There are new Lectionaries that have either arrived or are coming for the English speaking Catholic world.
England has theirs already using the ESV-CE translation for the readings, the USA is going with the Catholic American Bible (natch) when they get around to it and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand will use the the RNJB at some stage, because why not?
So we either get the Vatican making lousy decisions for the whole English speaking world or we get lots of different decisions for different areas to cause confusion.
Regarding psalms there appears more unity in that everyone is moving to “The Abbey Psalms and Canticles” otherwise known as the Revised, Revised Grail. Australia will use the ICEL responses but I’m struggling to find what other jurisdictions are doing with their responses, it appears that they won’t be using the ICEL responses I think.
There is little between them all, but it means the psalms for Australia will have two copyrights, ICEL for the responses and the holder of the copyright for “The Abbey Psalms.” That was the abbey who sold it to GIA who sold it to the USCCB.
There are some who think that copyright over psalms is evil and have posted the whole thing on the internet. They suggest it should be under a creative commons licence and that is something the USCCB could do if they wanted to.
This is all annoying me because I’m looking at the third volume of Paul Mason’s excellent psalms. All his volumes use ICEL (First 1981, 2nd and beyond 1997) responses. For verses, the first one used 1963 Grail, the second, 2010 Revised Grail and the third 2018 Revised, Revised Grail. This all makes my brain hurt and you wonder why anyone writes psalms with the confusion causing delays and limiting sales to smaller areas.
In my opinion, Australia shouldn’t be staying with the ICEL response. The UK folk did a brilliant job ensuring that all the responses and verses matched the Ordo as far as possible, and that the response translation matched that used in the psalm itself just making grammatical changes where required. Anyone having the Universalis app can see the UK translations and responses as used in liturgy.
A good example is Psalm 15 (14) as used for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, and elsewhere. The first sentence in the psalm asks the question “LORD, who may abide in your tent, and dwell on your holy mountain?” and rest of the psalm answers the question. The ordo response, a slight rephrase of the question makes sense as it is inserted into the congregational breaks in the psalm, but the ICEL response, “The just will live in the presence of the Lord” does not (in my opinion anyway!)
Paul Inwood published an article a few years ago suggesting that the ICEL responses varied from the Grail so that they could be copyrighted. https://praytellblog.com/index.php/2015/04/13/the-scandalous-but-true-story-behind-icels-1969-lectionary-for-mass/
The ccwatershed site has suggested that the US psalm translation is based on that by Father Cuthbert Lattey in 1939. https://www.ccwatershed.org/2025/07/22/pdf-comparison-chart-serious-problems-with-the-lectionary-translation/
The Abbey Psalms and Canticles make no acknowledgement of their Grail origins despite substantial chunks being identical. Paul Inwood published a detailed article about the RGP here: https://praytellblog.com/index.php/2015/03/03/the-revised-grail-psalter-by-paul-inwood/
There are a huge number of musical psalm settings on the web without direct permission, and Jeff Ostrowski’s Chabanel psalms, which have been online for around 15 years, don’t even attribute their source, yet there has never been any issue with this, so make of that what you will. I think there would be quite the scandal if a religious entity sued someone for publishing a psalm (for free) online.
With regard to bible translations, I just wish we had one official translation that can be put on the web. We are supposed to be a missionary church, but seem to leave that to other denominations! The only modern genuinely Catholic translation available online that I am aware of is the New Catholic Bible, which can be found on BibleGateway. It reads well, is approved for Catholics, has extensive notes, but is not allowed to be used liturgically in the US or anywhere else! Find it here: https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-Catholic-Bible-NCB-Bible/
In my opinion every word that is an official Catholic text should be able to be freely and accurately published by anyone not trying to make a buck!
Looking at Inwood’s article I left out several “revised” when referring to the latest Grail psalms.
Thank you for your thoughtful commentary as always, Chris.
Geoff
It seems like just when you thought there wasn’t another thing to retranslate, they find something else… And when they’re done, they start over again. Parishes clinging to their old 80s/90s Gather/Worship hymnals with readings in the back have three or four different “wrong” items that all became obsolete at different times (Mass settings, Lectionary readings, psalm settings). None of it is current. It’s no wonder why lots of parishes just use the Haugen, et al psalm paraphrases for the responsorial psalm.
From what I’ve read, once the Abbey Psalms & Canticles are officially adopted here in the US, all older translations will no longer be allowed during the responsorial psalm, possibly with a grace period. Currently, we have some rule that says we’re allowed to use any previously approved translation, but I guess that’s going away. We’ll see how many actually follow that when it happens.
As I was searching for who composed our psalm for this weekend, I noticed that a different “Be Merciful, O Lord” by Curtis Stephan (the Spirit & Psalm version) was listed as being in the new Glory & Praise Fourth Edition hymnal, which is apparently so new that OCP hasn’t even bothered to promote it on their own social media yet.
Anyway, this caught my eye at the bottom of the G&P description:
Coming soon! Glory & Praise, Fourth Edition with Readings will be available with texts from the new Lectionary for Mass, which is estimated to be released by the USCCB for the 2029 liturgical year. We are working closely with the USCCB to ensure this resource will be available as soon as possible.
So who knows when they’ll get those new readings to actually put in their new hymnals? But also, I’m pretty sure Spirit & Psalm was written using our current lectionary translation of the psalms, not the Abbey Psalms & Canticles, so that will also be obsolete. What a mess!