A dozen people sat in a circle in a small meeting room beside the darkened sanctuary of St. Barnabas Church on Hikes Lane on a recent weekday morning, practicing new readings that will mark the biggest and most controversial overhaul of Roman Catholic liturgy in decades next month.
They gave a test run to a revised version of the confession of sins. They softly struck their chests with their fists as they read the repentance for sins committed through “my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.”
Many hadn’t made that gesture in nearly half a century, when they had used the Latin phrase, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Since the Mass began to be recited in English, that clause, and the chest-striking, had been dropped from the confession of sin.
I’m not sure what is supposed to be so “controversial” about a more accurate translation of the Mass? Novus Ordo, rendered in Latin, has been THE official Mass since Vatican II. To the extent that the previous English translation departed from the Latin Novus Ordo, it was in error and one would think Roman Catholics would welcome a more correct expression of their official corporate worship.
I’m not a blind apologist for Roman Catholicism and I see the development of the Mass celebrated in the language of the people to be a central *good* thing that has come from era of Vatican II, as an evangelistic necessity to spread the Gospel in a manner people can understand.
But even granting that, I can’t complain when the Roman Church seeks to make the various translations more precisely correct with the Official Novus Ordo Mass. It’s one of those things you expect a *real* hierarchical Church (unlike TEC) to do.
The new liturgy is a great step in the right direction. As an Anglican who has always worshiped using either the 1928 BCP or Rite 1, I rejoice in Rome’s move to a “sacred vernacular.” Pope Benedict’s “Spirit of the Liturgy” is a masterful work that explains the significance of not only what is said and why, but how it is said.
It’s an awesome translation. I keep hearing that the people are going to rise up in revolt, but everyone in my parish is pretty buzzed about it. We sat down with the translations for six weeks and studied them, and the consensus was that it was a real improvement.
This may be another attempt by the 24/7 news machine to create a story ex nihilo.
It’s a beautiful translation, worthy of replacing Rite II and Canada’s BAS!
And B XVI’s The Spirit of the Liturgy is by far the best commentary on the liturgy I’ve ever read, and easily applicable to the Anglican use.
billingqs,
I agree with you that worship in the vernacular is a very good thing, but people who cared back then knew what was going on and people today who don’t care are as clueless in English as some folks were in Latin. I could argue it either way, and do sometimes wonder if I would have made the change under the old forms.
To a certain degree, this really is a manufactured controversy, but it’s also true that certain factions within the Church vehemently oppose any change, having moved from radical reformers to obstructionists of the first order. They pitch a fit at every advance of the Traditional Latin Mass ((the “Mass of Pius V”, or Tridentine Mass) and regard this new translation as a deep affront to their putative revolution. To the degree that revolution is infected with the modernism and western materialism, they are right to be affronted.
To “The Lord be with you,” the congregation will in the new translation respond “And with your spirit.” I’ll probably go right back to saying “And with thy spirit” !
Laura R., I did that, instinctively, at a (Catholic) family funeral. The priest’s head swiveled my direction.
Much of this will be quite familiar to worshippers using the 1928 BCP. More reverent worship language and a more penitential confession will surely improve Catholic worship, and since worship teaches belief to many who never go any further in study, it will improve the understanding of the faith among Catholic laity.
I am amused by the complaint that the Mass language will use subjunctive clauses and has some sentences which are ten lines long. The horror! The Latin, and the traditional English Prayer Books, both employ a precision of language and expression of which our modern world stands in need.
Agreed, Katherine. I would love to think that the translators of the new version of the Novus Ordo made some use of the traditional BCP in their work.
Laura R., we can hope so, but more likely, the case is that both the BCP and the Novus Ordo have their roots in the traditional Christian liturgy which predates them. Of course the BCP is a Protestant document, but there is no doubt that many of the collects and prayers are translations from the Sarum rite.
I think you must be right about that, Katherine. What I had in mind was the beauty of the BCP’s rendering of the Latin texts into English, which I think was one thing the Novus Ordo translators were aiming at.
There is (arguably) no more beautiful utterance in English than the Collect for Purity, Rite I. My understanding is that it was actually a sacristy prayer to be said before Mass in the Sarum Rite. It’s included in the Anglican Use Book of Divine Worship, and would it were included in the Mass of Paul VI (aka Novus Ordo). Now that would be a worthy improvement, although it would likely be in a Rite II form.