I offer two quotations from things I read/heard this morning. The first is from Christopher Page’s massive, erudite, fascinating The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years (Yale 2010). Speaking of the period beginning in the late 6th century, when Romance vernaculars were beginning to develop from Latin and various Germanic languages were still without a written form, he notes:
Until the eighth century, the Frankish tongue was banished to the exile where languages that the Romans judged too coarse for grooming with the alphabet lay unwritten, while the Gothic version of Scriptures composed in the fourth century was a resolutely literal rendition of Greek into a Gothic corresponding to nobody’s speech in either Italy or Spain.
The phrase “a resolutely literal rendition…corresponding to nobody’s speech” came to mind later at Mass during the prayer over the gifts. In case you do not have it committed to memory:
Receive, O Lord, the sacrifice of conciliation and praise
and grant that, cleansed by its action,
we may make offering of a heart pleasing to you.
Through Christ our lord.Súscipe, Dómine, sacrifícium placatiónis et laudis,
et praesta, ut, huius operatióne mundáti,
beneplácitum tibi nostrae mentis offerámus afféctum.
Per Christum.
OK, I’m not sure it really is “resolutely literal,” but it clearly does not correspond to anybody’s speech. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “conciliation” (and I’m a theologian) and has anyone ever claimed to “make offering of a heart”? But my main point to not to complain once again about a particularly clunky prayer, but to think about the cultural conditions that might produce such ugly prose.
As Page tells the story, the early Medieval period was one in which the increasingly few literate folks were convinced that truth, beauty, and clarity could not be found in the emerging vernaculars or barbaric Germanic languages and so Latin must be maintained uncorrupted at all costs, and what vernacular concessions might be made must conform as closely as possible to their classical source material, even at the cost of intelligibility. Scholars like Cassiodorus, to whom we owe a tremendous debt for preserving classical literature and transmitting the skills needed to read it, simply did not care about whether the vast majority of Christians could comprehend the liturgy. He thought, rightly or wrongly, that the loss of the classical heritage was a greater risk than the alienation of the uneducated laity from the scriptures and the liturgy.
I wonder if those who are advocating a return to a Latin liturgy or at least vernacular translations that are so resolutely literal that they correspond to nobody’s speech might, like Cassiodorus, feel that in our present moment the loss of our Catholic heritage is a greater risk than the alienation of the average lay person from the liturgy. (I should note that Page’s chapter from which the above quotation is taken is titled, “”Schooling to Silence the Layman’s Voice”). Certainly many of those who advocate a reform of the reform or a wide implementation of Summorum Pontificum seem to have a jaundiced view of current western culture and often express a need to pull up the drawbridge or circle the wagons (or whatever your favorite metaphor is), and the language of the liturgy seems to be a pretty good way of doing this.
I myself tend to be something of a cultural pessimist, but it seems to me that loss of our Catholic heritage and the alienation of the average lay person from the liturgy are equally undesirable scenarios and perhaps pose a false choice. I certainly hope they are. In the midst of my pessimism I certainly hope that we can preserve our Catholic tradition while speaking a language that people actually speak.
It seems to me that a lot of hymns correspond to nobody’s speech. In fact, most poetry corresponds to nobody’s speech. Should these be banned from the liturgy because they do not speak the ordinary language of the people?
I would suggest that it is the opposite, that ordinary banal language in the liturgy alienates people.
@Victor Wowczuk:
+1
@Victor Wowczuk:
Except those hymns differ from everyday speech in a significantly different way than our Missal prayers do. Beautiful, high quality old hymn texts are some distance from everyday speech, but they have an appealing inner consistency that draws one in. It is a language that one can assimilate, and wants to assimilate if one has an aesthetic sense for this other, beautiful world from which they come.
The missal prayers, by way of contrast, are just bad. They are ugly, inconsistent, awkward, confusing, puzzling. And their badness comes in so many different forms and types and genres that one never gets a sense for what the language of this other world might be so that one can befriend it.
It is incorrect to say that “hymns correspond to nobody’s speech.” They correspond to the learned speech of those who come to love them.
That will never happen with our missal prayers. The missal prayers are not ordinary speech… but in a sense, they’re really not any speech at all.
awr
I believe that prayers like the Collect are not poetry but direct address prose. Though they can be chanted, they are not “hymns”. The Gloria is poetry and a hymn and reflects it in its translation, but the Mass propers are different. Would you argue that the Vulgate, the “ordinary” language of St Jerome, alienates people? He was asked to provide the translation in order to make the Word accessible. Research the scriptures in their original languages and you will see that God spoke to us in ordinary language. Banal is up to the listener.
And isn’t the literal translation of mentis “mind” not “heart”? Why does this get translated for its meaning rather than literally? Does LA only apply selectively?
Hymns may be different from everyday speech now but they weren’t when they were written. You only have to look at literature stretching back over the past few hundred years to see that everyday discourse is significantly different from how it is now.
I remember the late and great Dr Erik Routley talking about the vexed question of whether or not to update hymn texts to eliminate archaisms such as thee and thou and to incorporate inclusive language. He said, “When you sing a hymn text from a former age, it is good for you to be there, on the author’s terms.”
The trifold problem with the language of the Missal is that
(a) it is not English that anyone speaks (or, sometimes, understands), nor has ever spoken;
(b) it attempts to reproduce the feel of a bygone age which is not ours (and fails miserably in that attempt); and
(c) it was known well in advance of the official promulgation of the text that (a) and (b) would be insurmountable problems and interfere with people’s prayer, and yet the authors persisted anyway. That is deliberate malice, and it is unforgiveable.
@Paul Inwood:
Well, we know the history. “Liturgiam Authenticam” 27 commands abominations (a) and (b), with appeal to no authority besides what was in the head of Cardinal Medina and his advisors. Our bishops (with some exceptions) then meekly acquiesced in this serious alteration of liturgical spirituality, ordered by somebody who wasn’t the bishop of anybody.
About the unforgivability of all this:
1. I don’t think the new missal translation is the sin against the Holy Spirit, which I’m told is the only literally unforgivable act. (Would “inexcusable” have been a better word?)
2. It’s an injury done to me, but I’d judge it closer to a 100-denarius injury than to a 10,000-talent injury.
3. When I say the Our Father at Mass after exposure to these frightfully worded prayers, I have an immediate subject for “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”!
@Paul R. Schwankl:
You may be right, and “inexcusable” may be a better word.
But as far as the sin against the Holy Spirit is concerned, when people tell me that they have stopped going to church because of the new translation, or that they still go but their prayer lives have been wrecked, when even priests tell me that they are no longer able to pray the Mass and even that they become angry at texts while they are presiding, then I do wonder whether indeed such a sin has been committed. Whatever the case, deliberate malice there certainly has been on the part of the perpetrators of the text.
@Paul Inwood:
Paul
That of course was also true of the prior translation.
It is not only that the Missal language misses its aims of communication, leaving congregations at a loss, but also that its inappropriate vocabulary actively distracts. The banality arises in part from the links suggested by its many obscure terms: in the UK, conciliation associates with resolution of disputes in industry (eg ACAS, the Advisory *Conciliation* and Arbitration service) while the admittance kindly sought to the kingdom conjures up metal doors labelled *No Admittance* protecting electrical switch gear and the like in engineering contexts.
Get over it already!
Stop insulting the wonderful work that went into the MR3 translation. PLEASE!
You all have to know that it won’t be retranslated any time soon.
I don’t know if you complainers know how much damage you do to the Church!
@Agman Austerhauser:
While there are some things I prefer in the current translation to the previous one (“And with your spirit” and “Lord God of hosts”—though I would have preferred “Lord God Sabaoth”), I would be hard put to describe the entire thing as “wonderful.” Could you perhaps say a few things about what strikes you as wonderful about it?
Also, if the Church is to ever have a better translation (and no matter what one thinks of this translation, surely even a wonderful translation can be made better) how can this happen unless people point out specific weaknesses and make suggestion for specific improvements? Does this damage the Church any more than people who criticized the previous translation?
@Agman Austerhauser:
You all have to know that it won’t be retranslated any time soon.
Actually it is already being retranslated. I long ago lost count of the number of priests I have encountered who constantly make pastoral adaptations to the text. Some even go as far as to write large numbers of corrections into their altar missals.
But even priests who claim they are sticking to the text exactly as it stands in fact are routinely making small tweaks without being aware that they are doing this. Often these will be the addition of small words that help the flow. I am sure that some reading these lines will say that this simply does not happen, as do those same priests when they are asked about it. I suggest to you that you follow the printed text at Mass carefully to see just how often a priest will unconsciously deviate from or misread what is in front of his eyes. There may only be one extra “and” or “the”, but it is still an adaptation.
The fact that priests consider it necessary to make changes, especially major ones, must give us pause for thought. I would rather have a text which is generally acceptable and which everyone uses than the possibility of a kind of anarchy as each priest makes his own adaptations to an unsatisfactory text.
How are we damaging the Church? We are doing what theologians have done for centuries — critically examine the documents and activities of the Church’s members, especially the magisterium.
+1 to Father Anthony Ruff in comment #4. Masterfully and splendidly said. Thank you.
Might part of the problem the that perhaps the original Latin was not all that good? I don’t know Latin, but just wondering.
Basically, modern man has intentionally so deformed his own ability to learn, read, and digest words,that for some, the new translations are not speech at all.
Meanwhile, my seven year old, of average intelligence, son seems to be able to understand and digest those same prayers.
So, when he asked what conciliation meant, I suggested he look it up in the dictionary at home. He did! And wonder of wonders, he now knows a new word, and it even gave him the opportunity to once again review the prayer!
Wow, it must have been hard and taxing for him! I will ask him if his brain hurts when I get home tonight.
@Todd Orbitz:
My issue is not the vocabulary (though “conciliation” did raise an eyebrow for me–why would one use such a word?) but the clunkiness and lack of elegance of the prose. One would think that the translators had the rhythmic equivalent of tone-deafness (in the technical sense).
And, because I know some people are curious, here’s the 1998 translation:
Accept, O Lord,
this sacrifice of reconciliation and praise,
that its working may cleanse us from sin
and make our hearts a gift pleasing to you.
Grant this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The nurse who took my vitals last Thursday complained that she had to keep looking up words on her Kindle (which makes it possible to look them up easily). She was reading an early 20th Century translation into English of a French novel. (She is not a dummy; she’s currently reading something I recommended). My point being that even what people speak doesn’t stay that way. As Paul Inwood said.
For me it just demonstrates what can happen when the liturgy is turned into a weapon by those with more partisanship than education.
@Fritz Bauerschmidt
I appreciate your proposal of putting forth the 1998 text. Therefore, I will quote that and the above approved translation before I comment further.
1998 Text
Accept, O Lord,
this sacrifice of reconciliation and praise,
that its working may cleanse us from sin
and make our hearts a gift pleasing to you.
Grant this through Jesus Christ our Lord
Current Text
Receive, O Lord, the sacrifice of conciliation and praise
and grant that, cleansed by its action,
we may make offering of a heart pleasing to you.
Through Christ our lord.
First, I appreciate the description of “sacrifice of conciliation” because it specifically calls to mind that of a propitiatory sacrifice implied in the use of “placatiónis” in the original prayer. I do not think “reconciliation” really captures that aspect in the same way.
Second, referring to we are “cleansed by its action” specifically refers to the efficiency and effectiveness of the Sacrament, in a way that “may cleanse us from sin does not”. Specifically, the Sacrament does cleanse those who are able to be cleansed… it’s not a “may”. It does, and it is efficient.
Third with respect to “a heart” vs. “our hearts”, I find it reflective of the corporate theology of the Church, within it, one finds only one beating heart. Specifically though, the association of affectum with that of heart, has much precedence in not only the Fathers, but also the medievalists, and the more recent theology of the 19th century. They could have used corde, but they didn’t.
@Todd Orbitz:
1) My knowledge of Latin is basically scholastic and does not extend to the subtleties of liturgical Latin, but the first entry in Lewis and Short for placare is “to reconcile,” so I don’t see why “conciliation” would be better than “reconciliation,” unless one was convinced that it is important to convey the idea that the Eucharistic sacrifice turns away God’s anger. But why would that be important, given that theologians ranging from Augustine, to Anselm, to Aquinas, to Julian of Norwich have said that talk of divine “anger” is at best a metaphor (and one that the Latin in no way requires)?
2) You seem to have missed the phrase “its working” in the 1998 prayer, which seems like a pretty accurate translation of operatióne, as when we translate ex opere operato as “by the work worked.” I don’t see how the current prayer conveys the notion of sacramental efficacy better than 1998.
3) On this one, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. Pretty clearly neither translation is very literal on this count, and for good reason: “affection of our minds” would sound very strange. My issue is with the odd English “we may make offering of” for offeramus. For the life of me, I can’t see any reason why one would not translate it “we [may] offer.” Frankly, “make offering of” sounds like something said by someone for whom English is not a first language (and whose first language doesn’t use articles).
Lest we be led to think that we moved from some translation Paradise to this purgatory of dull literalism l(and I agree in this case) et us recall the translation in the previous missal:
LORD, receive our offering,
and may this sacrifice of
praise purify us in mind and
heart and make us always
eager to serve you.
Easy to say but resonant of not very much and as blandly like every other day, which at least both 1998 and the current version attempt to correct. As far as the second part of the prayer is concerned (from “praesta” onwards) it is translated in the Layman’s missal I received from my father for my first communion back in 1967 thus:
“and grant that, made clean by its power, we may be able to please you by the offering of our love”
Non-official of course but better than anything above I reckon. (the reason for not offering the whole is that I found the prayer as part of Offertory for Saturday after Ash Wednesday where the first Suscipe part is different in the Latin – perhaps someone better at research can find the right day for the beginning bit – or maybe be it is one of those changed prayers. For the record that prayer began: “Suscipe, Domine, sacrificium, cujus te voluisti dignanter immolatione placari: …etc. Translated as “may the sacrifice you have ordained as a worthy peace-offering be acceptable, Lord …”
There is a line in “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” that goes, “This holy tide of Christmas all others will replace.” I did a double take — were we really happily singing that OTHER activities were replacing Christmas? I didn’t think of that as a happy outcome of the Incarnation.
Ah, those pesky direct object placements!
@Ann Riggs
@John Henley
This holy tide of Christmas all others doth deface
does seem to be the original and I have always heard it. However, the Methodists have tried to improve it:
This holy tide of Christmas all anger will efface
The Methodists have a good idea there, though I think it is right politely to ask for the 1998 translation of the Missal to be introduced.
I’ve never heard all others will replace. I was brought up on all other doth efface, ‘efface’ apparently replacing the ‘deface’ of earlier versions, when deface, like efface, meant outshine.
While I dislike this translation intensely, and as British speaker of English feel insulted that our language has been so mangled, I am quite content to let it stand as a monument to clerical arrogance and abysmal scholarship.
At the risk of going on too much about this, I’d like to return to what I said in #5:
it was known well in advance of the official promulgation of the text that (a) [unEnglishness] and (b) [unsuccessful evocation of a bygone idiom] would be insurmountable problems and interfere with people’s prayer, and yet the authors persisted anyway. That is deliberate malice, and it is unforgiveable.
They knew in advance that it would cause problems but the perpetrators went ahead anyway. That is deliberate malice. Stage 1 of the sin.
Even though the perpetrators may be too ignorant to realise that what they have produced is not English as anyone knows it, they certainly know now that the predicted problems have indeed come to pass. If nowhere else, they have been able to read about it on this blog over the past seven years.
They could therefore change/amend/correct what is manifestly a defective text. They could decide to withdraw it altogether in favour of a better one. But they do not do either of those things. Apparently they do not care. (Some have even accused them of gloating.) Stage 2 of the sin.
At the very least, all of this is compounding the deliberate malice by making it ongoing. Ongoing, deliberate, sustained malice. It is this which is without a doubt a serious, continuous sin.
To return to Deacon Fritz’s point about Page, Cassiodorus and those that might “feel that in our present moment the loss of our Catholic heritage is a greater risk than the alienation of the average lay person from the liturgy, ” I suggest substituting “Gospel” for “liturgy” and ask if the stakes remain the same.
After all, is not the liturgy an encounter with Christ and the realization of the Gospel in world? If recourse to traditional “classical” language and forms serves that, fine. The difference between our time and that of Cassiodorus is that today the vast majority of Christians, and those we might wish to share in the Gospel, are on some level educated and literate and have access to phenomenally better means of communication. That means the Gospel message does not have to be cryogenically preserved in Latin and opaque prayers and rituals so a remnant clergy may pass it safely beyond unwashed savages to some era in the future. Vatican II was based largely on the idea that “the average layperson” of today is capable of fully appropriating the Gospel and membership in the church themselves, understanding and sharing in evangelization, and can (and must) do that in their own language, according to their own cultural realities.
What is Catholic Heritage? The collects etc. of the Hadrianum, or conversion of heart and love of neighbor? Does the former serve the latter today? How is this Roman Missal forming the church as Christ in the modern world?
I would suggest that less than careful use of our classical liturgical heritage is precisely what will cause alienation of Christians from the church and the church from the world.
Another twist: It really should be (and sometimes is still correctly printed as): “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” “You” is the object of the verb “rest,” but “ye” is a nominative form. “Rest you merry” means something like “keep you in a state of merriness.” Further evidence that what was once colloquial language does not always stay that way!
Looking at 1998 and 2011 side by side, a first glance suggests two comparative weakness of the ’98 version.
1) instead of a two-fold agency in the Latin original (the sacrifice cleanses and then, cleansed, we offer), the ’98 version ascribes all agency to the sacrifice. I remember an earlier thread in which someone objected to the presence of “merit” in the 2011 version, thinking he/she was identifying a defect of translation when in fact the supposed defect lay at the feet of the Latin prayer. People really do absorb (and rightly so) a theology (here, of grace and free will/cooperation) from our orations, and while botching one prayer won’t necessarily leaven the whole lump, sloppiness of this sort for the supposed sake of smoothness certainly obscures what the Roman theology really is.
2) gift vs. offering. It’s true, that “we may offer” is both most accurate and efficient, but if we’re going to go the route of circumlocution, an offering more directly links the sacrifices of “heart” and sacrament, which ought ultimately to be fused into the same victim. A gift could be sacrificial, but in Roman thought an offering much more clearly is.
At the end of the day, though, regardless of these criticisms I don’t find either specimen particularly beautiful OR clunky. That very well may be because I have experience using a hand missal, and in my own experience while the 20th century translators also took dynamic liberties within phrases they did fairly often follow the structure of interlocking clauses found in the original Latin. Thus, for folks conversant with the hand missal tradition, there is little foreign about the 2011 style. The obvious counterargument is that the vast majority of American Catholics know (or at least remember) only the Dick-and-Jane ICEL, but that still doesn’t mean 2011’s style came out of the blue.
“It is already being retranslated”
Ad-lib softening or “retranslating” of the Roman Missal is not good. This is illicit and schismatic. And sinful. This should be clearly understood by every ordained minister, and they should be clearly teaching this to any layperson who would argue for it.
How is this incessant line of thought [that this missal is defective] damaging the Church?
Because laypeople are given free reign to characterize this new missal as “a manifestly defective text”, one promulgated in a spirit of “deliberate, ongoing, unforgivable malice” when ordained ministers choose to publicly call the missal prayers ” just bad… ugly, inconsistent, awkward, confusing, puzzling.” These laypeople, especially if they are liturgical ministers of some sort, exert enormous influence over how other Catholics view the mass. Someone who blogs about how defective the new translation is for “seven years” is not doing good.
Surely everyone realizes that we are now past the very lowest point of the post-vatican II period, in terms of the vernacular liturgy. The new english translation is driving us away from the many, very serious liturgical abuses forced on the faithful since the 1960s. I am not saying that the former abuses were to be FOUND in the older missals. I am saying that the loose translations, with their “dynamic equivalence”
encouraged all sorts of other, more insidious “dynamic interpretations” of the mass.
There are no options for English-speaking Catholics but to accept the missal. It is time to turn the page and suck it up.
Peace,
Agman
— Save your parish’s money: Sing the Propers for every Mass —
A similar oddity, which corresponds to nobody’s speech
“We have received, O Lord, the Sacrament of Unity;
grant us, we pray,
that, living in your house in holy accord,
we may possess the peace we hand on
and preserve the peace we have received.
Through Christ our Lord.
15. For Promoting Harmony
I was going to take advantage of the teaching moment that Agman’s posts here have presented to us, but it is not Agman who needs to be convinced: it’s the boys in Rome who need to be convinced, and the convincers could be us but more realistically those bishops who have been appointed, advanced, or been shown signs of respect by the new sheriff.
I don’t understand how turning a blind eye to this text and the process by which it was delivered serves anybody’s cause.
Its the bad fruit of a bad tree.
Alan,
My point is that we need to change those things that we are able to, accept those things we cannot change, and know the difference between the two.
If we don’t like the way a Mass prayer feels, we need to have the serenity to accept it and move on. There are far, FAR worse things that some bishops (and priests) get away with unchecked than this new missal, which is actually pretty good.
“corresponding to nobody’s speech” is prettymuch not a big deal. Nobody consecrates bread and wine in normal everyday speech. Nobody invites people to “pray that my sacrifice and yours be acceptable to God” in normal speech.
If priests are having a hard time reading the prayers of the missal, I would encourage them to rehearse the material they find confusing. Make it sound good, and move on.
Peace,
Agman
— Save your parish’s money: Sing the Propers for every Mass —
@Agman Austerhauser:
I should think it possible to both offer critique of our current translation and still cultivate a sense of detachment that allows us to keep joyfully celebrating our liturgy. Unless one thinks that we have a translation that is beyond improvement, we ought to anticipate (or at least hope) that it will one day be improved. But how could it ever be improved unless people point out its deficiencies.
With the previous translation there were plenty of people who talked a lot about its deficiencies, ranging from the CREDO folks to Fr. Z’s WDTPRS to (in my estimation) more sober voices like Eamon Duffy and Fergus Kerr who wrote on the flaws in the orations of the Mass.
I would also point out that there is a difference between the way in which “this is my body” is odd and “we may make offering of a heart” is odd. The first is saying something odd, whereas the second is saying something oddly. Certainly saying something in an odd way might sometimes convey the oddness of what is being said, but sometimes it doesn’t. One of my worries is that if we confuse saying something odd with saying something oddly, we end up confusing mystery with mystification.
@Fritz Bauerschmidt:
Mystery vs mystification is my point too. That and the sheer ham-fisted ugliness of it. Where is the gain in worshipping in what to my ears sounds too often like a trash collector trying to ape the language of a prince?
Its like liturgical My Fair Lady, but in reverse.
@Alan Johnson:
That’s exactly it. The artificial obsequousness that we don’t take seriously. We are given the language of uneducated flunkeys. With the emphasis on uneducated.
I believe that those of us who are happiest with liturgical reforms need to remember how angry those of a more traditionalist bent were with the role of Abp. Bugnini. They accused him and Paul VI of creating a new liturgy which represented discontinuity with the TLM. This was an anger which was on simmer for years until it came to a boil during the waning years of Pope John Paul II. By that time they were in charge and determined to undermine the work of “liturgical reformers” through a coup which overthrew the established principles of translation and its advocates through the notorious Liturgicam Authenticae. It took them years to wear down the remaining bishops who received their miters from Paul VI before promulgating the 2010 transliteration which continues to generate discussions like this one. So we have a missal put together by people who because they were not schooled in liturgy go by the axiom “read the black and do the red”. Like it or lump it.
To Fritz Bauerschmidt: if it is jarring to read “make offering of a heart”, it is positively bizarre to hear it, for I hear it as “make offering of a hart”! Are we sacrificing a male deer upon the altar?
The Scripture I can hear and understand. The prayers of the liturgy require the written text in front of me to attempt to work through their meaning.
Although I speak several languages, I love English intensely. It can be extremely beautiful — when employing its richness and eloquence. The current missal should have aspired to that but it fails miserably. The value above all others was fidelity in word and syntax to Latin. While the translation uses English words, the ponderous construction employed and the continual use of subordinate and dependent clauses is singularly displeasing both to the ear and to the mind of a native Anglophone.
I am a convert to Catholicism and, in Rite I of the Book of Common Prayer (and the 1928 prayerbook), we used a language beyond that of everyday conversation for worship…as also was the King James Version of Scripture…for those of us in the 20th century. They were beautiful uses of the English language…thoroughly English in the words used and the way the phrases were constructed, with memorable turns of phrase. If people wish to say that the previous translation failed for its lack of fidelity to the Latin editio typica, this translation fails for its lack of fidelity to English — for it is not enough to employ English words. One must abide by the language’s internal logic and genius. This translation is attempting to force a round peg into a square hole by saying it must conform to Latin grammar and syntax even to being disharmonious with the English language. It is grating in the extreme when one confronts prayers that descend to being unintelligible because of construction. More importantly, it is difficult for anyone’s “Amen” to be serious, meaningful and heartfelt when one says it while trying to work out “what was just said and what…
@Rod Hall:
In his address to the reader at the start of his 1996 translation of and commentary on Genesis, Robert Alter has this to say:
“…in a language that conveys with some precision the semantic nuances and the lively orchestration of literary effects of the Hebrew and at the same time has stylistic and rhythmic integrity as literary English.”
It’s the second part of this formula which is so sadly lacking in the 2011 translation.
I don’t understand how anyone can speak of the current translation as being “faithful to the Latin”.
Latin is a language. Once upon a time, people used it to gossip, argue, pray and buy eggs in the marketplace. As Peter Kwasniewski wrote elsewhere on Pray Tell, a few people still learn to speak Latin. Others may not reach sufficient fluency to converse in Latin, but can easily understand written or spoken liturgical Latin without doing an intermediate translation into English.
Translating the French sentence J’ai accepté à passer une soirée chez ma tante as “I have accepted to pass a soiree at the house of my aunt” doesn’t show fidelity to the French; if anything it mocks the vocabulary, style and structure of the language.
The current translation does the same to Latin.
@Jonathan Day:
Nail on head.
@Jonathan Day:
Absolutely! Brilliant analogy!
@Jonathan Day:
1+ Jonathan!
@Jonathon Day
I think we can all agree with you on that analogy.
The other end of that however, is this: “I ate at auntie’s”
Both are bad, but one contains all the information of the original, albeit poorly packaged, and one summarizes it. Which is worse?
I know that people are upset about the clunkiness of the translation, and that is fine. What I’m writing about is specifically those who are campaigning for a return to the 1998 translation, or those who would edit their new missal’s prayers. We just don’t have the mandate to alter anything in there. We have to pray and wait.
But spending too much energy on this topic means that other, far more pressing issues have to wait.
I’d really love to see weekly posts which celebrate the beauty of our newly discovered English Propers, instead of the constant hunt for the next turd in the Missal
Peace,
Agman
— Save your parish’s money: Sing the Propers for every Mass —
@Agman Austerhauser:
The other end of that however, is this: “I ate at auntie’s”
That’s not the point. The point is that “I agreed to spend an evening at my aunt’s” is perfectly accurate and idiomatic. Why didn’t the version we have now go for idiomatic English as well as accuracy?
I think if you’re waiting for “weekly posts which celebrate the beauty of our newly-discovered English Propers” (whatever you actually mean by “English Propers”), you’ll be waiting for a long time. One of the main criticisms of the revised translation is precisely that it isn’t beautiful. Not one bit.
What I’m writing about is specifically those who are campaigning for a return to the 1998 translation
I’ve not seen anyone campaigning for a return to 1998, since we never officially used that translation. I’m aware of many who would like the opportunity to use it, and also of some priests who do actually use it. Additionally, the Opening Prayers (Collects) are still in print as a separate volume.
You seem to think that no one has the right to critique the new translation, that we should all just knuckle down and get on with it because it is there. If that were really the case, all those who critiqued the 1973 translation should have kept their mouths shut, too. But of course everyone has the right — in fact the duty — to point out when a translation is unsatisfactory, and to press for improvement. Otherwise we risk going on to a kind of worship autopilot, where it doesn’t really matter what anyone says or sings
@Paul Inwood:
Your last point.
What niggles away at the back of my head is the notion that the latin originals are some sort of magical incantations that have to be adhered to slavishly, to the detriment of sense and beauty, or the magic won’t “work.”
They are prayers, not unalterable spells.
@Paul Inwood
I’ve not seen anyone campaigning for a return to 1998, since we never officially used that translation. I’m aware of many who would like the opportunity to use it, and also of some priests who do actually use it.
Ok, without straying off topic, I have to ask, Is it proper for priests to be using prayers that are not found in the latest missal, for the Ordinary Form?
Paul, you seem to be endorsing the idea that since the missal was promulgated in a malicious, even sinful way, priests can simply choose to not use it.
Am I reading you correctly?
There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that the practice of modifying the missal texts to render them more prayable is widespread. The question is not “can” or “should” they do this because they are doing it. It is unlikely that these modifications in any way alter or obscure the faith of the church.
@Fr. Jack Feehily: #50
Priests are not above the law though, Father Feehily. I think the question is absolutely valid: Should a priest be consciously changing the Missal texts?
Your response is very troubling, because you seem to be saying (please correct me if I am wrong) that you don’t think it is a big deal.
“There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that the practice of artificial birth control is widespread. The question is not “can” or “should” they do this because they are doing it. It is unlikely that these sinful actions in any way alter or obscure the faith of the church”
I asked above, rhetorically, whether a priest can licitly make ad-lib or written changes to the missal. I say “rhetorically” because I know the answer. You know the answer. I would hope that we all know the answer. If a priest is willfully disobedient on an issue as simple as “saying the black”, in what other ways might he feel free to rebel? When the laypeople see a priest railing away at what he considers to be a defective text, refusing to read it, changing it to fit his liking, what are they then justified in changing or ignoring in their lives?
You say it is unlikely that these modifications in any way alter or obscure the faith of the Church. What if you are wrong? How can we measure that? Is it worth the risk? Wouldn’t it be better to strictly follow the Missal so as not to risk corruption?
@Agman Austerhauser:
“You say it is unlikely that these modifications in any way alter or obscure the faith of the Church. What if you are wrong? How can we measure that? Is it worth the risk? Wouldn’t it be better to strictly follow the Missal so as not to risk corruption?”
The text is already being “corrupted”, that was the point. So you can’t mean hat.
Do you mean “the faith of the Church” might be corrupted? That is a trickier question. Will that faith be corrupted more by a priest expressing his own faith clearly? Or by a priest following strictly a text that cannot be understood? I think he latter risks corruption more than the former. How many will pray for Jesus to lead sinners out of the basement? That is how today’s opening prayer was probably heard.by some people.
I believe we can trust long ordained priests to stick with the faith of the church when praying with English rather than Latin syntax. This includes the generation of priests who actually studied Latin (I had 5 years for which I have always been grateful). As Jim mentioned above, most English speakers will have heard “a basement” because the word abasement is simply not a part of everyday vocabulary. “that Jesus leads sinners away from their transgressions” is faithful to the original and makes more sense and doesn’t in any way alter the faith of the church. The idea that what makes the Mass an acceptable sacrifice is saying all the approved words may make sense for the TLM, but not for a Novus Ordo translated into a Latinized version of English.
The corruption I referred to in my last paragraph was not the corruption of hard-to-read prayers. I’m referring to willful disobedience.
When priests are disobedient, it corrupts: it alters and obscures the faith of the Church. Is that a worthwhile trade-off?
Father Feehily, you say you believe that we can trust long-ordained priests to stick with the faith of the Church while they change their Missal texts…. Why can’t we trust them to stick with the faith of the Church and NOT change those texts?
I agree with you that there might be better ways of explaining or unpacking some of these prayers, but that will have to be during the homily or in the program or something else. The act of altering those prayers as they are being said, even for the best of intentions, is not licit, and it is disobedience.
@Agman Austerhauser:
It’s liturgy, not incantation.
Disobedience perhaps: but one’s conscience is sovereign – even over the magisterium of the Church.
I do have some sympathy though with the notion that when priests show some, “latitude” then it can be infectious.