Around 12 years ago, I discovered a great document: the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GRIM). I found this document on the Catholic Liturgical Library website, and read it in its entirety and referred back to it many times. It made the Mass more meaningful to me and, aside from a couple issues, let me know what exactly I should and should not be doing at Mass.

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I have a terrible sense of humour. At times, it can be one of my greatest strengths, but at other times, it’s my greatest fault. I have a number of other faults that were much worse than my terrible sense of humour, but through prayer, hard work, spiritual direction, confession, and even some psychotherapy, they’ve improved considerably. So I’m hopeful that my sense of humour will become less terrible.

My sense of humour is usually quite sarcastic and usually so quick that it’s out of my mouth before I consider the consequences. What are these consequences? I sometimes appear insensitive, self-righteous, and harsh.

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For the most part, I don’t like praise & worship music. I like music that praises and worships God, but I don’t really like the genre of praise & worship music. A few artist can pull it off, like Glenn Kaiser, Steve Bell, and, of course, John Michael Talbot. (Petra’s pretty good at taking praise & worship music and making it into rock music, but then it isn’t really praise & worship music anymore.) Aside, from these, and maybe a few others I’m not familiar with, I think praise & worship music sounds awful. To me it sounds like very poorly done secular music with religious lyrics.

Another type of music I don’t like is religious folk music. Again, to me it sounds like very poorly done secular folk music with religious lyrics, even when it’s done with an organ (I think with an organ it qualifies as a new genre).

What kind of music do we get at a Roman Catholic Mass? I can’t say I’ve heard much of anything except praise & worship music, religious folk music, and even religious rock music. There have been some exceptions, particularly at my cathedral and some of the music at Easter Vigil, but they are very few.

What kind of music would I like to hear at Mass? Sacred music.

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8 December
Solemnity

One of the things that attracts me to the Eastern Churches is the way they teach theology and doctrine through their prayers and hymnography. The Latin Church does this as well, but not as explicitly. This is not the case with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, particularly in the new translation of the Roman Missal. These prayers are pregnant with theology and doctrine, and so, I will present them with a little commentary for my Protestant brethren.

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How was Mass yesterday? Did you remember to say, “And with your spirit”?

I said, “And with your spirit,” but I didn’t go to a Roman Mass. I went to a Byzantine Divine Liturgy.

Can you believe it? I’ve been waiting years for the new translation of the Roman Missal and the implementation of the new GIRM (unlike the in the U.S., Canadians just started using the new GIRM yesterday), and when it came, I missed it. I was also looking forward to using my booklet, but I guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s weekday Mass.

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It’s been a slow process, but I’ve done a 180 since my post three months ago on the word consubstantial in the Creed. As I said three months ago “I like the word consubstantial itself. However, I personally don’t think it should be in the English translation of the Creed for ecumenical reasons.” Well, I’ve become even more fond of the word consubstantial, and after exchanging e-mails with Orthodox Deacon Steven Robinson, I now know that the word consubstantial poses no threat to ecumenism with the Orthodox Churches.

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Alright, I got a little too excited yesterday when I read about the March 9th release of the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) and completely missed this sentence:

“It retains the 1986 edition of the New Testament.”

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(This post has erroneous information in it. Please read my next post.)

I guess I’m a real Bible nerd since I’m marked March 9th on my calendar (OK, in iCal, which my iPod is synced to). This is the date a new Catholic translation of the Bible will become available (I hope an ePub format will be available).

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I’ve done a 180 on this issue. When you’re done reading this post, make sure you read 180 on Consubstantial.

I just finished rewriting my simple guide to the Mass, Why do Catholics bounce on one knee?, a couple of days ago. In case you didn’t hear, there’s a new translation of the Roman Missal. In the United States, they’ll be using the new translation by Advent of 2011, so I thought I better rewrite my guide a year before people will actually need it (I don’t know when the new translation will be approved in Canada; hopefully soon). There’s been a lot of talk about this new translation. It seems that many don’t like it. I like it. Well, all but one word: consubstantial.

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