Different lectionaries in England and Ireland (not Eire!)

 A working church-musician, who has made a much-appreciated contribution to making simple, sing-able psalm settings available in the English-speaking world, recently had an article in the Tablet.

She'd just discovered that Catholic Mass-readings in England, Scotland and Wales will be from a different translation of the Bible, from the start of Advent 2024 - ie this December.    

From what I can see, Cathedral, "big-church" and professional musicians know about this change.  But maybe the English bishops haven't done a great job telling people smaller-church musicians, ie the ones found in must parishes.

It's a good article, getting to the point but not over simplifying.   But I had two big reactions to it.

1) You won’t be able to use the same settings for England and Wales and Ireland any more.

The Irish bishops decided in 2021 to move to a lectionary based on the Revised New Jerusalem Bible (RNJB) – source:   https://www.irishcatholic.com/new-lectionary-translation-raises-practical-concerns/

There has been no public progress on this (that an ordinary-lay-person can see!)  or even approval from the Vatican yet.   But a July 2023 news article stated that the Irish bishops plan to work with Australia and New Zealand (https://www.irishcatholic.com/irish-bisho.ps-stick-to-their-guns-as-uk-gets-new-lectionary ).

That makes me think it’s very likely that England and Wales, and the island-of-Ireland will have different texts.

2) The “Eire” word raises people's ire.

The article refers to “UK and Eire, the US, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand”.

Firstly, there’s a spelling issue.  It’s Éire, not Eire.    Small dash, big difference.

And a meaning issue:  Éire is the Irish-language word for a country commonly called Ireland, more-formally the Republic of Ireland.  But Catholic bishops aren’t organised on a country basis.  In particular, the Irish Catholic bishops includes have people leading dioceses that cover two different countries, viz Ireland and Northern Ireland.  Eire, or even Éire, just doesn’t describe them.

Secondly, the article is in English.  It’s very odd to have one sentence that use an Irish-language word for Ireland, but not the Welch language word for Wales () or the Māori language word (Aotearoa) for New Zealand.   And I’m certain that if the author was writing in English and referring to certain countries in Europe, they would not be called Espana, Italia, Deutschland, etc

.

Language is powerful, and extremely political.  Colonial thinking isn't a good bit with Catholicism.