Because the Roman Catholic Church was a driving force behind the development of a common English translation of basic prayers used by many Christian churches for 40 years, more recent Vatican rules for translating Mass prayers “came as a bombshell,” said an Anglican liturgist.
“I do not contest for a moment the prerogative of churches to change their liturgical texts,” said the Rev. David Holeton, a professor at Charles University in Prague.
But he said other Christians were “both stunned and dismayed” when the Vatican abandoned the English texts of prayers Catholics had developed with them since the Second Vatican Council and when the Vatican discouraged Catholics from consulting ecumenically on the new translations.
And why would Rome be keen on consulting the Anglicans, Lutherans, and so forth when they have become a sad parody of what Rome aspires to?
Meanwhile we have all but destroyed the worldwide sense of Anglican Common Prayer.
Idiocy. The problem is not the new translations, or their failure to consult people who reject Catholic sacraments and sacramental theology. The problem is that Rome decided it could improve on a liturgy that developed organically over 1500 years with a new one concocted in the space of about a year by a committee of left leaning clerics and Protestants who had no interest at all in affirming the Catholic Faith. The entire liturgical “reform” has been an unqualified disaster.
It is perhaps worth noting that the only “ecumenical” partner Rome now seriously entertains any hope for eventual communion with understands this. I don’t think I would be overstating things to say that the Orthodox Church has been quietly horrified by what Rome has done to the venerable western liturgy over the last 40+ years.
Sorry if I sound a bit strident but ecumenical drivel like the above really bothers me.
For those not aware, the English translation that has been used in the United States was ‘rushed into production’ after Vatican II, and no one was really happy with it at the time, as it presented more of a ‘literary equivalent’ or paraphrase, of the Latin Mass. This new version is supposed to be a more literal translation of the Latin, and a return to fidelity to the charges of the second Vatican council, and long overdue.
Let’s see, someone from a church that really has to think hard about whether or not to commune the unbaptized wishes to advise the Catholic Church on its translations?? Could it just possibly be that the Romans are consciously making their services sound different from —well, from other churches so people *would* notice a difference between the two? So one would have *more* trouble finding points in common? Because there are so *few*? I know this has never occurred to the writer. Rome didn’t consult him or a basset hound on the subject.
Fr Holeton should talk. He was one of the liturgists behind the Canadian Book of Alternative Services in the 80s, which includes altered versions of some of those same key ICET liturgical texts that he’s complaining that Rome is now changing. e.g. The Creed in the BAS omits the filioque (“…and the Son…”), and in an attempt at inclusive language it has “It is right to give OUR thanks and praise” in order to eliminate a masculine reference to God. I took one of Fr H`s liturgics classes in seminary in Toronto, which, to my profound disappointment, had precious little to do with the nuts and bolts of the liturgies we presently use, but amounted instead to nothing more that creative writing and choreography– inventing new touchy-feely rituals for agnostic Anglicans. Oh, and you should read some of those hokey psalm prayers in the BAS too. What drivel. Here endeth the rant.
Yes, Fr. Holeton “should talk.” He had to leave Toronto to take up a ludicrously obscure position teaching theology in Prague to the odd ordinand in the Czech Old Catholic Church because of a case homosexual harassment. Some expert on “ecumenical theology.”
I have looked at the new liturgy, and an evangelical Anglican my only problem is with the emphasis of Mary. In all other regards it is perfectly acceptable.
How amusing. Of all the impasses in RC/Anglican ecumenical relationships only a liturgist could see translation of the new mass texts as one of the major stumbling blocks.
As an Anglican gone Romeward, I can only echo the substance and tone of my Orthodox brother in #3.
Ad Orientem expressed perfectly my own opinion on this subject.
I welcome the return of the Romans to some more correct translations. A few years ago, at my father-in-law’s Catholic funeral, the priest said, “The Lord be with you,” and I responded automatically, “And with thy spirit.” The priest’s head turned in my direction in surprise for a brief moment. From my point of view some of the changes will make the Catholic Mass in English more familiar, not less.
Language is hardly the largest barrier to reunion, obviously, as others have noted above.
In no particular order:
1. As a Catholic priest who has been active in the new liturgical movement for twenty years, allow me to say that the liturgical reforms which followed the Second Vatican Council have not been, pace Ad Orientem above, an unqualified disaster. On the contrary, the reforms of the Lectionary and the Breviary are splendid. Moreover, while the Missale Romanum of 1970 may not be what the Fathers of the Council hoped for, it is far from a disaster. What was an undeniable disaster was the translation of the Latin in the 1970 Missale Romanum into English; in fact, it wasn’t a translation at all but a very free rendering of a noble Latin text into colloquial English.
2. The new English translation, which comes into force in the US on the First Sunday of Advent this year, is not a work of great English prose, but it is a very faithful rendering of the original Latin text into hieratic English and it constitutes a giant leap forward for English-speaking Catholics. I suspect that in 20 years, the liturgical landscape of the average Catholic parish in the Anglosphere will be vastly better than today, and the new translation will be on the main reasons for the improvement. Perhaps then we will be ready for a work of great English prose.
3. The day when the Catholic Church consulted with non-Catholic Christian communions on liturgical texts has long since come and gone. That effort flourished for a brief moment in the 1970’s at the time when real hope for the restoration of full, visible communion among all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord still existed. But the wreckage among Protestants caused by the sexual revolution and other forms of cultural collapse into gnosticism has apparently ended that hope forever.
Fr. Newman, there’s something pathetic about having to say, “well, at least it’s accurate.” One should be able to defend the English without appealing to the Latin, after all. Meanwhile the liturgy has moved from one banality to another; the controlling attitude is still “we don’t have to care about anything else as long as we get the magic words right.”
One side effect of mucking with the common texts is that, once again, a lot of liturgical music gets pitched over the side. Now I’m sure a bunch of people are going to rise up and cheer at the thought of not singing Marty Haugen any longer, though I would point out that (a) Haugen is still around to do it over again, and (b) in my experience he’s not so bad if you back him up with a 150 voice choir and a killer Lutheran pipe organ. But in any case, once again continuity of tradition takes a hit.