Screenshot of the home page of the new USCCB translations website, www.usccb.org/romanmissal

More significant news on the liturgical front: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a website about the new English translations of the Roman Missal.

Go here to access the website and the resources it provides to assist with the revised translations, which are intended to make the English Mass prayers more faithful to the meaning of the original Latin prayers contained in the Roman Missal.

As Catholic News Service reports in this article about the new website, it “has background material on the process of development of liturgical texts, sample texts from the missal, a glossary of terms and answers to frequently asked questions.”

The long-delayed implementation of the new Mass translations appeared to hit yet another pothole at the U.S. bishops’ spring meeting in June in San Antonio. At the meeting, the revised translations of four liturgical texts — prefaces for the Mass for various occasions; votive Masses and Masses for the dead; solemn blessings for the end of Mass; and prayers over the people and Eucharistic prayers for occasions such as evangelization or ordinations — did not obtain the required support of two-thirds of all American bishops.

But the U.S. bishops’ conference announced last month that a mail-in ballot among the bishops had garnered the necessary support for the four liturgical texts, which now go to the Vatican for final approval.

What’s the current timeline for implementing the new translations in the United States? According to CNS:

In the fall the bishops will consider the Proper of the Saints Gray Book, the commons Gray Book, U.S. propers for the Roman Missal, U.S. adaptations for the Roman Missal and the Roman Missal supplement Gray Book. Gray Books are revised translations proposed to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy.

Last November during the bishops’ fall general meeting, Bishop Serratelli said that, with the time needed for publishers to produce the new edition of the missal and for Catholics to receive proper catechesis about the changes in the Mass, the use of the new missal is not expected before Advent of 2012.