Liturgical music’s Big Three — GIA, OCP, and WLP — combined forces to produce a benefit album. With Faith, Hope, & Love: In Support of the Victims of Terrorism, already in release, features many well-known liturgical songs. All production costs and royalties have been donated, meaning that every dollar of the $16 purchase price will benefit victims served by Catholic charities. The initial pressing of 5,000 may have sold out, but give the websites of the publishers a try.

New norms … but what do they mean?

The Vatican approved new U.S. norms for receiving communion under both forms. The promulgation of the new Roman Missal (which itself expands opportunities for receiving from the cup) means that “This Holy and Living Sacrifice” (USCC 1984) is rendered obsolete. American bishops approved new norms last year before sending them to the Vatican for its approval. The new guidelines will address church teaching on communion under both forms, give directives for sacred vessels and liturgical roles and outline procedures for distributing communion. What will actually change from last year? Probably not too much.

Slip in the back pew and make yourself comfortable

Catholic University professor D. Paul Sullins’ sociology class studied people arriving in church: when they came and where they sat. He related, “People who arrive earlier tend to sit up toward the front, much more than those arriving later. The stereotype of the person who arrives just in time and slips into the back has some foundation to it.”

Teaching tolerance

If you can read Italian, this may be an interesting volume to acquire: Directory on Popular Piety and Liturgy, prepared by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. A press conference earlier this spring introduced the book. Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez noted that “just because an expression of popular piety may seem ‘a bit strange’ in another culture, it does not mean that it is not an expression of Christian faith.” So even if you do not understand practices such as home altars, kneeling your way through a pilgrimage or reenacting Christ’s passion with nails through an actor’s hands, be generous toward those who express their piety in these ways. The document also underscores the primacy of the Sunday Eucharist for Catholics. No devotion, no matter how beloved or traditional, is to replace the centrality of the celebration of Sunday Mass.

Sermon of the year … and the winner is …

Like your pastor’s homilies? Ever wonder how your favorite preacher would stack up against the best? Encourage him or her to enter the second “Sermon-of-the-Year” competition and see. Laypeople are also invited to enter the contest, run by Sunday Sermons, a periodical from Voicings Publications, which has served preachers since 1970.

According to Rev. Eugene Zimmers of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, this resource contains “a veritable treasury of stories, and gentle humor that provide immeasurable assistance to preachers’ efforts to inspire their congregations. The entire 32-year collection might well be the most formidable and effective body of sermons ever published.” Print, computer disk, and e-mail formats are available, and the resource is based on the three-year lectionary cycle shared by many Christian churches.

Editor James F. Colaianni, Sr. describes the contest: “[It] represents an effort to encourage preachers to be ever-mindful of their responsibility to regard preaching not only as an awesome duty but also as a source of tremendous joy and personal fulfillment. The serious preacher needs to recognize, in all humility, the need to draw upon the best available resources for encouragement support and inspiration.”

For further information concerning the competition’s guidelines and awards, write Voicings Sermon Competition, PO Box 3102, Margate, NJ 08402. Telephone 1-800-827-9401. E-mail sermons@voicings .com. Entries can also be sent via the internet: www.voicings.com /sermonentries.html.

If you pave it, will they come?

The first idea was to solicit tens of millions of dollars, then pave about four square miles of a dried lake bed on the outskirts of Mexico City. Buses would bring in pilgrims by the millions for the canonization Mass of Juan Diego. After a few weeks of media scrutiny, the plan was scrapped. The July 30 liturgy will instead be held in the city at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pope John Paul II plans to fly there from the World Youth event in Toronto.

Early speculation was that the number of worshipers would surpass the estimated four to five million who celebrated with the pope at World Youth Day in Manila in 1995. Apparently, church officials had second thoughts about a run at the record books. You have to wonder what they’d do with the leftover parking lot after everybody went home.

Cell phone problems at Mass? You are not helpless.

“I ensure that the celebration of the religious service will unfold within the parameters of prayer,” says Father Francisco Llopis of the Church of the Helpless in Moraira, Spain. He has overseen the installation of an electronic jamming system to be sure that cell phone calls do not interrupt the Mass. The system is turned on just as liturgy begins and then is turned off afterward. As the first parish in Spain to use such a system, one can certainly not say they are helpless.

Liturgical reformer dies

This past February, Father Godfrey Leo Diekmann, a Benedictine liturgist, died in Collegeville, Minn. The 93-year-old priest and editor was a leading proponent of the use of vernacular and the revision of sacramental rites prior to Vatican II. He was a leader behind the drafting of the council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

Better late than never?

Liturgists worldwide are asking why it took almost two years between the promulgation of the new Roman Missal and the publication of the actual book. Printing difficulties, especially with music, caused the holdup. Pope John Paul II received the first bound copy of the Missale Romanum on March 18 this past Lent. Now the work begins to translate the Latin original into vernacular languages, a process that is likely to take several years as bishops’ conferences around the world tackle the task.

The new Roman Missal features few dramatic changes over the 1975 edition. Nineteen feasts have been added, some new and some returnees from the pre-conciliar liturgical calendar. One returning votive celebration is a “Mass for Sinners.”

A little translation lubrication

Apparently not trusting the competency of English-speaking bishops to develop their vernacular of the newest Roman Missal, the Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship will reportedly set up a special body to monitor the Latin-to-English translation process. ICEL will likely do the detail work with the Latin originals, and then the new committee, Vox Clara (“clear voice”) will collect additional input before forwarding the work to the CDWS. A similar process, though not without controversy, helped move the English-language lectionary through a final stage before it was accepted by the CDWS in 1997.

More than one official English translation may see the light of day. According to Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez of the CDWS, the Vatican may be ready to accept a separate translation of the Roman Missal if an English-speaking country wished to submit its own work. Among Spanish-speaking Catholics, there are five separate translations of the 1975 missal available at present. ML

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