. Performed here by the orchestra and chorus of London’s St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the music is emotional and cerebral—suggestive, even, at times, haunting. Conducted by Sir Neville Marriner and recorded for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, the Yizkor Requiem was composed by Beveridge not just to remind listeners of what Beveridge says “really matters,” but also to combine, musically, two faiths.

THOMAS BEVERIDGE (Composer and Conductor): I realized that I could put together a piece that kind of stands on the bridge between the two religions, the Christian religion and the Jewish religion, and takes a look at, simultaneously, at the ritual for the dead.

FAW: Beveridge says he was inspired to compose this piece after the 1991 death of his father, an Episcopal priest and scholar who immersed himself in both faiths. It was, says Beveridge, “a quest for spiritual roots.”

BEVERIDGE: My quest and my father’s quest. My father inspired me to look at the origins of Christian liturgy in the synagogue. I mean, that’s basically what we’re talking about here.

FAW: Was it an attempt to come to terms with his death, or to memorialize him, or both?

BEVERIDGE: I think both. I find it a very cathartic experience to make this effort in his memory, and in the process I learned a lot.

FAW: What Beveridge, a church organist, choir director, and composer of more than 600 works, learned over the two years he spent writing the Yizkor Requiem is that despite profound differences in theology, the two faiths share enormous common ground.

BEVERIDGE: I went through the Requiem Mass and found passages that were almost exactly the same as passages in the Yizkor service or in similar synagogue ritual, and that’s where the Mass came from. It came directly out of the synagogue.

FAW: “Yizkor,” Hebrew for “may he remember,” is a memorial service for the deceased. The Requiem is the music for a Catholic funeral service, seeking eternal rest for the departed. While a Requiem emphasizes comfort, and the Yizkor can be sad, musically they reinforce one another.

Here, for example, as the cantor sings the Kaddish in Hebrew, the chorus underneath sings the Lord’s Prayer in English—each of them a doxology, a hymn praising God.

BEVERIDGE: The Kaddish is a doxology. The Lord’s Prayer is a doxology, though the Yizkor Requiem begins with the Kaddish prayer, which is what every Jew says at the Yahrzeit, the annual remembrance of anyone in his family who has died.

FAW: Another similarity which Beveridge accents musically: the word “holy,” repeated here three times in Hebrew—kadosh, then three times in Latin—sanctus.

But make no mistake: while much of this composition is solemn, parts are also light-hearted, or what Beveridge calls “lickety-split.” “I wanted,” says Beveridge, “to give the impression of a train that gets going and keeps going, going along.”

BEVERIDGE: It’s not all very ponderous stuff. There’s a lot of joy in it—the joy of recognizing that a departed soul may be resting in Eden, in the Garden of Eden.

FAW: Perhaps the most dramatic moment of all in the Yizkor Requiem comes at the end, when a single flute plays a plaintive theme. Finally, with the soft refrain of “Amen” by the chorus, the flute slowly fades away.

BEVERIDGE: The flute player turns around and walks out of the building and disappears, and the last phrase is played over and over and over again until the player can hardly be heard any more. I wanted to depict the departing soul somehow, and the flute playing the melody of the ninth movement, the words of which are “the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.”

FAW: What Beveridge has done, says one reviewer, is “bring us back to our beginnings—and our endings” in a work which Beveridge says is meant to be reassuring, a peaceful work about the experience of death.

BEVERIDGE: I mean we are the ones who are left. We’re the ones who have to deal with this event in our lives and to try to understand it, try to find a way, through ritual or through musical experience, of coming to terms with it.

FAW: A spiritual lesson in music—bridging traditions which differ, but which also experience the same thing and which here come together as one.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in Washington.

Monsignor Charles Pope

TIM O’BRIEN, guest anchor: Catholics of a certain age grew up hearing the Mass only in Latin. But since the 1960s, priests have been allowed to say the Mass in Latin only with the permission of their bishop. The Vatican is now loosening those restrictions, so the Latin Mass — also called the Tridentine Mass — may soon become more widely available, although few of the world’s Catholics understand Latin. And yet over the years some Catholics have remained committed to a Mass they consider more historically authentic. At St. Mary Mother of God Parish in Washington, D.C., Monsignor Charles Pope says the Mass in Latin one Sunday a month, and it is well attended.

Monsignor CHARLES POPE (Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.): The Tridentine Mass is a form of the Mass that existed prior to 1962. Things began to change in the Catholic liturgy probably in the mid-1960s, and certainly by 1970 whatís known as the new Mass was fully in force.

There tends to be a religious tendency for the language used inside the churches to be more ancient, and I think that’s largely why Latin remained. It was the main language of the Church even after the Latin language had ceased to be spoken.

The priest always faced the altar. In fact, the priest and the people all face one direction. Some people say the priest had his back to the people. But the reality is that the priest and the people were all facing one direction, an eastward orientation — at least theoretically eastward — and everyone was looking for the risen Christ.

Tonight ís liturgy is referred to as a Solemn High Mass. There is a priest, a deacon, and a sub-deacon who all take part in the liturgy, and it adds solemnity to the liturgy. And they each have proper roles to fill. We also have a lot of extra servers. And itís just a more solemn form of the Mass, with an opening procession and, of course, the use of incense and so on, which is all unique to either the sung or the solemn high form of the Mass.

People of all age groups attend and that ís, I think, a little bit surprising. It was always thought that if we were to go back to the Latin it would mostly be the older folks. But one of the things that’s been discovered just about everywhere the Latin Mass is celebrated, there is a huge number of young people as well. And they didn’t grow up with the Latin, but there is something attractive about this ancient form of the liturgy — its dignity, and its sort of very just lofty quality, especially in some of its forms.

I’ve been saying this Mass for 18 years now, for all my years as a priest. There is a part of me that loves to sort of step back into time and to be part of something ancient that goes way, way back, all the way back hundreds and hundreds of years, even thousands of years, into the ancient past using an ancient language. This is a Mass that most of the saints knew.