Chalice, Not Cup

All the local clergy have accepted with alacrity, or in some cases resigned themselves to using, the new translation; one, however, still has "issues" with "them big words" – and, to the irritation of yours truly (a self-confessed pedant), insists on saying "cup" not "chalice" in the Eucharistic Prayer. (He was not best pleased when I coughed significantly at this mistake...)  Other words, too, seem beyond him or at least repugnant: "oblation" becomes "offering", "clergy" morphs into something along the lines of "those who minister to your Gospel" (not that that is quite grammatical in itself).

One wonders why a priest would avoid the word "clergy" – self-hatred? unmanly desire to approximate his priesthood to the good works of some religious sister? – but so it is, at least in E.P. II, since in E.P. III he appears comfortable with it.  So many shibboleths!  Yet why worry over such words, when he is seemingly happy to pray that "we may merit to be co-heirs to eternal life" and other such learnèd phrases?  (To be fair, I quite understand when the words "In a similar way" are omitted, since this phrase sounds lame in English, despite being a logical rendering of Simili modo.)

The other little passage that troubles Father refers to "my sacrifice and yours", and I recall that he usually made up his own version of it, the Orate fratres, even when the old translation was still around... defective theological training must be to blame: he did attend the Melbourne seminary in the bad old days before daily Mass was re-introduced (yes! believe it or not!) and the teachers still taught that the real presence ceased when Mass ended (a military chaplain, one Fr Paul, told some years back of how, as a seminarian then, he complained to the Rector about such teaching – and was forced to apologise to his lecturer for daring to doubt him).  The nasty ICEL paraphrase of old, and the errors spread throughout the seventies and eighties, still have potency...