What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

I just finished reading through nearly 200 comments posted to this entry.

I am truly amazed by your responses.  Some of the comments are fascinating!

I glossed some of them in red.

Thanks for the generous response to my query.  I never expected such an outpouring of experiences and thoughts.

I get a lot of e-mail feedback from my columns in The Wanderer and from commentary on this blog and various interviews.  Here was a truly amusing bit I received this morning.  It is from Fr. Philip Chircop, SJ who, it seems from my brief internet search on his name, specializes in workshops and retreats.

My emphases.

Dear John

I happened on your web-site and blog and I had to quickly move elsewhere as I found myself entering a prison!  You yourself put it so beautifully and powerfully well “Slavishly accurate Liturgical Translations”!  What a pity it is to be a prisoner of accuracy and prisoner of the letter when we are called to be not “slavishly” but “LAVISHLY” and creatively free, open and awake enough to listen to the ever fresh daily rhythms of the Spirit who is beyond all boundaries and who as you know breathes where She wills!  Be blessed John and may you know true freedom in the one who came to set us ALL free.

Philip sj

Just what are "rhythms of the Spirit"? 

In any event, Fr. Chircop didn’t really bother to find out why this WDTPRS project exists, why we do what we do here.

I don’t think he read even one of the archived columns, in which I first dissect the prayers with slavish accuracy and only then drill down into them to see where they might lead us. 

So, everyone, welcome to "the prison of accuracy".

I have a favor to ask those of you who did NOT grow up with the older form of Mass. 

If sometime along the way you decided to check out the older form of Mass, the "Tridentine" Mass, I am interested in your experience and reactions.

• Were you "hooked"?
• Are you hooked now but it took a while?
• Were you indifferent ("What’s the big deal?")
• Were you put off and don’t want to go back?
• What was it that captured you?
• What repelled you?
• Do you go now?  Often?  Exclusively?  Rarely?

Folks, I am not so much interested in discussion between you readers in this particular thread.  I simply want to give space to those who discovered the older form of Mass. 

I guess this could also leave space for those who grew up with the older form and then rediscovered it after many years and now either love it, hate it, or something in between.

Laypeople and priests alike!

I am really hoping people who never knew the older Mass will post their comments. 

If you disagree with someone (or agree), don’t jump in to react. 

Just let people speak their piece.

Okay, folks!   Get to it!

UPDATE:  I am going to highlight points of special interest to me in RED.