"It's going to take me a while to cope," 57-year-old Charles Cianci said as he headed into the Saturday-evening vigil Mass at St. Peter's parish in Merchantville. "But at least the changes are just words. It's the same Mass."
"I just don't understand why they've got to change," grumbled an usher who declined to give his name.
"I kind of like them," said 58-year-old Mike Tomasetto.
But Karen Burns, 54, left St. Peter's an hour later wearing a broad smile. "I love the changes," she said. A daily Mass-goer and eucharistic minister who calls herself a traditionalist, Burns said the changes "will force us to think about what we're saying."
That is the hope of church leaders and liturgists, who predict that Catholics who reflect on the new English translation of the Roman Missal - 10 years in the making - will find it spiritually richer than the missal they have known for the last 41 years. They also say it is truer to Scripture and the original Latin.
"Only Son of the Father" is now "Only Begotten Son," for example, and "God of power and might" will henceforth be "Lord God of hosts."
The Nicene Creed no longer begins with a collective "We believe," but a singular "I believe." Jesus is no longer "born of" the Virgin Mary but "incarnate of." Nor is he "of one substance with the Father." He is "consubstantial."
Worshipers leaving St. Peter's and Our Lady of Perpetual Hope over the weekend joked about the awkwardness of "consubstantial." But the Rev. Anthony Manuppella, longtime pastor of St. Peter's, predicted most would soon grow used to it.
