Lost in Translation: The English Language and the Catholic Mass

In this book, Gerald O'Collins, SJ, takes a systematic look at the 2010 English translation of the Roman Missal and the ways it fails to achieve what the Second Vatican Council mandated: the full participation of priest and people. Critiquing the unsatisfactory principles prescribed by the Vatican instruction Liturgiam Authenticam (2001), this book, which includes a chapter by John Wilkins:

• tells the story of the maneuverings that sidelined the 1998 translation approved by eleven conferences of English-speaking bishops,
• criticizes the 2010 translation, and
• illustrates the clear superiority of the 1998 translation, the "Missal that never was"

Gerald O'Collins, SJ, (1931-2024), was an adjunct professor at Australian Catholic University and a research fellow at the University of Divinity in Melbourne. He taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for thirty-three years and was well known as a lecturer and broadcaster around the world. Fr. O'Collins has had hundreds of articles published in professional and popular journals and authored or co-authored sixty-seven books, including The Second Vatican Council: Message and Meaning (Liturgical Press, 2014).

John Wilkins edited the London-based international Catholic weekly The Tablet from 1982 until his retirement in 2003.