Eugene Kennedy on "New" Catholic Liturgical Translations: Beading and Feathering the Audience

Eugene Kennedy's take on the "new" Catholic liturgical translations: as Rome burns to the ground, it's doing some mighty fine diversionary fiddling.
Kennedy writes:

An old vaudeville song suggests that when the performers lack any substantial material they should "bead and feather" the audience, that is, divert them with clamor and tricks so that they won't notice the show's lack of content. Our pastor here in Naples, Fla., did just that in a pre-Mass pep talk in which he stressed -- and nobody could make this up -- the burden, far greater than that borne by the parishioners, that the changes have placed on the shoulders of priests.  

"It only affects 14 percent of what you say," he insisted, downing a self-pity pill, "but 98 percent of what the priest says."

And Kennedy thinks that the diversionary fiddling is not lost on what he calls "practiced Catholics," who have long since learned to sift a considerable amount of hierachy-imposed chaff out of the wheat of their spiritual lives.