Chai Brady
A staple of Irish Masses is under pressure, writes Chai Brady
Trouble is brewing for the prolific missalette, a staple in many parishes across the country, as Ireland’s national liturgical group, academics, priests and laity lambaste it for a plethora of reasons.
Millions of missalettes are printed every year by a variety of publishers, all offering variations on their products. Some allow parishes a space to add their weekly notices, others have reflections of the Sunday’s readings or perhaps the liturgical season and hymns, Eucharist prayers and more.
The Church in Ireland’s liturgy advisory body has produced a stinging condemnation of “commercially produced missalettes”, dubbing them “not true aids to the Sunday celebration”.
Fr Danny Murphy of the National Centre for Liturgy in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, told The Irish Catholic a worship aid that circulates a parish’s “legitimate” choices for Sunday Mass is necessary “if it is serious about having worthy, fruitful celebration of the liturgy”.
Worship aids should be for seasonal use, he said, and be durable and not one-use disposable and include words and music for the dialogues, acclamations, responses, ritual music, hymns and songs of the congregation. It would not have to include the texts of the Collect, Prayer over the Offerings or Prayer after Communion.
“Commercially produced missalettes that include the texts of the readings and the full text of the Eucharistic Prayer are not true aids to the Sunday celebration,” he said.
Notices
Missalettes that facilitate parish notices are also not true aids to the Sunday celebration, he continued, “since they circulate from the outset information that belongs outside the celebration of the Liturgy or, at minimum, to the Concluding Rites”.
This is echoed by curate Fr Jim Doyle of Kilmore parish in Wexford, who doesn’t provide missalettes in his churches anymore and says it’s not a good idea to have a newsletter as part of the missalette.
“Now I don’t think that’s a good idea in the sense that people are reading all the notices, and they’re reading the newsletter during Mass,” he said.
“We have a newsletter here that’s separate to the missalette and I don’t even put the newsletter out until the end of Mass because I’ve found people were bringing it into Mass, reading it when they should have been reading their missal.”
Worship aids should be for seasonal use and be durable and not one-use disposable and include words and music for the dialogues, acclamations, responses…”
They no longer use missalettes and have opted for a few dozen books they leave at the back of the church that people can refer to if they wish, which he describes as a “big improvement”.
“People, after a while they use it and they start to see that there’s a cycle of readings. It does help educate them on the readings. They have the whole year’s readings, last week’s, next week’s, they can see what’s coming up.
“In that sense it can help, but I would still probably prefer if people were attentive listeners when the actual Mass was being said and certainly when it comes to prayers outside of the readings, they really shouldn’t be leafing through the missalette.”
However, he said that some forms of missals-cum-missalettes cause issues during Mass. “I find sometimes at Mass I might change the Eucharistic prayer and suddenly they’re frantically leafing through it in front of me. It can be a distraction for me because I’m saying the Mass and then suddenly they’re looking for the Eucharistic prayer and it’s not what they were expecting to come up – at that point you’d rather they just knelt down and prayed.”
While it’s clear some people have serious issues with and a dislike of the missalette, publishers of the product say it is still an important part of parish life and is still needed, and wanted, in churches.
Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR, editor of Redemptorist Communications, produces two form of missalette, Sunday Message and Soul Space. Between the two, five million are printed every year for use in about 400 parishes, with the former coming in both A3 and A4 sizes.
Sunday Message contains the “longer prayers people might not know very well, such as the Creed and the Gloria”, says Fr McConvery, adding that this is particularly true after a new translation of the missal. The missalette’s inside pages are for use by the parish, many of which use them for notices.
Soul Space similarly has a blank space for parishes on the inside pages, it doesn’t have prayers, says Fr McConvery, “there’s no reproduction of anything else, it’s just simply a space that has, lets say, a short reading on a theme over two pages and then the inside the parish uses for its own material, usually the inserts are for weekly announcements but there’s also the possibility of using one page of that for the hymns”.
Future
Regarding missalettes’ future in Irish parishes, Fr McConvery does not doubt it is still wanted. “Priests keep ordering it, and keep getting it from year to year. Sometimes they come to us looking for a good missalette, they have seen our stuff and they liked what they saw,” he said. The paper and ink used is said to be from ethical sources.
The Society of St Paul in Ireland, who are another big player in missalette sales, also produce about five million every year.
Fr Alex Anandam, one of the people in charge of their missalettes, admitted that recently sales have decreased. “The reason we are doing this is it’s our mission to proclaim God’s Word, through print media, radio, television, that is our charism. Here in Ireland we have been doing this for a long time, the print media for which we proclaim God’s Word we help people to participate in the liturgy.
“Our circulation, it has come down, because parishes are cancelling and the number of people going to church is less and less.”
They publish five types of disposable leaflet each week, adding up to 109,000, but declined to give the number of parishes they serve.
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In the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin, Julie Kavanagh of Pastoral Resource in the Faith Development Services says there is an environmental aspect that can’t be ignored due to the amount of waste generated from disposable missalettes.
“I know here in our own diocese at the time of the publication of the new edition of the missal we produced a more permanent leaflet for parishes to use for their regular Masses, so many of them would use that,” she told The Irish Catholic.
“There is a huge concern I think with regard to the environment and the disposability every week of the leaflet, it is an issue to explore, there are some people who invest personally on a missal that provides them with the reading from week to week if they need it.
“Then other parishes use simple things like publishing what the readings are for the next week in their parish missalette, or making it available on the parish website so that people actually have readings read before they come to Mass and that they’re ready then to listen to the Word proclaimed by the reader, that’s the ideal situation.”
However, she said, some people need or want the reassurance of having a guide or worship aid and a parish can assist in this by leaving a more permanent worship aid at the back of the church for people to take of they wish.
Impact
A growing concern among many of the faithful are the affects missalettes can have on priests. According to some, it has a profound impact on the decisions and choices a priest can make during Mass.
“I think often the leaflets that are published sometimes take away choices from priests and parishes with regard to what Eucharistic prayer to use or the particular text of the reading, sometimes they might go for a shorter version while a parish might have opted to do the longer version of a reading for example, so it does take away some freedom,” says Ms Kavanagh.
Although a member of Ireland’s National Council for Liturgy, Dr Tom Whelan CSSp spoke to this paper in a personal capacity, saying he would “ban” missalettes if he could.
The visiting lecturer at Maynooth University said publishers are being given too much power in being allowed to decide what Eucharistic prayer would be used. Dr Whelan said: “There are 10 Eucharistic prayers available, publishers don’t seem to know that, so a presider is often stymied by what a publisher decides.”
A presider, Dr Whelan said, should be free to be able to decide for a parish on a particular Sunday, which prayers are the best or most appropriate to use on that day. “One parish I went to here in Dublin for the Triduum liturgy, Easter vigil for instance, there were three readings chosen, there are seven available of the Old Testament, but there were three of them in the missalette.
There is a huge concern I think with regard the environment and the disposability every week of the leaflet, it is an issue to explore, there are some people who invest personally on a missal that provides them with the reading from week to week”
“There are a few parishes, not too many, who actually do want to do all seven Old Testament readings. There are two other New Testament readings also…everyone wants to do it but a parish should be able to choose how many readings and what these are, not a publisher,” with many priests often feeling they have to follow “what’s in people’s hands”.
“The issues are pastoral, people, rather fumbling around with a thing in front of them, which actually dictates what a liturgy is in a parish.”
One of the core issues regards readers, or lectors, according to Dr Whelan, who says if readers are good there is no need for text as they should be listened to.
“Readers in some churches, some are very, very good, but in some churches the standard is actually pretty poor, right down to the fact that people don’t know how to use a microphone properly even in their own parish church. Mind you some priests don’t know how to use a microphone properly,” he said.
Ms Kavanagh also mentioned the need for well-trained readers during Mass, as it’s something that isn’t read but proclaimed and prayed. As it’s done in a group there should be an attempt to help people “lift their eyes up from the missalette and to bring them into a shared experience of communal prayer”.
This is also reiterated in Fr Murphy’s comments to this paper, when he said that readings of the Word of God by individuals are not receiving the Word for themselves alone, and parish finances should be used to make this possible.
“Other than for hearing and other impairments on participation, true worship aids for the Liturgy do not include the texts of the Scripture readings. Besides, limited parish finances ought to be applied to the effective, ongoing formation of excellent ministers of the Word,” said Fr Murphy.
Dr Whelan warns that some hymns he’s seen appearing on missalettes not only don’t credit the author of the piece, but are breaching copywrite by publishing it without permission.
“There are agencies that can give blanket copywrite permission, they would represent a large number of composers. The concern around that is, it’s a matter of law and it’s a matter of justice. Music composers can rarely make any type of living out of composing music for church, unless they have a big record label,” he said.
Core issues with missalettes seem to stem from the belief they distract, and even cheapen, the faithful from the Mass experience”
“A publisher who’s doing this sort of thing, they’re not doing it for free, they mightn’t have a massive profit margin but at the same time, if they are doing something like this they are obliged in law.”
There were mixed reviews from Mary Dee, the Diocesan Liturgy Assistant for the Liturgy Commission in Waterford and Lismore.
Although Missalettes act as a “distraction for some”, it depends on the individual, Ms Dee said, adding “for a lot of people I think it might help them a bit as well”.
“A lot depends on your minister of the Word, if they deliver the reading well, then the missalette is not useful but if you have somebody that you can’t understand or find difficult to understand then the missalette does help, it’s 50/50 really.”
Core issues with missalettes seem to stem from the belief they distract, and even cheapen, the faithful from the Mass experience.
Some priests feel their hands are tied when certain prayers are chosen for them by publishers. Readers should annunciate and be clear, but according to liturgists, poor speakers should not be a reason to keep missalettes, rather there should be better training provided by the parish.
Some publishers feel they are giving a legitimate, worthwhile and quality product to Massgoers, which helps them in their Faith journey and much more, and they are still getting millions of orders of them.
There are certainly very polarised beliefs when it comes to the missalette – which faces an uncertain future.