Church revises Roman Missal

By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer

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While Roman Catholics in the United States will be using a revised missal at the start of the Christmas season on Sunday, Catholics in the Philippines will have to wait another year to do so.

Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) already had an English version of the Roman Missal. But it needs to be translated into various native languages in the Philippines, he said.

“We already have an English translation but we’re still waiting for it to be translated to the vernacular. We’ll be using the revised missal starting the First Sunday of Advent 2012,” Iñiguez told the Inquirer over the phone.

The CBCP Episcopal Commission on the Liturgy, headed by Zamboanga Archbishop Romulo Valles, is leading the translation of the missal into Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bicolano, Waray and other major languages of the Philippines in consultation with various dioceses.

“The 41-year-old liturgy, with its colloquial English phrasings, will be replaced by a revised Roman Missal that’s word-for-word more literally tied to the original Latin Mass,” USA Today reported.

The Roman Missal, also called Order of the Mass, is the liturgical book that contains the texts and rubrics for the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Rites of the Catholic Church.

Pope John Paul II authorized the revision of the missal way back in 2001 to reflect the Latin original. PopeBenedict XVI approved the revisions last year.

Changes

An example of the changes is the response “Et cum spiritu tuo” (literally, “And with your spirit”), which is rendered “And also with you” in the current missal.

There were also changes made in the Eucharistic prayer, in which the text “…cup of my blood” was changed to “…chalice of my blood,” and “it will be shed for you and for all men,” which was changed to “which will be poured out for you and for many.”

Other changes, according to USA Today and the Washington Post, include the following:

Where the Nicene Creed once spoke of Jesus as “one in Being with the Father,” now Jesus is “consubstantial with the father.”

The Gloria hymn’s familiar opening “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on Earth,” is narrowed to offer peace only for those who have accepted Jesus as messiah, considered by the Church as “people of good will.”

The line “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed,” becomes “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

The English version was completed by the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL) last year and adopted by English-speaking countries such as the United States. The Philippines is a member of the ICEL, with Valles as representative.

Approved in January

In its plenary assembly in January early this year, the CBCP approved the adoption of the new English translation.

“Some parts of familiar responses and prayers have been amended to reflect the true meaning in the original Latin text, the language of the Roman liturgy,” the CBCP said.

The CBCP earlier ordered the liturgy commission to prepare a catechetical primer on the new missal to explain the changes to the clergy and laity. The primer would compare the 2010 and 1973 missals in both English and the vernacular.

Fr. Genaro Diwa, executive secretary of the commission, said changes always would usher in some difficulties, hence the need for liturgical catechesis for everybody, including the bishops and priests.

Critics

The new missal has its critics in the United States and Ireland.

Hundreds of Irish priests have called on their bishop to delay the use of the missal, according to USA Today. They also challenged the scholarship behind the changes.

A priest in Seattle, Micheal Ryan, launched a campaign on the Web urging the Vatican to first test it on a pilot group of parishes.

But the US bishops praised the new missal. “God merits elegant language, not ‘Hey. God, it’s me,”’ Msgr. Eugene Morris, director of Sacred Liturgy for the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, was quoted as saying by USA Today.

New Jersey Congressman Urges Vigilance at Hospital that Wanted Nurses to Assist at Abortions

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by REGISTER STAFF 12/28/2011 Comments (3)

Rep. Chris Smith speaks during a press conference with nurses in the background who were suing the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey hospital Nov. 14.

– CNA

NEWARK, N.J.  — Last week, a New Jersey hospital   settled with a group of nurses, who charged that they were forced to participate in abortions, in violation of state conscience protections. Now,  Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who defended the nurses’ right to adhere to their pro-life moral principles, contends that the hospital should establish a system to ensure compliance with federal conscience-protections. 

In a Dec. 22 statement, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark agreed not to require nurses to participate in abortions or any service related to those abortions.

“Now it is the hospital’s responsibility to make sure respect for conscience is implemented through a hospital-wide policy without nuance, loopholes, ambiguity or small print,” said Congressman Smith in a Dec. 28 statement.

“A durable, transparent and effective means of monitoring compliance with federally protected conscience rights must be put in place to ensure that no-one at UMDNJ, including the nurses who asserted their federally guaranteed rights not to participate in any way in the killing of an unborn child are harmed, subjected to any discrimination or retaliated against now or at any time in the future,” he added.

“UMDNJ argues that sometimes so-called safe, elective abortions put women in life-threatening situations,” said Smith, co-chairman of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus since 1982. “When an abortion threatens to take the life of both the baby and the mom, the pro-life nurses have always been willing to step in, if needed, to preserve the life of the mother until the emergency code team arrives.”

According to the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented the 12 nurses, the terms of the settlement require that if a woman suffers a true emergency from an abortion, the nursse will help protect her until other staff, such as the emergency team, arrives moments later.

“Because the abortions are all elective, outpatient surgeries, and the court is requiring the hospital to fully staff all abortion cases with non-objecting medical personnel, the pro-life nurses should never actually be needed in any such case,” the ADF statement said.

“No pro-life medical personnel should be forced to assist or train in services related to abortions. The hospital has finally done the right thing in agreeing to obey the law and not force our clients to do any work on abortion cases in violation of their beliefs,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman, who represented the nurses.

“The hospital agreed not to penalize our clients in any way because they choose not to participate in abortion according to their legal rights,” said Bowman.

The hospital agreed not to replace the pro-life nurses or reduce their hours.

When asked if the hospital might implement a policy like the one Smith called for, a hospital spokesman did not comment but simply provided a statement: “We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that is in the best interests of the patients we serve and respects the beliefs of our nurses,” the statement said. “The hiring of additional nurses, which we announced several weeks ago, enables us to address both concerns.”

Where they live is how they die

By: Jose Ma. Montelibano
Philippine Daily Inquirer

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If there is a God, then He will bring disaster after disaster to the Philippines. He will have little choice but to do it. It remains the gentler way through which He can trigger change, much kinder than war and violence for the same purpose.

I accompanied the Gawad Kalinga leadership to Cagayan de Oro and iligan Cily the other day so we could best determine with local volunteers the most effective way to help with our limited resources. In the heat of a disaster that has just struck and afflicted great numbers, there is that understandable flurry of help activities from many sectors beginning with government to NGOs and simply ordinary citizens who want to help. There is also that burst of concern, sympathy and resources generated abroad among Filipinos living in foreign lands. Yes, disaster reminds us we are brothers and sisters after all, and the fate of one necessarily affects the other.

When the exhaustion of being in the center of relief work forces this senior citizen to rest, I cannot help but see a tapestry of a situation that is truly just one even though it may look like separate events. I refer to disasters and how often they strike and how consistently they target the poor. I am not talking about the wrath of nature, I am talking about her victims, I am talking almost always about the poor.

Coincidentally enough, a fire hit a community of informal settlers in Iligan City around 2003 and prompted the mayor the with the infant movement, Gawad Kalinga or GK, to build a new community for them. That community, called GK Missionville, still stands. But an even earlier community built on a former garbage dump in the same city was destroyed by the floods of Typhoon Sendong. This is a lesson we have long learned – do not build on former garbage dumps. It is not just the sanitation problem, it is an expression that the poor are severely undervalued and a garbage dunp is good enough for them.

After that fire, GK went to relief and rehabilitation work in Pinut-an Island of Souther Leyte when landslides hit three towns, Liloan, san Ricardo and San Francisco. This was quickly followed by the great fire of Baseco in early 2004. Razed to the ground, the old colony of informal settlers numbering over 5,000 families went into shock and paralyzed even their traditional pattern of violence there. When GK started building homes and communities, Baseco had a record of 28 unsolved murders just the year before. All these post-disaster relief and reconstruction work prepared GK for the great disaster at the end of 2004 when four typhoons hit Luzon in a period of three weeks. GK waded into the most massive relief and reconstruction work of its young history, concentrating in Mindoro, Bicol, Quezon, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela.

There have been other disasters since then, of course, where I have participated in helping with relief and rebuilding work. It seems non-stop with a recurring face and story. Disaster is mostly the face of the poor. Because they are landless and can stay only in areas which are undesirable or of no value to the rest of society, the poor invariably have four favorite habitats – seashores (without white sands), river banks and canals, upland slopes, and squatter colonies in urban areas. By their choice of where to stay, the poor also choose their most probable way of dying. Those who live in seashores are killed by typhoons. Those who live along river banks and canals are killed by floods. Those who live along the upland slopes are killed by landslides. And those who build colonies in the cities are killed by fire. Those who escape live lives shortened by illness, malnutrition and inner city violence.

Disaster do not spare the rich, or the not-so-poor. Some are killed as well. But the places where their homes are situated can withstand natural calamities better, more insulated from floods, fires and landslides and more resistant to the winds and rains of typhoons. I do not have figures but have a good memory of the social terrain of disasters where I was personally exposed to because of my Gawad Kalinga advocacy. I have seen the ratio of rich and poor victims of disaster and they follow closely the economic brackets. If one thousand have perished so far in CDO and Iligan, I can venture to assume that victims will be 9 poor to 1 rich, or even higher for the poor. That is why there are many who are intuitively drawn to sympathize and help – because they know that the victims are mostly, and often, only the poor. If disaster strikes Forbes Park or Ayala Alabang, there would be sympathy, of course, if there are many deaths – but money will NOT be raised for them, food packs will NOT be prepared and distributed, or boxes of used clothes and blankets will NOT be shipped to them.

When death and destruction stare us in the face, our souls cringe from empathy and our hearts are awakened enough to immediately help. But the last eight years of post-disaster intervention has shown me, and will show me again with CDO and Iligan, that most who help today will shirt their attention to their daily concerns pretty soon and that empathy for the plight of victims, for the plight of the poor, will fade away until the next great tragedy. It is not that they are less humane, I believe. It might be that the natural caring for one another is largely absent in a country where solidarity among Filipinos is virtually non-existent outside of catastrophic situations. The clear lack of a sense of nation manifests itself in a clear lack of concern for one another as a people in our day-to-day lives. That is why poverty persists over extended periods, over centuries, without a sense of urgency to solve the legacy of poverty.

If there is a God, He has to intervene, to find ways to make us understand we are one people, one Filipino race, that rich and poor are not the same but not different enough to live and die in such ugly contrasting ways. So far, God chooses natural calamities to remind us. Let us not force Him to find more painful ways. It is Christmas, we might hear better this time.