The editor of the Church of Ireland's new Book of Common Prayer (BCP), Canon Brian Mayne, has said a copy to be presented to General Synod next May for acceptance will be without errors.
He was responding to a query from The Irish Times, based on speculation by well-informed sources, that - as the 80,000 copies of the new BCP now being circulated carried an errata slip correcting three errors - the book was not as legislated for and approved by previous General Synods of the church and that its validity could be challenged.
A spokeswoman for the church also said such a challenge was unlikely, as it was the masterplan for the new book which had been approved by General Synod, and that had not been changed.
Work on the Book of Common Prayer has been underway since 1997. The original Book of Common Prayer was published in 1662. It was revised here on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1870, again in 1878, and again in 1926. An Alternative Prayer Book, using more contemporary language, was published by the Church of Ireland in 1984.
Canon Ricky Rountree, central liturgical officer of the Church of Ireland, said the discovery of the errors had been made just last week, when it was too late into the print-run to have copies corrected. However, he pointed out that, where the person in the pew was concerned, this omission was likely to make little practical difference and that a separate booklet for ordination services was being issued anyhow.
The errors were, he felt, an illustration of what could happen in modern editing where it was all too easy for lines or paragraphs to fall off the end of an on-screen page. A spokesman for Columba Press, which published the book, said the errors were "an awful misfortune", not least as the book was "a matter of enormous pride" to them.
Pew editions of the Book of Common Prayer cost €19.99.