Papal Masses in England will use new English texts

Catholic News Service reports that

People attending Pope Benedict XVI's Masses in Scotland and England in September will get a chance to hear and sing a few of the newly translated Mass texts, according to the pope's chief liturgist.

Msgr. Guido Marini, papal master of liturgical ceremonies, told Catholic News Service Aug. 19 that the prayers sung in English at the papal Masses in Great Britain will use the translations from the new Order of the Mass approved by the Vatican in 2008.

Mgr Marini seems to draw a distinction between those texts that have already been approved:

"The songs from the Order of the Mass -- for example the Gloria -- will be from the new translation, which was approved a while ago," he said.

and those that have not already been approved:

The words for the rest of the Mass prayers "will be from the text currently in use," he said, because when the papal Masses were being planned, the Vatican had not yet granted final approval to the bishops of Scotland, England and Wales for the complete English translation of the Roman Missal.

This would seem to imply that those texts that have already been approved may already be used. Some priests, including myself, had already started to use some of the new texts to introduce the faithful to them. As CNS points out, however,

Although the new translation of the Order of the Mass, which contains the main prayers used at Mass, was approved by the Vatican two years ago, bishops' conferences in English-speaking countries decided to wait to introduce the prayers until the entire Roman Missal was translated and approved.

It would seem to me that this delay is entirely unjustified.
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