Watch for it...

The forces that want to stop the now-unstoppable forward motion of liturgical reform are in a panic. They have resorted to a hearsay "populism" (most people think...nobody wants...etc...etc..) to try and stop the movement now that the new translation is assuredly on its way and at least a tentative date has been given for the day when all parishes will begin using it.

The efforts have been targeted at the Bishops for the last several years. Now that has failed, and the final front in this lost war is with the Catholic faithful themselves...convincing them that they don't want a new translation which they know nothing about except what the opponents tell them. We will see polls about the lack of support for it. We will see polls about people's satisfaction with the current translation (who wouldn't be "satisfied" with a translation they've used for 40 years?). The effort will be made to appeal to the same principle as was demonstrated in Summorum Pontificum, where those who prefer the 1962 Missal are allowed to freely use the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. The cry will go out to allow the use of the old translation for those who are "attached" to it. Mark my words.

Our love of democracy runs deep in the United States, and one of the conflicts increasingly presented to American Catholics is the necessary realization that democracy has no place in faith, at least not in this way. We cannot "vote" on what is right, and it is not our "right as Catholics" to have a voice in forming Church doctrine. The Bishop, or Pastor or Priest that continues to appeal to "what the people want", whether it's about the new translation or any other facet of reform for that matter, will eventually find themselves trapped in a hole from which there is no escape... a hole that leads them, and their faithful, further and further away.