Fr. Shane Tharp writes:

Today, I’m working with someone from another parish on implementing the new Missal. I am using those materials Ted Sri worked up along with some of my special magic. Then I strolled over to Fr. Phillip’s blog and he mentioned having classes about the Creed due to the fact that with the new translation restoring “I Believe” rather than the weaker “We Believe,” Catholics need to be more personally engaged with words of the Creed. All of this points out how interconnected all of the Faith really is. Even though I am preparing for irritation and frustration as the translation is put into place, I anticipate great fruit coming from it. I guess that’s the only reason to show interest in “The Liturgy Wars” (trademark pending). The Liturgy can save the world so long as those who use it use it in a spirit of the covenantal Faith that binds us together. We have got to stop making the liturgy about ourselves. It’s about our participation in a work that God has begun and will consummate at the end of time. This new translation is both overwhelming in the details and ripe with promise all the way around. I think the emotion is “excit-o-whelmed.”

Happily, I have no responsibilities in implementing the new liturgy beyond “Remember your lines and your blocking”. I will, as is my custom, receive any liturgy the Church gives me with gratitude and pray for good, hard-working priests like Fr. Shane, whose (often thankless) task is to herd us cats in the pews. I, for one, am grateful to ye, padre. I look forward to the coming years as the new changes get settled in and the grace juices start flowing as we let the liturgy teach us.

And yes, “excite-o-whelmed” is a word because Fr. Shane just wrote it. When people complain, “That’s not a word. You just made that up!” I always ask, “Name one word somebody didn’t make up.” One of my secret dreams as an English major is to someday coin a word that winds up in the dictionary. I’m still rooting for “eupocrisy” but I think it’s too fancy pants Greekish to really catch on (even though it really is a nifty term that describes something for which we have no other English word).

The measure of a successful coinage is “Does anybody use the word besides you and people close to you? By this standard, “eupocrisy” fails miserably.

Typically, new words, like language in general, are transmitted along the vectors of money and power. When Alexander becomes powerful, Greek becomes the dominant tongue. As Rome waxes, so does Latin. When the nation states arise, their languages follow them into their Empires. Not surprisingly, the American Century led to the dominance of English and, within the language, successful economic or cultural ventures transmit new words like “software” or “cyberspace”, “d’oh!” or even “hobbit”. So the Japanese adopt such terms as “aisu kurimu” (ice cream) and “beseburu” (baseball) because, hey!, American culture rulz.

Moral #1: if Fr. Shane wants “excite-o-whelmed” to catch on, he should become Pope and keep using it in his encyclicals and books. It’ll catch on.

Moral #2: Get ready to learn a lot of Chinese in the 21st Century.