Salt Lake City, USA - When Kristi Haas begins the second phase of an apprenticeship with the Catholic Church next fall, the 22-year-old Notre Dame grad student wants to help members of her Galveston, Texas, parish embrace the most significant changes to the church's liturgy in more than 40 years.
"It's not just about getting stuff in your mind, but getting stuff in your heart," Haas said. "That's our challenge as leaders: to facilitate that for people."
Haas is one of more than 2,400 Catholic leaders from 33 states, Canada, Guam and England attending the 49th Annual Southwest Liturgical Conference at the Salt Palace Convention Center. It's the first time Salt Lake City has hosted the conference since 1996, and it comes months before a historic moment for the church.
Parishes will begin using the third edition of the Roman Missal, the ritual text containing prayers and instructions for Mass, on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 27.
The English translation of the missal was introduced after the second Vatican Council concluded in 1965. The Catholic Church gave parishes permission to celebrate most of Mass from English translations of the Latin Roman Missal.
"We've had 40 years now to look at those and say, 'Well, there's certain things we did well and certain things we'd like to improve on,' " said Bishop John Wester, of the Salt Lake City Diocese. "A lot of the translations were not as faithful to the original Latin as they might have been or should have been."
To correct errors in vernacular of the original text, the Catholic Church published Liturgiam Authenticam in 2001, a document outlining the church's principles and rules for translation. Church leaders at the Vatican in Rome have used the document to update verbiage in the missal's English version for the past 10 years.
"This is not an overnight sort of thing," said Timothy Johnston, the Salt Lake director of the Office of Liturgy. "We've been working on this for a while. The people who have worked on this have done a great job."
Among the notable changes is the removal of the words, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again," from Eucharist prayer.
"That's not in the Latin text, so it will not be in the new English Missal," Johnston said. "So people will maybe notice ... maybe miss it."
Another change to the dialog of Mass will come after the Sign of the Cross when the priest says, "the Lord be with you." The congregation will now respond, "and with your spirit" instead of "and also with you."
"I think there's going to be concerns about people who violently reject this text for whatever reason, but there's also the hope that it will draw us more closely to Christ," Johnston said.
It's the biggest transition since the second Vatican Council, he added. Catholic Leaders were encouraged and taught how to help parishes through the transition during the conference.
"I do think that a lot of people haven't formed an opinion, but I'm guessing that for a lot of people, change is not easy and there may be some resistance," Bishop Wester said. "It's going to be hard to be honest, to remember; it's going to take a little adjustment."
The transition will be an opportunity for church leaders to encourage Catholics to explore Liturgy more deeply, Bishop Wester said. Which is important because the Liturgy is the source and summit of the Catholic life in Christ, said Bishop Gerald Kicanas.
"I hope we will see it as a moment to bring together the household of faith and to heal some of the division that exists," Bishop Kicanas said. "The introduction of the third Roman Missal could be an opportunity to shake us from our tiredness and shake us from our lack of confidence as a church."