This morning’s Washington Post has a story on the new translation.
As many know, I’m not exactly an enthusiast with regard to the new translation, but his article’s attempt at a critical perspective on the changes struck me as somewhat lame (as the Post‘s coverage of the Church often is). It is as if the reported didn’t quite understand the issues involved, and so cast the whole matter in terms of the rather tired tropes of the conservative Pope reigning in the liberal modernity that Vatican II called for. The mention of the Pope’s “declining. . . to pray with Hindus, Jews and others at an interreligious event” is not only a red herring, but makes it sound as if Benedict boycotted the Assissi gathering, rather than being the one who called it. The statement that “the thinking that came out of Vatican II was that the Mass script should be contemporary and paraphrased” gets so many things wrong that I don’t know where to begin.
The article translates everything into the categories of secular politics, maybe because Church politics are just too bizarre and byzantine for someone outside the Church to grasp.
I do however concur heartily with the last statement in the article: “‘There are other things more important to focus on,’ said the Rev. Gerry Creedon of Holy Family in Dale City, ‘like drone bombings.’”
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