Vox Clara urges rapid completion of that translation.

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and a committee of congregation advisers have urged the quick completion of the new English translation of the Mass.

The Vox Clara Committee, a group of English-speaking bishops who advise the Vatican on English translations, met March 12-15 at the Vatican.

A press release about the meeting repeatedly referred to hopes that the translation of the Roman Missal, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 2002, would be completed quickly.

The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, or ICEL, is preparing the translation in several sections. When individual bishops’ conferences approve the texts translated into English from Latin, they request Vatican permission to use them.

The new translation of the Order of the Mass, which contains the main prayers used at every Mass, has been approved by all the English-speaking bishops’ conferences.

The Vox Clara press release said Vatican permission to use the text is expected "in the near future," although most bishops’ conferences have said they would wait until the entire Missal has been approved to begin using the new translation.

Vox Clara members also said they discussed a report on "musical considerations" involving the translation of the Order of the Mass and proposed "appropriate revisions" to the texts.

The Vatican had asked musicologists to evaluate how easily and smoothly the translation of the people’s parts of the Mass — for instance the Gloria and the Sanctus — could be set to music.

Kevin Miller has a solution to that last "problem."

And as for me…well, it’s really hard for me to take the whining – oh, oh, don’t render the texts unwieldy, please – of the liturgical music establishment seriously.

Why?

Because, well, in our parish, during Lent, we sing the Coony/Daigle Penitential Rite "Hold Us in Your Mercy", which, in the form we sing it, does not have a Kyrie. (I’ve heard it done with one). So – no Confiteor, no Kyrie (and it is not prayed after the musical setting, either), just…Hold us in Your Mercy…

Also during Lent, we do the dreadful Bernadette Farrell business for the Agnus Dei, the salient portion of which goes,

Jesus, Lamb of God, bearer of our sins, Jesus, Savior: Hear our prayer, hear our prayer, through this Bread and Wine we share, may we be your sign of peace everywhere.

So, the lesson is…they’re going to do what they want anyway. I say let the translators produce produce their fruit, which should be that delicate mix of accurate/poetic/elevated without being fussy or archaic and let the composers cope. It’s not as if they care anyway.

Because, you know, the General Instruction for the Roman Missal, #366, says outright of the Agnus Dei,

It is not permitted to substitute for the chants found in the Order of Mass, e.g., at the Agnus Dei.

…through this Bread and Wine we share….

To see how, in this particular case, the Liturgical Whatever has been wielded, read this eye-opener from Adoremus. It won’t answer the question, "How is this permitted?" but it will clarify the dynamic, which seems to involve the liturgical establishment writing reams of stuff and running workshops while bishops are apparently off somewhere doing other things – meeting with lawyers, I suppose.

Update and Clarification:

God bless composers and musicians! I have read what seem to me to be legitimate concerns about the new translation, and chunks of it do seem to be less poetic than they could be, as oft discussed here. The translators should be working with musicologists, I believe. View the above as a rant prompted by an intense week of reflecting on the disjunction between what I read and what I – and most of you – experience.