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Written by Ann Rodgers

The Rev. Anthony Ruff, a liturgy professor who worked on the new translation of the Catholic Mass but was deeply disappointed with both the process and the final result, will speak Thursday, Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. in the Father Ryan Arts Center in McKees Rocks.
Father Ruff, a Benedictine who counted the late conservative Catholic writer, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, among his friends, teaches at St. John’s University in Collegeville. Minn. He is a former chairman of the music committee of the International Commission on the Liturgy in English, which the Vatican appointed to do the work of translation.
Originally he had been scheduled to speak in dioceses across the United States to promote the new missal before its implementation at the beginning of Advent. But he resigned from those

engagements in February, saying he couldn’t give pep talks about the missal in good conscience.
“I’m sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe,” he wrote in an open letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church. When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process — and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity . . . I weep.”
His talk here is sponsored by the Association of Pittsburgh Priests, a small, liberal alliance of priests and laity with no official ties to the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Although reactions to the new missal have been somewhat mixed – with some enjoying the slightly archaic language and others finding it obscure and convoluted — there has been no great protest from the pews. But Sister Barbara Finch, a member of the Association of Pittsburgh Priests, said the group believed it was important for Catholics to hear Father Ruff.
“Part of his stance, which is our stance also, is that people need to act out of the primacy of conscience and not just take everything that the church gives to us,” she said. “It’s important to speak up. The process was lousy. There was no consultation at all. It’s to try to get people to be alert and aware to what is going on in the church, and to speak up. The church should respond to the faithful.”
An offering will be taken to cover the cost of the talk.
For more information, call Sister Barbara at 412-716-9750 or
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