There has been a delay in publishing our CTS Daily Missal, so we took some of your questions, which have arrived via blog comments, e-mails and telephone enquiries, and put them to our Missal Project Manager,  Pierpaolo Finaldi.

CTS Catholic Compass: The Daily Missal was originally scheduled for release earlier – what happened?

Pierpaolo Finaldi: As with all the Missals, from the Ritual editions to the Sunday Missals and now the Daily editions, all the publishers have been working against the clock, as we received the corrected texts from Rome much later than we had hoped; but I think they were well worth the wait. Even in today’s computerised design environment which allows us to work at speeds which Publishers of the past could only have dreamed of, we only really get one shot at formatting a book of this size and complexity, so we wanted to be sure that it was as good as we could possibly make it. In the end we felt that it was better to delay by a few weeks and give the book the close but time-consuming attention it deserved, so that the readers could enjoy a better publication over the years that they will own this Missal.

CTS Catholic Compass: Can you tell us what is involved in producing a book of this size, and how different is it from the Sunday Missal?

Pierpaolo Finaldi: A book of this size is always a question of finely balancing lots of competing demands. The book must contain everything, but be of a manageable size. The paper weight must be light in order for the book not to be too thick, but it must also be sufficiently opaque to be easily readable. Getting these things right has been a real challenge, and there’s always room for improvement.

The Sunday Missal is a comparatively simple book because the Sunday Liturgy allows the celebrant very little leeway in terms of the content of the Mass, therefore although there is a lot of text to set, the amount of cross-referencing and the options in terms of prefaces, prayers and readings are limited. In a Daily Missal, which contains both Sunday and Weekday Masses, there are many more options. Weekday Mass can be said using the Mass of the day or sometimes using prayers and/or readings from the Saint of the day, or a combination of the two. We wanted to cover the options as exhaustively as possible in a user-friendly way, while at the same time keeping the Missal to a manageable size.

CTS Catholic Compass: Can you go through some of the features of the Daily Missal?

Pierpaolo Finaldi: The CTS Daily Missal will be the only Missal which will contain the Sunday texts as well as the texts for weekday Mass, so it’s an extremely comprehensive volume. Added to that is the fact that all the texts from the Mass will be in both Latin and the new English translation.

We are looking at over 3000 pages of text which is 1000 pages longer than our Bible. It will have six ribbons, which I think users will appreciate, although since the placement of that many ribbons in a book is a manual process it does add a bit of time onto the production process.

The same artwork as was used in the Altar Missal will be present in the Daily Missal, and I hope that will be of real help to people in increasing the devotional value of this Missal.

CTS Catholic Compass: Is this the end of the Roman Missal project?

Pierpaolo Finaldi: Absolutely not; in fact it’s only the beginning. The improvements in the language and translation will certainly be rolled out across the all the different Rites of the Catholic Church, and we will respond to those with good quality, user-friendly resources as soon as we can.

You can pre-order your Daily Missal on the CTS website.

	CTS New Sunday Missal – White Presentation Edition - The CTS New Sunday and Daily Missals are a brand-new edition being published to coincide with the launch of the new English translation of the Mass (2011). This one is white leather, with gold page edges, in box an ideal present.
	CTS New Sunday Missal – Presentation Edition – New translation of the Mass with the current 3-year cycle of readings, for Sundays (and solemnities) Leather-covered hardback in a box.
	CTS New Daily Missal - The new translation of the Mass together with the current 3-year cycle of readings, for Sundays and all weekdays of the year.