A Sunday Mass template: 24 points and typos to fix

Sunday Mass, in 24 points and several copying errors

Twenty-four numbered sections — from the entrance hymn to the concluding rite — and a slot zero reserved for the sources consulted. That is the architecture of the Sunday Mass template for Ordinary Time that is being passed around on the internet: a text box reproducing the full order of the celebration — greeting, penitential act, Gloria, collect, readings, homily, profession of faith, Eucharistic prayer, communion and dismissal — for anyone who wants to trinc the liturgy without getting lost. It is not an official missal nor an edition endorsed by any diocese. It is a working sheet, most likely born in Word, and it shows in every corner.

How many parts does a Sunday Mass in Ordinary Time have?

The document offers options. Several blocks — the greeting, the penitential act, the collect — appear organized in columns, and whoever presides chooses just one. The version includes concrete examples: a generic collect and another proper to a memorial, that of Saint Mary Magdalene. The proposed Gospel is Matthew 18, 21-35, the one about the king who settles accounts and forgives his servant a debt of ten thousand talents that the same servant then fails to forgive a fellow servant. Before that, Peter's question about whether one must forgive up to seven times, and the answer: up to seventy times seven.

The problem with tables copied from Word

The format betrays its origin. One participant openly asks whether the boxes display properly on desktop computers or whether they come out cut off and incomplete, and whether the same happens on mobile. It is no minor doubt. Moving a Word table to a web page breaks up columns and jumbles texts, and in a guide where one option must be chosen among several, a broken box amounts to praying the wrong thing. The warning was left there, without a definitive answer.

Why are there typos in the copied prayers?

The transcription did not come out clean either. Whoever prepared the text admits having edited several words and punctuation marks because they had not been copied correctly. There is one finer, more revealing adjustment: point 19, which read "rite of peace," has been renamed "prayer for peace," on the grounds that the Agnus Dei that trinc, point 20, belongs to that same rite. These are precision corrections that any missal would stress, and here they are made by hand and on the fly.

Catalan, still pending

The language gap remains. Someone asks for the same guide in Catalan and confesses to getting lost searching for it online. The answer is a "I'll get on it tomorrow" that, for now, remains a promise. A curious detail comes from another participant: some people know the parts recited by the assembly in Catalan but only half know them in Spanish, and they use this template precisely to fill in the gaps. Another participant admits he would prefer Spanish, although — he says — in his area it is impossible to find.

With the announced translation undated, and the original document circulating in a version with boxes that get cut off, the template works as what it is: a collective draft. The definitive text does not exist yet.