Benedict, a quintessential realist, will probably be among the few who understand right away that his ruling is not terribly earth-shattering. Sources close to the pope I have spoken to say his modest ambition is that over time, the old Mass will exert a “gravitational pull” on the new one, drawing it toward greater sobriety and reverence.
Perhaps ”” although it’s equally possible that traditionally minded Catholics will now have a broader “opt out” clause, making them less likely to pester priests and bishops about what they see as the defects of the new Mass.
In any event, the real impact of Benedict’s ruling is likely to be measured in small changes over a long arc of time, not in upheavals or revolutions. That reality, however, will do little to lower the rhetorical volume. If only we could convince the activists to slug it out in Latin, leaving the rest of us blissfully oblivious, then we might have something.
Since I cannot be persuaded that God cares about liturgical precision or favors any particular human language, the only criteria for worshipping God well seem to be whether the priests, pastors, or other worship leaders and the other congregants understand what they are doing and saying in worship AND TRULY MEAN IT FROM THEIR HEARTS.
Sorry Henry but I think liturgy is FAR more important than you suggest. You are what you pray.
Just contrast the hymns of yester year with today.
Then the language and focus was about God – imoortal invisible God only wise. See him come with clouds ascending etc etc
Now it has shiften to a foucs on self – Here I am Lord Is it me..me me me me I feel this I feel that etc etc
One could also point to the loss of the BCP as a moment when the Church fractured became excacerbated -as it was the one thing which unified.
The effects of litugy may seem subtle- but the style and form of worship actually teaches us about God. At my church we strive to create a sense of holy mystery and offer the best of our abilities to God. We keep feasts as days of holy obligatrion and strive to meet for mass on a daily baisis. Anything less suggests to me that faith is somehow secondary to work, and all else besides.
I love historic liturgies, too, on both sides of the East-West schism. But I think we can lead people astray from the responding to the whole will of God – the mistake of the Pharisees – by imagining liturgical form and practice to be the foundation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
Sure thing- I understand the point you make. And no amount of incense, devotional music and beauty of content can compensate for a soul that is not truly given to God.
But surely true liturgy is an outpouring of love, promted by the Holy Spirit that leads us to God.
As Pope Benedict has realised to water down the liturgy (the unintended but sad consequence of Vatican II) is to water down faith as well.
With good healthy liturgy it is not an either or but an also and
Right on! — and Kyrie eleison.
I love the Latin mass and think it’s far too good to be restricted to RCs, nor was it at the beginning of the Reformation period.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about the ‘new’ translation of the Roman Catholic mass. Proponents are heralding the faithfulness of the English translation to the Latin source. Such things have been restored such as:
Given for many
“The Lord be with you” responded with “And with your spirit”
etc.
Yep, my Catholic friends are quite happy with it.
For a stunningly knowledgable critique of Liturgiam Authenticam from one who is a self described conservative and historian of latin chant have a look at ‘Translating Tradition: A Chant Historian Reads Liturgiam Authenticam’ by Peter Jeffery, Obl.S.B
Henry Greville:
I would certainly agree, though this depends upon what it means to “truly mean it from one’s heart.” For many, this simply means “being filled with waves of sincere emotion.”
The biblical stories of the widow’s mite and the woman with the nard of perfume both teach us that the Lord is pleased only with our costliest sacrifices. If I had given my wife a glass engagement ring, she would have been well within her rights to question whether I “truly meant it from my heart.” Why? Because the gift I offered her would have been at odds with my insistence that I love her with all that I am.
By the same token, it is necessarily impossible to offer the Lord a liturgy of pedestrian text and banal music, and still “truly mean it from my heart.”
Obviously, I can’t view Roman Catholic liturgy as an insider, but the new English Sacramentary presents three serious problems to me as an Anglican:
(1) The idea of “the faithfulness of the English translation to the Latin source” is a fundamental issue. It is quite clear that the normative text of Holy Scripture for the new version is the Vulgate (a Latin translation of a problematic Greek tradition, including an OT translated into Greek and thence into Latin). Whether we believe in biblical inerrancy or not, Anglicans—like Protestants—are committed only to the inspiration of the original texts. Where the text of the underlying Revised Latin Sacramentary differs from the late-60s version, it is almost always in the direction of changing language from a Hebrew-based idiom to Latinate forms. The English translation is even more regularly in the direction of changing language rooted in the Tyndale/Coverdale/BCP/KJV/RSV/NRSV tradition—which is also the Erasmus/Stephanus/Westcott-Hort/Nestle-Aland/UBS textual tradition—in favor of a fairly literal word-for-word translation of the Vulgate. The same is true of the revision’s tendency to closely follow Latin liturgical forms that have been conformed to the Vulgate (even if the originals were in Hebrew, Greek, or some other language).
2. As an Anglican, I am committed to “language understanded of the people,” which I understand to be literate but ideomatic English, not a transliteration of Latin terms embedded in a syntax that no native American-English speaker has ever used. Only a minority of the committee that wrote the new liturgy (after the Vatican rejected attempts by the English-speaking conferences of bishops) was composed of people who grew up speaking our language… and it shows.
Almost without exception, the changes in the 2007-era text from the 1970-era version are away from natural spoken English, never towards it. Only rarely do they even constitute a movement towards better literary English. To the extent the changes reflect a dialect of our language at all, it is the dialect used in pre-Vatican II “people’s missals,” where the English was really only intended as a “crib” for following the Latin service. However fondly old folks like me may remember those days, not many American (or other English-speaking) Catholics can recall the 1960s that clearly. For them, this is not a “restoration” but the imposition of a foreign language.
3. The issue that really burns me, however, is the rejection of ecumenical cooperation. The 1970 text was the result of a deep commitment on the part of the Roman Catholic authorities to the notion that whatever else may drive Christians apart, the prayers we have in common should hold us together. Since praying shapes believing (lex orandi, lex credendi), getting Protestants and Anglicans to use Catholic forms of worship will in the long run bring them home to Catholic belief.
Consequently, there was ecumenical consultation at every step of the way in developing the common texts and a common lectionary. Every English-language Christian liturgy adopted anywhere in the world since 1970 has overwhelmingly followed that pattern of the liturgy. This commonality has been a factor not only in Protestant relations with Rome, but even more in inter-Protestant relationships between denominations that now use almost indistinguishable worship books. Altar fellowship between Anglicans and Lutherans, for example, would be almost unthinkable without our prior liturgical convergence.
Rome has now cut the legs out from under that convergence. The authorities who revised the Latin texts and English translations were not only ordered to avoid the sort of ecumenical consultation that their predecessors took for granted, but were specifically told to adopt forms that were not in use among “other ecclesial communities” (the term preferred since Rome stopped referring to Protestants and Anglicans as members of the Christian Church).
So, Roman Catholics are to be confronted with a change in the liturgical language they have been using for forty years, not because the new language is better, but only because it is different from what Protestants use. The fact that the Protestants were imitating RC use when they adopted the language doesn’t matter. The difficulties that adopting new texts of the Creeds and other key liturgical forms will produce for ecumenical relations doesn’t matter, because ecumenism doesn’t matter anymore, either.
Dale,
From what I understand about the ‘forced’ changes in the 1979 BCP, we have no leg to stand on when commenting upon the changes in anyone else’s liturgy. I mean, few would admit that the linguistic, and theological changes and the manner in which it was forced on the people in the pews was done for the better or in a positive manner!
Oh, by Latin source, I meant the liturgy of the Mass, not the Scriptures. In the U.S. Catholic Church, the Bible used in the New American Bible (NAB) although I have heard the Jerusalem Bible and the RSV, Catholic edition used occasionally. The introduction to the NAB says:
So you see, it is not based on the Vulgate. By the way, the New Vulgate is not the vulgate of the past. It is a new translation based on the original languages.
a history on the revison of the English mass can be found here:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_comunicato-stampa_en.html
I’m still looking for informaiton on what version of the Bible is used at the Vatican for the readings at Mass.
Hey, I found it:
(emphasis mine)
The last paragraph:
In 2001, the Vatican released the instruction Liturgiam Authenticam, establishing the Nova Vulgata as a point of reference for all translations of the liturgy into the vernacular from the original languages, “in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to the Latin Liturgyâ€.
has met with some rsistance:
from
Translations and the Consultation of the Nova Vulgata
of the Latin Church
Congregation for Divine Worship
– November 5, 2001
a portion reads:
http://www.adoremus.org/0502NovaVulgata.html
Dale, what a fascinating road you have pointed me down! Thank you! I always love doing research on new topics!!! 🙂