I’ve made some notes and observations about the changes in the English translation of the mass and the opportunity and challenges with which it presents us. Despite the fact that what we are using now has to be, because of the process by which it was achieved, deeply and seriously flawed, I do not think there is much to be gained, except further heartache, in noisy protest. I do think it worthwhile to outline how it happened, because it says a lot about the sort of church in which we now participate, but then I think the next step is to think about how at a parish level we can make a positive work of the spirit out of the machinations of those who place considerations of power and control over the welfare of the English speaking Catholic Church.
One way to look at Jesus’ message is as liberation from tribalism, that is we are to love our enemies. Our human instinct is to promote social cohesion through demonizing the other and desperately holding on to rigid rules as a defence against the need for uncomfortable thought. It takes very little sense of history to realize, however, that these “rules” have always been fluid and situational, both in time and place: this is not to be feared, but embraced in faith. There has always been a conversation between the wisdom of tradition and the need to test it with innovation in response to new circumstances. People who resist relativism fail to note that their own positions are contingent and relative and that the movement of the Spirit allows for correction of excess and excision of what is dead in the Church in God’s good time.
Fear can stall, for a time, the movement of the Spirit and reveals a lack of trust in others and a disbelief in other’s sincerity of belief and that they serve the same God. The clerical forces of reaction in the Church cannot change the fact that the laity are often better educated than they are and have thought just as deeply about these matters and that while they may want a return to premodern belief , the rest of humanity is already postmodern.
What we are being told about the new translation in the ICEL DVD is at the very least a sin of omission. It would perhaps go too far to accuse the speakers of outright lies, but by laundering the history of this translation they go pretty close. Hiding the process as blatantly as they do, goes back to the pay, pray and obey days and is simply not acceptable. We have seen the results in other areas of our Church’s life of secrecy and attempting to obscure the full story and the tendency is just as unhealthy in the debate about the translation we have started using.
At the risk of the sin of pride, there are things that we know more about than the Roman curia, the Congregation for Divine Worship, the current iteration of ICEL and especially Vox Clara. We know more about the way Australians think and talk. We know that Australians see elevated language as a sign of pomposity, not holiness. We know of a spirituality based on the outdoors and simplicity. We know more of a spirituality of community, largely divorced from the anonymity of the cathedral. We have been using music that some deride as folk pap, yet is meaningful for all that. The translation we have been using for the last forty years or so aimed for a simplicity and straight forwardness that made especial sense in Australia and only those from another thought world to ours could imagine that it fostered spirituality any less real than their own simply because it didn’t have the same ring for them.
The DVD produced by the current version of ICEL to explain the changes makes it obvious that they weren’t thinking of liturgy for the suburbs or people with an Australian way of thinking. What we have are modes of expression to which we will have to add layers of interpretation, just to accept as adequate Catholic theology. They basically say that a transliteration of Latin is preferable even when it is unreadable and even when it obscures the meaning of the liturgy. Now whether they really believe that or whether the spin that is evident on the DVD is merely a way to not get sacked is hard to say. It appears that anyone who departs from the party line at ICEL, for which read those ideas that please the non-English speaking members of the Curia, is quickly sacked.
For the sake of brevity and to limit the misery, here is an abridged version of events.
- Vatican 2 said you can have vernacular liturgy.
- The Bishops of the English speaking world establish ICEL to do the English version – importantly this is independent of Rome and raises the ire of those who prefer centralized control.
- Using the principle of “dynamic equivalence” the translation we use now was achieved in a very short time by 1974.
- It was approved by all the English Speaking Bishops.
- The revision of the English translation that was always planned to occur with the benefit of time and experience, continued over many years and a reportedly excellent translation that improved on the 1974 edition was ready by 1998 and also had the approval of all the English speaking bishop’s conferences.
- In the meantime those who feared the power of the English speaking Catholic Church, especially in the CDW (Congregation for Divine Worship) and the future Benedict XVI himself, had become powerful under the papacy of John Paul II, who had reversed the collegiality expressed at Vatican 2 and had achieved far more centralized control.
- Before the 1998 translation could be approved it was made redundant by Liturgica Authenticum, which was essentially a new set of rules for translation. These make no sense as translation because instead of trying to convey the meaning of the Latin texts as accurately as possible in modern English the Latin text had to be slavishly followed word for word wherever possible.
- The people who had devoted their lives to the translation of 1998 had nowhere to go and were replaced by those willing to follow the LA. Just to make sure however, ICEL was placed under Roman control and just to really make sure was given a new body called Vox Clara to make absolutely sure that the translation is what Rome wants, not what is needed in English speaking countries. The fear Rome has of the power of the English speaking Roman Catholic Church is clear, as no other language group has such a body supervising translation. Vox Clara has no special skill in translation and is led by Cardinal Pell who is well known for talking about things about which he knows nothing.
- Under the new rules the translations goes ahead and the results are predictable.
- The Bishops agreed to the changes in 2008, and appear to have had little choice and no input. You had no input at all. Even if you had wanted to know what was happening, ICEL, which had up to its takeover been a transparent consultative group had become as suspicious closed cabal, such that now you look at WIKIspooks for leaks, as if you were researching the CIA!
- Amazingly, after the approved version following the LA principles even the supposedly safe scholars at ICEL were bypassed by someone (?who – no-one knows for sure) who made another 10 000 fairly random changes, which even those happy at the return to a closer link to the Latin text were appalled by. LA was being ignored now, replaced by the whim of Vox Clara.
Some of the arguments put forward to justify the translation we are using are so weak as to be laughable. They say that many languages were using the English translation to make their own translations rather than directly from the Latin and this was not appropriate as the second generation of translation would encourage mistakes. Fine, use the transliteration they have created as a translation tool and let the English speaking Bishops have a proper English translation – it has already been done.
They say all English is the same, that there is a standard English to which the translation can aspire. This is nonsense in both word meaning and nuance. Australia’s English is very different to New Zealand’s, which is different to South Africa’s let alone the US, England etc. Rome generally only allows the powerless to have enculturation, where it does nothing to diminish their control. One interesting exception is that German Churches were allowed to keep their custom of replacing elements of the Mass with paraphrases, even though LA banned them, because the Pope had grown up with the musical settings and couldn’t bear to lose his favourite pieces. The truth is that every community has a degree of enculturation in their Mass celebration but the people in power want theirs to be normative.
They say English is incapable of having an elevated style suitable for worship unless the Latin idiom is followed slavishly. This is nonsense on several levels. English is capable of many modes and is in many ways a more versatile vehicle than Latin, with its constant evolution and elaboration increasing its potential all the time. Only those whose ATMs work only in Latin would think otherwise. Putting words in the wrong order in English does not make them more suitable for worship; it merely invites ridicule and lack of clarity. You could as easily translate them in to Yoda speak for the same effect.
The aim appears to have a worship style comfortable to those in Rome imposed on everyone who speaks a different sort of English in a different sort of Roman Catholic Church.
I accept that “resistance is futile,” so how do we benefit from this mess.
Well this is our Church, it makes no sense to have a Catholic Church without the laity. As with a lot of issues, we try not to make things worse for our Priests and Bishops, and get on with local liturgy and community. The secrecy and centralization of decision making in the Church has served it poorly on many levels and on many issues that I do not intend to dwell upon. We’ll all be dead before many of the issues of power in the Church are dealt with. Unlike Greenpeace we think locally and act locally, until the dreadful results of concentration of power and lack of accountability create an inescapable mood for change. And we pray. We don’t leave because, not just because it is our church, but because when people get sick of being treated like idiots and leave, they leave the Church unbalanced with no-one but the reactionary remnant. We also have to struggle to see the fear that is causing the mistakes made in Rome and try to love the sinner but hate the sin.
There are admittedly practical pluses for any change in wording of the Mass. I have noted that we will have to think about the words to get them to make sense. We have already noticed that any change to what we have done for many years requires a new alertness. It is no bad thing to have a change to the liturgy so we can’t switch off – even this faulty translation may encourage our full and active participation, because without engagement with the new words, some will say the new and some the old and we’ll be sending worship to God that sounds like a washing machine.
It does not hurt to have to throw out a lot of mass settings and revise or learn new ones. Some of the harshest critics of the process are now getting swept up in the new music that will be required. It has set off a burst of mass writing that may one day supply us with some really good ones. In the mean time, again we will have to think even when we are singing.
We will have to make an effort to understand the clumsy expressions in English. We will have to know that the “under our roof” is straight from the Gospel and doesn’t mean the roof of our mouth. We have to know that saying for the sins of “many” really still means “all” we just can’t say it. We have to know that saying “I believe” with a whole congregation of our fellow parishioners in community still means on first principles that “we believe!”
The ICEL DVD that I have criticized as spinning so much it will work even outside the DVD drive is also the best RCIA resource I have ever seen and will be very useful indeed.
So we sing new songs, say new prayers, concentrate to overcome the clumsy wording, support our priests, and wait for the edifice to collapse under the weight of its absurdity and believe in a future Roman Catholic Church with an English translation of its liturgy that sings in English while conveying the meanings that need to be conveyed. …just don’t hold your breath.