By now most regular readers of our blog have read--and responded to--"What if We Said, 'Wait?'", Father Michael Ryan's critique of the new translation of the Roman Missal. The article has garnered over 200 comments, and is the most read article on our site for the second month in a row.

Now Father Peter M. J. Stravinskas, editor of The Catholic Response, offers a formal response to Father Ryan in his Web-only article for America"Defending the New Roman Missal." Like Father Ryan, Father Stravinskas was a young priest during the liturgical renewal of the 1970s, though unlike Father Ryan he did not embrace the changes:

When the English Missale Romanum appeared in 1970, it was clear we had been handed a paraphrase instead of a translation. As a young priest required to use these texts, I quickly determined that something needed to be done to return to the people of God what Father Ryan dubs “their baptismal birthright”—that is, an English liturgy that seeks to convey all the depth, truth and beauty of the original Latin.

Father Stravinskas contends that the new translation is more faithful to the original Latin and "a vast improvement over the uninspiring, banal and all-too-often theologically problematic texts we have been using for nearly 40 years."

Read "Defending the New Roman Missal."

Tim Reidy