From the Huffington Post...
Link to Original Story
New Mass Translation Launches In American Parishes
TOM BREEN
Associated Press
CLAYTON, N.C. — English-speaking Roman Catholics who have regularly attended Mass for years found themselves in an unfamiliar position Sunday, needing printed cards or sheets of paper to follow along with a ritual many have known since childhood.
"I don't think I said it the right way once," said Matthew Hoover, who attends St. Ann Catholic Church in Clayton, a growing town on the edge of the Raleigh suburbs. "I kept forgetting, and saying the old words."
The Mass itself – the central ritual of the Catholic faith – hasn't changed, but the English translation has, in the largest shakeup to the everyday faith of believers since the upheavals that followed the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. A years-long process of revision and negotiation led to an updated version of the Roman Missal, the text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass, which originally was written in Latin. The new translation was rolled out across the English-speaking Catholic world on Sunday after months of preparation.
Mickey Mattox, a professor at Milwaukee's Marquette University, said he was happy with the idea that the bishops wanted the translations as accurate as possible.
Adapting to the changes "was a lot less difficult than I thought it might be," said Mattox, 55, adding, "even though probably all of us are going to end up holding our worship folders for a few weeks until we memorize all the new language."
The Rev. George Witt, pastor of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on New York's Park Avenue, started the 11 a.m. Mass by noting Sunday was not only the first day of Advent, but also the first day to use the new Missal. He directed parishioners to a pamphlet inserted into the back of the now-outdated hymnal that spelled out the new wording. A notable number of worshipers stumbled after the priest said, "Peace be with you." The new response is "And with your spirit" instead of "And also with you." But many others confidently gave the right response.
Kathleen McCormack, a church volunteer and former school teacher, said she didn't like the new translation and didn't understand why the church needed a translation closer to Latin.
"Consubstantial? What is that word?" McCormack said, referring to a term in the retranslated Nicene Creed that replaces language calling Jesus "one in being with the Father."
But she saw a cautionary tale in the many Catholics she saw distance themselves from the church over changes made after the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
"It's not shaking my church experience," said McCormack, as she handed out church bulletins. "You have the spirit between you and God and the words are insignificant."
Most of the changes are actually to prayers recited by the priest, but some of the changes for prayers spoken or sung by the congregation revise familiar words that for some people are spoken almost automatically after years of churchgoing.
Along with the new response and unfamiliar words, the affirmation "We believe" has been replaced with "I believe" in the Nicene Creed. Some of the language seems more formal or poetic: the word "cup" has become "chalice."
"It's more British in some ways," said Monsignor Michael Clay, pastor of St. Ann. "But this is the first time that every English-speaking country in the world will be using the same translation of the Mass."
Clay likes the new translation, finding it closer to the Latin text that is still the church's official language. But some priests and parishioners have been less enthusiastic, criticizing the new version as too ponderous or distant, and in some cases circulating petitions asking for a delay in introducing the new missal.
Maribeth Lynch, 51, a publisher from the Milwaukee suburb of Elm Grove, said she was "distraught" over the changes and would refuse to "learn the damn prayers."
"It's ridiculous. I've been a Catholic for 50 years, and why would they make such stupid changes? They're word changes. They're semantics," she said.
"It's confusion. All it's doing is causing confusion," she said. "You want to go to church and be confused?"
The roots of the new translation go back to that epochal council held at the Vatican in the 1960s, which allowed Mass in languages other than Latin. An English-language missal was produced by 1973, but that was intended to be temporary while improvements were made.
In 2001, the Vatican office that oversees worship issued a directive requiring translation of the English missal that would be closer to the Latin rather than to more familiar vernacular speech. Numerous revisions and bishops' meetings eventually produced agreement on the translation being used Sunday.
Parishes and dioceses around the country have spent months trying to prepare Catholics for the change. Descriptions of the new translation have been printed in weekly bulletins, seminars have been held and, since Labor Day, many parishes have been gradually introducing the new translation piece by piece, starting with the parts of the liturgy that are sung.
Most of those activities are for the benefit of the average Catholic, but it's priests who have more new material to master.
"I've had a new missal in my hands for about three weeks now, and I've been literally practicing the prayers," Clay said. "I've been doing this now for 31 years, and a lot of these prayers I actually know by memory. I have to make sure my brain isn't getting ahead of my mouth."
Associated Press writers Rachel Zoll in New York City and Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus...
...old sour puss!
FAITH...
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Childhood wonderment...a time to dream, a time to be carefree, a time before reality slaps you upside your head and the rest of your gloomy life looms.
Just say "NO!" to a grinchy Santa!
Leave the nay-saying to Scrooge...who even he finally saw the light!
In short...
Don't bring me no Bad (News) Santa!
From the New York Times...
Link to Original Story
In Gloomy Economic Times, Santas Learn to Help by Curbing Expectations
By MONICA DAVEY
MIDLAND, Mich. — Here, at the nation’s oldest, most celebrated, school for would-be Santa Clauses, much has stayed exactly the same over its nearly 75 years. A proper Claus ought to have pleasant breath, his beard curled just so and a hearty laugh that rumbles not from the throat but from deep below the diaphragm.
Yet this year, from the holiday parades, to the cheery carols piping from Main Street loudspeakers, to the “this way to Santa” lines at shopping centers, something more sobering has cast its shadow: the economic slump.
The result is a Christmas season in which Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School — must learn to swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency — “Can you bring my parent a job?”
Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. On the flip side, some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item — a pair of sneakers that actually fit.
“In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Mr. Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures here. He has devised his own tale about a wayward elf and slowed toy production at the North Pole for children who are requesting a gift clearly beyond their family’s price range. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.”
The Santa school itself, held in this small, central Michigan city over three days every fall, may offer some measure of the nation’s woes. Last month, it drew the largest class of its history. And while most of the men were longtime, passionate Santas looking to hone their skills in hair bleaching, story-telling and sign language, at least a handful, including an aerospace engineer and an accountant, said they were testing out Santa school in part because of slim times, shrunken retirement accounts, or a dearth of work altogether.
“I’m trying it,” said Joe Stolte, who, at 28, was decades younger than most of the bearded, portly, jarringly similar-looking men in rows all around him. “There are no jobs out there — it’s ridiculous,” he said, adding that he had been surviving by doing odd jobs and cutting lawns in Saginaw and that his mother had helped him come up with the tuition ($400 for first-timers, $350 for others). “I like being Santa Claus. And I figure it comes once a year. It’s a thing that’s going to be there.”
At the school, which takes place partly in an elaborate, cookie-filled Santa House on Main Street, there is a long-standing if polite debate over the role of money in this entire jolly endeavor. The essence of the split? Nursing Home Volunteer Santa versus Mall Santa.
Kevin Scott Fleming, of Evansville, Ind., lectured fellow Santas on the evolution of a character resembling Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, and described making money off the beloved character as “poison, absolutely poison.” Others, like Pat Adams, of Madisonville, Ky., who was soon to fly to Las Vegas for a 40-day stint in a mall, with help from an agent and paid casino-hotel and plane arrangements, saw no harm. “I do well,” he said, adding unapologetically that Mall Santas may earn between $25 and $50 an hour.
“It’s a personal choice,” said Thomas F. Valent, a longtime Santa, who took over operations of the school in 1986 and moved it to Midland, where he also runs a construction company. “The important thing is that people really like Santa. He stands for all good things. So you just have to be the best Santa you can.”
Still, this is a practical education. Along with training in how to store your wig, how best to answer the questions of kindergartners and how to perform on your local cable access television station, a financial planner advised the Santas (and a handful of Mrs. Clauses) to open pension funds and contribute as much as possible to 401(k) retirement accounts. A marketing consultant and gym instructor urged the Santas, a few of whom dozed in their chairs, to create their own Web sites and extolled the benefits of Facebook and Twitter. “Drive ’em, drive ’em, drive ’em to that Web site!” Sabrina Ann Zielinski, the consultant, told the class.
There are other Santa schools. But this one carries a history that leads many here to describe it as the Harvard of the genre and to list it prominently on their résumés and business cards. The school was started in 1937 by Charles W. Howard, a former Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade Santa whose memory is revered in these halls. It was initially based in Albion, N.Y., setting a set of more professional standards for department store Santas.
Some of the lessons might come in handy any year: do not stay too long or children will lose interest; insist on a good, private place (not a boiler room) for changing into your suit; keep your hands in plain view.
But the message has shifted with the times. Some Santas say they now feel a larger obligation to speak up in the face of giant, expensive wish lists, an obligation to lower expectations in a way that only Santas (not parents) can get away with. At least one Santa, Gary Christie, had devised a specific routine for talking children out of their demand for an iPod or the like.
Another, Rick Parris, said, “When kids start asking for the world now, I just say, ‘Hey, look, Johnny, you ain’t getting all that.’ ” The former Alabama state trooper added, “I just make sure to let them know that Santa seldom brings everything on a list.”
Even with the economic downturn, not all the Christmas lists have grown shorter. Some children show up with elaborate printouts, cross-referenced spread sheets and clippings from catalogs. “I try to guide the children into not so unrealistic things, and I do tell them that Santa’s been cutting back too,” said Tom Ruperd, of Caro, Mich., who added that parents often silently signal their appreciation.
When questions get more complex, Mr. Ruperd said, they sometimes require “creative answers.” The solutions, it seems, may be beyond what any school could prepare one for, and possibly out of Santa’s reach altogether. “If they asked for something that’s totally impossible — a job for Daddy, say — I usually tell them, ‘Santa specializes in toys, but we can always pray on the other,’ ” Mr. Ruperd said. “ ‘Is there anything in toys that you’d like?’ ”
Matthew Orr contributed reporting.
