CV NEWS FEED // The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is set to gather this week for their Spring Plenary Assembly, where they will vote on, among other things, texts to be included in a new Liturgy of the Hours.
The vote will be a step towards completing the years-long retranslation project of the entire Liturgy of the Hours.
From June 12 to 14, the USCCB will meet in Louisville, Kentucky. The USCCB’s Committee on Divine Worship will present the action items on the liturgical texts to be voted on.
The Liturgy of the Hours, also referred to as the breviary, is a set of public prayers that all clergy and religious pray daily. Some lay Catholics also pray the Liturgy of the Hours as a part of their daily devotion.
In 2021, the online Catholic publication The Pillar interviewed Fr. Andrew Menke, then-executive director of the USCCB Office for Divine Worship, about the ongoing project to provide a retranslation of the Liturgy of the Hours, and the reasoning behind it.
Menke explained that after the Second Vatican Council, liturgical books were translated from Latin into English. The translations were completed over a short period of time, however, resulting in “somewhat loose” English translations.
“Around the year 2000, the Vatican decided that liturgical translations needed to be more accurate and precise, and that kicked off a wave of retranslation projects,” Fr. Menke said.
The Pillar noted that the USCCB has been voting on the new translations of the breviary in sections rather than all at once, after it is completed.
“Certainly the bishops could have decided they were going to wait until the whole thing is finished and then voted on the complete book,” Fr. Menke said. “But instead they’ve been voting it piece-by-piece as the translators finish different sections. That’s what the bishops did as the Roman Missal was retranslated as well.”
“One advantage to this system is that the translators get immediate feedback on their work and make adjustments as they go,” he added. “My sense is that at the end there will be an opportunity for the bishops to review everything, but we’ll see exactly how that will work out.”
After the bishops approve the full breviary, it will need to receive approval from the Vatican.
In November 2023, the Pillar highlighted in an article that the project is expected to be complete by June 2026.
Other topics that the USCCB will discuss during the Spring Assembly include the Synod on Synodality and the future of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).
As CatholicVote previously reported, the bishops also “plan to consult each other about possibly opening a cause for the beatification and canonization of Adele Brise, a 19th-century catechist who was the sole witness of a powerful Marian apparition.”
