Q. The second edition of the English missal includes the following rubric: “In all Masses, the priest may say the Eucharistic Prayer in an audible voice. In sung Masses he may sing those parts of the Eucharistic Prayer which may be sung in concelebrated Masses,” followed by some other rubrics. In the third edition of the Missal in English (2011), the rubric changes slightly and the first sentence disappears completely
When I went to look at the Latin typical ed, I cannot find any rubric that corresponds to, “In all Masses, the priest may say the Eucharistic Prayer in an audible voice,” which means is need not be said audibly. So I am trying to figure out the origin of that rubric.Second, when I look at the GIRM, both the 1970 version of the GIRM and the 2002 version both seem to contradict this. Both are clear that a) “Among the parts assigned to the priest, the eucharistic prayer has precedence; it is the high point of the celebration” (par 11 in 1970; par 30 in 2002) and b) “the presidential prayers should be spoken in a loud and clear voice so that everyone present can hear and pay attention. Wile the priest is speaking, there should be no other prayer or song, and the organ and other musical instruments should be silent” (par 12 in 1970; par 32 in 2002). Thus, does the second English ed of the missal contradict this?
A. The rubric that says the priest “may say the Eucharistic Prayer in an audible voice” appears in the English translation of the first and second editions of the Sacramentary – in the United States. The 1974 publication of the missal for Australia and New Zealand, for example, does not carry that rubric. I’ve checked translations in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. None of them carries that rubric.
It does, however, appear in the Jesuit Sacramentary published in St. Louis in 2001, which probably carried over the rubric from the US Sacramentary.
I do not have the first Latin edition of the Roman Missal (1969). That would be the logical place to look for an original. The rubric does appear in the 1970 publication of the Order of Mass from Catholic Book Publishing Co. in New York. That would be the earliest English translation of the Latin, as far as I know.
The priest does not have the option of saying the eucharistic prayer inaudibly.