Parishes will
have to buy interim Missals between September and Advent to use before
the full translation of the Missal is published, it emerged this week.
Martin
Foster, the acting secretary of the liturgy office of the Bishops of
England and Wales, said that the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) would
produce a “cheap but worthy” Missal to be used at the altar for the
three months between the introduction of the new Order of Mass and the
publication of the full Missal.
He said there would be a number of
options for the lay faithful, including buying a copy of the new Ordo,
which will be available in June.
He also said that the liturgy office
would make the new Order of Mass available online as a PDF file so that
people could download a copy for printing.
A Sunday Missal will not be
produced until the whole Missal is published, but there may be a
supplement to existing Sunday Missals with the new translation of the
Order of the Mass because the lectionary will not change.
A new
lectionary is due to be published at some point in the future.
But Mr
Foster said: “What we had originally hoped was for the lectionary and
the Missal to be released at the same time, so that we could publish
them together. But now, it seems, even if the new lectionary came
tomorrow, we would wait three years before using it.”
This is because
the lectionary follows a three-year cycle.
Mr Foster said it would
be up to the parishes how the laity will be given the new Missal when
it is introduced in September.
He said he thought some people would just
have a card with the responses on them while others who were more
interested might buy the available books.
Richard Brown, sales and marketing manager of the CTS, said staff were hard at work preparing the full version.