Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Another glowing review of Praying the Mass

Here are a few excerpts from the latest review of Praying the Mass: The Prayers of the People, by Rev. Michael Cullinan in the April 2010 issue of The Sower.
Jeffrey Pinyan, an American layman, has written and published (privately, it would appear) an extremely good guide to the Mass, based on the forthcoming English translation. [...]

This is a work of liturgical, indeed mystagogical, catechesis, of the sort that is very much needed today. [...] Pinyan adopts a hermeneutic of continuity with tradition, citing works from the Douay Catechism of 1649 through Richard Challoner and Joseph Ratzinger to, most recent, a 2007 work by Thomas Kocik. [...]

[...] Pinyan goes slowly through the Mass in 12 chapters, from the fast before Mass to the mission we receive at the Dismissal.  Each chapter ends with ‘Questions for Reflection’ which are often thought provoking and do not simply lead back to the text for answers. [...] The text is attractive, easy to read, and remarkably free from typographical errors. [...]

A short review cannot do justice to all the things one can learn from this book. [...] Errors and omissions are hard to find [but their] extremely minor nature [...] only goes to show the quality of this work, which I am happy to commend warmly as an excellent and very widely useful piece of modern liturgical and catechetical writing.

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