USCCB votes on text of the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition for

Dear Community,

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is set to gather on June 12-14 for their Spring Plenary Assembly, where they will vote on, among other things, the texts to be included in the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition.

Catholicvote.org published an article where the progress for the publication of the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition is summarized. They quote The Pillar interviewed with Fr. Andrew Menke from 2021 and a more recent interview, from November 2023 with Fr. Dustin Dought, the current Executive Director of the USCCB Office for Divine Worship.

Catholicvote.org reports that Fr. Dought said: “In May (of 2023), ICEL transmitted seven books to us of texts for Liturgy of the Hours, a total of 4,000 pages, English and Latin. These were texts that were not a part of the scope of work that the bishops established in 2012, but ICEL, in their assessment, felt that those needed to be updated so that they were consistent with the new translations.” USCCB “didn’t anticipate” that ICEL – [the international body actually doing the translation] – would send those texts, but “the committee believes that it’s good to have those texts, so that there will be greater consistency in the breviary.”

“For the most part those were updates, but the bishops still need to review those, have an opportunity to modify those, and then the full body of bishops will vote on those [4,000 pages] in June of 2024”.

On the other hand, “the revision of the New American Bible is ongoing. And so all of the non-Scriptural texts will have been approved, but it will remain for the revision of the NAB to be completed, and then for that translation to be approved by the whole body of bishops for liturgical use.”

“Our hope”, Fr. Dought said, “is that [the NAB] would be completed next fall (the fall of 2024), and that the whole body of bishops would vote on that liturgical text in November 2024.”

Asked to estimate a publishing date for the new 4 volume, Fr. Dought said: “So, my hope is that we will be able to send four volumes of the breviary to the Holy See in December of 2024. The dicastery normally takes 12 to 18 months in their review of texts.” Also publishers need some time to prepare, an estimated another six or eight months after the Vatican finishes. So, when asked about a new best case scenario for a publishing date, Fr. Dought estimated June 2026.

You can read the whole Catholicvote.org article here.

Details about the progress on each section of the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition and further updates can be found at USCCB website.

Sources:
Catholicvote.org
The Pillar interviewed with Fr. Andrew Menke from June 2021
The Pillar interviewed with Fr. Dustin Dought from November 2023