A new English translation of the Order of Mass is the biggest church issue U.S. bishops will face when they meet June 15-17 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

Bishops will also be asked to approve a 10-year extension of the annual collection for retired religious and a plan to write a message to teenagers on stewardship, and a no-increase 2007 assessment on dioceses for support of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Before the bishops vote on the new translation of the Order of Mass, Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, England, president of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, is to address the bishops. The new translation was prepared by the commission, using new Vatican translation rules that call for liturgical translations to adhere more closely to the original Latin text than was done in the past.

If the new translation is adopted as proposed and subsequently approved by the Vatican, Catholics will have to learn a number of changes in their Mass prayers and responses. Among the more obvious will be:

---Whenever the priest says "The Lord be with you," the people will respond, "And with your spirit." The current response is "And also with you."
---In the first form of the penitential rite, the people will confess that "I have sinned greatly ... through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." In the current version, that part of the prayer is much shorter: "I have sinned through my own fault."
---The Nicene Creed will begin "I believe" instead of "We believe" --- a translation of the Latin text instead of the original Greek text.
---The Sanctus will start, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts." The current version says, "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might."

Approving a new text of the Order of Mass is only the first step in a long process of considering and approving a new translation of the entire book of prayers said at Mass. In the United States that book has been called the Sacramentary since 1970, but the Vatican wishes to restore the name Roman Missal, since it is an English translation, with minor adaptations, of the normative Latin "Missale Romanum."

Officials of the bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy told CNS that it is uncertain whether the bishops will seek to publish the new Order of Mass for U.S. use as soon as possible, or wait until they have the new English translation of the entire Roman Missal completed. Completing the entire Roman Missal is likely to take at least two more years.

Once the bishops adopt new liturgical texts, they must also be confirmed by the Vatican before they can be authorized for use.

In a recent letter Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, told Bishop William Skylstad, USCCB president, that if a current text does not conform to the new translation norms it must be changed.

"It is not acceptable to maintain that people have become accustomed to a certain translation for the past 30 or 40 years, and therefore that it is pastorally advisable to make no changes," he wrote. "The revised text should make the needed changes."

He said his congregation is open to dialogue about "difficulties regarding the translation of a particular text," but the 2001 instruction calling for translations more faithful to the Latin text "remains the guiding norm."

Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., chairman of the USCCB Committee on the Liturgy, said he sees Cardinal Arinze's letter as "a clarification and further restatement of criteria for translation previously authored by the congregation." He said it "offers additional input for the deliberation of the bishops."

The first day of the meeting and a small portion of the morning session on the second day will be open to media and observers. The remainder of the meeting will be held in executive session, out of public view.

In a straw poll in 2004 on various questions about the content and flow of their meetings, the bishops expressed a strong desire to devote less time to debating and voting on statements, documents and policies during their national meetings. They wanted to spend more time in reflection or discussion among themselves, outside a debate-and-vote format, about various issues facing them as bishops or facing the U.S. church today.

Part of the private meeting in June will be devoted to discussion of the new evangelization, a term often used by Pope John Paul II to express the church's response to new challenges in spreading God's word today, including the need to re-evangelize those who have been baptized but have not been formed in the faith or have drifted away from the church.

They will discuss --- but not vote on --- plans for a major restructuring of the way the USCCB operates. The main focus of the discussion in June will be a reconfiguring of USCCB committees, with a major reduction in their number.

The meeting will give Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who just arrived in February as apostolic nuncio to the United States, his first opportunity to address the entire U.S. hierarchy.

The bishops will hear oral reports from Catholic Relief Services, their Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Politicians, and their Hurricane Task Force.

A reconfiguration of committees is to be followed by national staff changes as part of an effort by the bishops to curb expenses and limit the number of national projects and activities they undertake as a conference. The bishops want their national offices to be more focused on limited projects and priorities mandated by the Vatican or the bishops themselves.

---CNS