Where to from here?
Fr Patrick J Flanagan, Red Cliffs, Victoria, charts the history of the missal texts and the need for reform.
The Council began to flounder. The bishops, gathered from around the world, were annoyed at being asked to be rubber stamps. Cardinal Frings of Cologne delivered an address prepared for him by his peritus Joseph Ratzinger, which blew up the prepared agenda. New commissions were formed to draw up new documents that would address better the reality of the Church post-WWII. And the world’s bishops were determined to smash the power of the Roman Curia, or perhaps I might say it better, to break its stranglehold.
The Liturgy document became the one bishops could most easily come to grips with. The Liturgical Movement was nearly 100 years old; and pope Pius XII had already made significant changes, mainly by restoring Holy week. One of the disputed questions at the Council was the use of the vernacular in the Roman Rite. Cardinal Spellman of New York occasioned a jibe from Time magazine. He wanted the Breviary to be put into the vernacular, but the Mass to stay in Latin. Time remarked, ‘he wants the priests to pray in English, and the people to pray in Latin.’ There were a lot of serious questions involved in reforming the Liturgy; the vernacular question was comparatively minor.
The first session of Vatican II ended without completing any document. Joseph Slipyi, a late arrival at the Council, just set free from a Soviet prison, asked that St Joseph be included in the Roman Canon. He was laughed at by bishops who had suffered nothing for the Faith. Pope John XXIII went ahead and inserted ‘Joseph, the spouse of Mary’, into the Roman Canon.
The second session of Vatican II concluded two documents. One was about the media. It did not receive the attention it deserved. It was more ‘got out of the way’ than thought through. Fortunately, the post-concilar commission formed to implement this document made up for the deficiencies in the document itself.
The other document was of course the one on Liturgy. It was one of the four documents from Vatican II that were named not Decrees, but Constitutions. Use of the vernacular was approved, though the fathers did not anticipate at the time that the whole of the Roman Rite would become vernacular. It did in fact become vernacular quite swiftly, before Vatican II ended finally on December 8, 1965. But there was a very important proviso in the Constitution and that is that responsibility for producing vernacular translations was entrusted NOT TO THE ROMAN CURIA but to the bishops of the particular language groups. But the Holy See was not excluded from the picture, and the Curia would in time, use the need for texts to be forwarded to the Holy See to exercise a lot of control.
At all events, the various English-speaking countries began at once to put together their own translations of the Common of the Mass in the Tridentine Rite as amended in 1962. (Time magazine later compared them and reckoned that Australia did it best.) Various approaches were followed for translating the proper. Fairly soon we were using here the Canadian Missal, with the Australian texts for the Common.
Translating the Mass texts to English
But for the English translations of the Rites for the Mass and Sacraments that would be produced in fulfilment of the Decrees of Vatican II, the bishops of the anglophone countries established in 1963 the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), with its headquarters in Washington. To help with translating, the Commission set up to implement the Constitution on the Liturgy, produced a comprehensive guide. It was published in seven languages, of which the original was French. The document is known as Comme le prevoit. Interestingly, it was never translated into Latin.
As ICEL and other translating bodies were embarking on translations of the new rites of Mass and the Sacraments, they began to formalise procedures. In the case of ICEL, it had an EpiscopalBoard of Directors consisting of bishops representing each of anglophone countries. ICEL had also an advisory board consisting of people with expertise in Liturgy. Denis Hart, when he became secretary of Australia’s National Liturgical Commission (NLC) was a member of this advisory board, replaced later by Tom Elich when he became secretary of the NLC.
And ICEL sought out experts in Latin and in English to engage in the actual work of translation. They also obtained the help of experts in Greek and the other biblical languages, because biblical texts often underlay the various formulations. They did not have to mark time, waiting for the Missal of Paul VI to appear, whole and complete. The post-conciliar Commission sent the various elements of the new rite to them as they were completed. The over-all principle of translation was that of dynamic equivalence. The aim was not word for word translation from the Latin, but the conveyance of the meaning of the original. As texts were prepared they were sent, in the case of ICEL, to each of diocese of the anglophone world, so that the bishops could comment, make suggestions for improvement etc. My bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, often sent material from ICEL to me to vet on his behalf. On one occasion I made an important intervention. It was the proposed translation of the new Rite for Anointing the Sick. In the form for the second part, the anointing of the sick person’s hands, the translation proposed read, ‘may the Lord who has forgiven you your sins’; but the Latin, reflecting the passage about Anointing the Sick in chapter 5 of the letter of James had the present tense. ‘May the Lord who forgives you your sins ..’ I don’t imagine that I was the only one who pointed out the error. I am presenting it to illustrate that ICEL was not a closed shop.
Everything went very harmoniously. If any criticism is to be made of ICEL’s translation of the Missal of Pope Paul VI, it is that the translation was a bit too simple. But there were no hassles from the post-concilar Commission about ICEL’s modus operandi.
There were other currents at work though. They had to do mainly with the way celebrants were operating, and most especially, with the kind of music that was being sung at Mass. The sense of mystery necessarily involved in the use of Latin, because it was foreign, was not there in the vernacular. We might call it the Guitar crisis (a term I just invented). Various theologians began to express concern to Pope Paul VI. Foremost among them was Joseph Ratzinger. Pope Paul VI disbanded the Post-conciliar Commission, which entailed the dismissal of its president, Cardinal Knox, and of its secretary, Annibale Bugnini. When everything has settled down, someone will write a worthy biography of Annibale Bugnini and all that he accomplished.
In the place of the post-Conciliar Commission, though it was given a new name, the old controlling Congregation of Rites was restored; and life would become in time less happy for ICEL.
We are now far enough down the road from Vatican II for it to be worthwhile recalling why the language of the Roman Rite changed from Latin to the vernacular. The original language of the Roman Rite was, not Latin, but Greek. The reason for this was simple. The common language of the Roman world was Greek. Eventually, though, Latin replaced Greek as the lingua franca.
The vernacular liturgy around the world
Consequently, about the year 375, Pope Damasus decreed that Latin should be the language of the Roman Rite. Logic then would suggest that, as the Gospel spread into countries where Latin was an alien language, the Liturgy would be celebrated in the native languages of those countries.
In one case this did happen. The apostles of the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, found that the Slavic-speaking peoples had no written language at all, and they devised an alphabet for them, and the written language of Russia now is the Kirillic (after Cyril.) The Slavs received from Cyril and Methodius an enculturated Liturgy, though not without a lot of opposition from the bishops of Germany. But, for the most part, wherever in the new countries that grew out of the barbarian invasions the Liturgy was celebrated, its language remained Latin. This was to have a most unfortunate consequence. The laos, the people of God had, from the beginning, been the subjects of the Liturgy, its actors. Joseph Jungmann SJ, in his magisterial work, the Mass of the RomanRite, points out again and again that the further the Roman Rite journeyed, the more it became foreign to the people. The actors had become spectators. There was eventually only one actor, the priest. I will give some examples. The task of chanting the Epistle at a High Mass belonged to the sub-deacon. But, while the sub-deacon chanted, the priest, standing to one side of the altar, recited the epistle in a subdued voice. Similarly with the Gospel. The deacon chanted the Gospel; but, while he chanted, the priest recited the Gospel in a subdued voice. A fortiori, while the choir may have chanted the Entrance Antiphon (Introit), the priest had to recite it. So that the priest did everything, and anything done by others was mere window dressing.
As the Church entered the new Asian world in the 16th century, the newly-formed Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith prevailed upon the popes to allow the missionaries to both celebrate the Liturgy in native languages, and to enculturate the Liturgy for those countries. Later popes however reversed this, insisting the Liturgy be in Latin and unenculturated. This caused great pain, and did great damage to the Church’s missionary endeavour in China, India and the Philippines. I mention this here, because, since Vatican II, dancing has become a cultural Liturgical expression in sub-Saharan Africa. Right now there are dark forces at work trying to suppress this enculturation. When will they ever learn?
The intention of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy was, before all else, to bring about the full, conscious and active participation of the people in the celebration of Mass. For this to happen, the language of the Liturgy had to be the vernacular.
The translation of reformed Roman Rite, the missal of Paul VI, came into use in 1974. But ICEL had not intended the 1974 translation to be the last word. Soon enough it began looking at what it had produced with the aim of producing a much better translation. In regard to this, I had been screaming softly, ‘Don’t change any of the people’s parts. Australians had been very unhappy when, with the new Rite, they had to ditch the Australian translation of the Common, that they had learnt enthusiastically, and learn the ICEL text. Don’t do it to them again.’
The ICEL 1998 translation
As a consultant for the National Liturgical Commission here in Australia, I followed the work of re-translation and offered suggestions as best I could. In addition to the translation of all the prayers in the Missal, ICEL also produced original Opening Prayers for each Sunday and major feast of the three-year cycle. The production of these original prayers accorded with the final recommendation, (paragraph 34) of comme le prevoit ‘Clearly, translating from the Latin is not enough. Original prayers, suited to the genius of each language are needed. But the Latin texts of the Roman Missal will serve as a guide for all this.’
Well, that was the 1998 translation. All of the anglophone bishops’ conferences gave the 1998 translation their approval. It went to the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW), and the CDW sat on it till it squashed it.
At that time, the boss at the CDW was the biggest bully in living memory in the Roman Curia, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez. He was determined, in fact, to reject the English translation approved by all of the anglophone conferences of bishops. Liturgiam authenticam was his weapon for achieving that. He just changed mightily the rules governing translations from the Latin, shifted the goalposts, and said that the 1998 translation failed the new test. It was a bit like the dictation tests, that successive Australian governments used, to keep out of the country those they didn’t want to admit.
This procedure was manifestly unjust, and done in bad faith. In no way was CDW behaving like a servant. All of the language groups would have to re-translate according to the new rules, no matter how much trouble that meant. But the real purpose was to bully ICEL. And in fact, ICEL was to be disbanded, which caused a lot of hurt to a lot of people; but sociopaths don’t even begin to feel the pain they cause to others. And new ICEL was formed, controlled by the CDW, which was clear contrary to the intention of Vatican II. I asked a contact I had in Rome why they disbanded ICEL. His reply was ‘They had to. It was becoming the Congregation of Rites for the English-speaking world!’ My response to that should have been, ‘So bloody what?’ But I have never been quick on my feet.
How was old ICEL becoming the Congregation of Rites for the English-speaking world? Well, again, I’m guessing. ICEL was exercising lots of pastoral initiatives, each and every one of which it was entitled to do. It was violating no liturgical laws. A simple example: In the 1998 Roman Missal there was to be, beside the excellent general introductions prepared by the post-conciliar commission giving the ratio for everything (these general introductions were found for each of the revised rites following Vatican II and were goldmines). ICEL had prepared Pastoral introductions. I was able to make what I think was an important, if small, contribution to one of these Pastoral introductions. It was the one for Advent-Christmastime. The final line said that ‘we leave the season of Christmas with the words the Father speaks to us ‘Listen to him’. I wrote to point out to John Page, executive secretary of ICEL, that in fact those words were spoken by the Father, not at Jesus’ Baptism, but at the Transfiguration. I suggested a much better ending, ‘And so Christmastime is completed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, as later in the year, Eastertime will be completed by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church.’ John Page thanked me for my observation.
An initiative ICEL exercised early on was in the translation of the Nicene Creed. In the Latin text, this creed begins in the singular, Credo in unum Deum – I believe in one God – although this was not always the case in Latin rites. There were Latin versions of the Nicene Creed that had the plural Credimus. The Latin text is not the original text. That is the Greek of Nicea-Constantinople which speaks in the plural – ‘We believe in one God.’ The Post-conciliar Commission had no trouble about accepting ICEL’s proposal that the English text use the plural of the Greek text. But not the CDW further down the track.
There was one pastoral initiative of ICEL which I opposed quite strongly. If you set out the Entrance Rite of Mass, it appears to be quite complex. The Anglicans had one way of simplifying it. They moved the Gloria to after Communion. ICEL proposed to simplify the Entrance Rite by giving a series of options. One of these options would be the Penitential Rite. But a consequence of that was that the Penitential Rite would become optional. That is what I opposed quite strongly. But I want to emphasise that ICEL didn’t sneak in this simplification. The Episcopal Board of Directors was aware of it and accepted it. As far as I know it was accepted by the various anglophone conferences of bishops, and became part of the proposed 1998 Missal. But if the CDW had wanted to reject this simplification, it could have done so without producing the heavy artillery of Liturgiam Authenticam, Vox Clara, and the sacking of ICEL.
Pope Francis and a new translation
Anyhow, Pope Francis, by his motu proprio Magnum Principium, has returned the responsibility for translation of Liturgical texts to where Vatican II had initially decreed – the relevant bishops’ conferences. So, where to from here?
Readers of The Swag will be aware that CDW told the bishops of England that, since it has been already rejected, the 1998 translation cannot be revived. This is sheer nonsense, believable only by those who want to believe. It seems obvious that the 1998 translation will be the foundation of whatever translation the English speaking world chooses for its new translation. But it can’t be that wholly and solely, because the edition of the Missale Romanum that appeared in 2002 contains, for example, Mass formularies for each day of Advent and of Easter-time, welcome additions to the missal. These, of course, need to be translated. There were some other prayers added, as well as propers for a number of saints since added to the general calendar. These all need to be translated. Translated how? To me the answer is obvious. Translated according to the principles of Comme le prevoit. Ideally I think, the new ICEL should be graciously retired, and the old ICEL restored. The work of translating all of the new texts should be executed as far as is feasible, by those who brought about the 1998 translation.
That, however, leaves some residual problems to be addressed. It is quite important, it seems to me, that the English speaking world not have several versions of the texts recited by the congregation floating around. A couple of enterprising parishioners here in Red Cliffs, Vic. managed to get the best of both worlds with one of the common responses by answering ‘And also with your spirit.’ But the anglophone bishops’ conferences do need, providing no one conference (England) tries to hold the rest to ransom, to settle on an agreed translation of the common responses and prayers. The 2010 translation of the Nicene Creed, beloved it seems of Cardinal Sarah, has fallen into disuse, and should not even receive Christian burial. But there is a small but significant problem with the Apostles’ creed, too. We oldies know that ‘he descended into hell’ does not mean ‘he descended into hell’; but those who received their Christian education more recently don’t know that. I suggest that, ‘he went down among the dead’ expresses accurately what the creed means at this point. Whatever, hopefully, unanimity among the anglophone conferences of bishops may be arrived at, without disturbing the laos.
Further, I think it is time to consider whether it is still necessary for there to be one only approved translation of Opening Prayers, Prayers over the Gifts, Prefaces, Prayers after Communion etc.
The 1974 ICEL translation of the Missal was not without merit, although the alternative Opening Prayers were so complex that it was very difficult for the Celebrant to so pray them that the congregation prayed them with him.
The 1973 translation of the Missal approved for use in England and Wales (until Cardinal Knox sat on it) likewise had merit, as do certainly the Opening Prayers in the Breviary most of us pray in Australia. The set of Opening Prayers for the 3-year cycle in the 1998 translation are generally excellent. Those who clamoured for the 2010 translation were hoping that it would restore to our celebration of Mass that lost sense of mystery. What has been learnt from its use is that it is not the way to go.
It has been proposed that one of the reasons the bishops of England decided to continue with the 2010 translation is the expense of printing yet another altar Missal. But the idea that everything that is used in Mass should be contained in one heavily bound book may be anachronistic. There are priests for whom, with the appropriate apps, the Ipad or some other tablet, has become both breviary and missal.
There are now quite a number of books with plastic leaves for items such as the Prayer of the Faithful, notices etc. They generally are, unfortunately, not long lasting. Their covers, being also plastic, don’t take long to develop cracks. Hopefully, some entrepreneurial Liturgical publishers will begin to produce such books with long-lasting leather covers. [/s2If]
