Chant historian Peter Jeffery is, in his own words, is “as conservative as one can get without rejecting Vatican II” (17). In 2004, four remarkable articles by him on the Vatican instruction on translation, Liturgiam authenticam [LA], appeared in the journal Worship. These articles were later reprinted in book form. Given the recent news about a small group from the Vox Clara Committee completely reworking the translations prepared by ICEL and submitted by the national bishops’ conferences, his words are eerily prophetic: “Liturgical scholars and translators are not afraid to have their work reviewed by Church authorities. What we fear is having it ‘revised’ by people who invoke Church Fathers they haven’t read, whose theories of language and culture were created ex nihilo, who cannot tell the New Vulgate from the old one.” We highly recommend Peter Jeffery’s book. Here, PrayTell offers an excerpt. Emphasis ours.
“The readiness to see one’s own work examined and revised by others is an essential trait” for those working with liturgical texts, LA warns us (75). Who can deny it? The work requires, as LA says, both a “spirit of prayer” and “a rare degree of expertise.” The need for expertise is self-evident: the Christian liturgical tradition is as long as history, as wide as humanity, as complex as civilization. Nobody could ever know it all. But if the LA authors perceive a need to emphasize this, here is one more historical development they are unaware of: These days, anyone who has the scholarly competence to translate a liturgy is already accustomed to seeing her work examined, criticized, and improved by others. It is built into the academic workplace in a dozen ways, through the use of respondents and panel formats at conferences, peer review, promotion review, book reviews, review articles, and so on. Every year I am consulted by publishers, editors, universities, granting-making entities, and international cultural agencies for my opinion on other people’s work, and others are asked to judge mine by identical standards. Liturgical scholars and translators are not afraid to have their work reviewed by Church authorities. What we fear is having it “revised” by people who invoke Church Fathers they haven’t read, whose theories of language and culture were created ex nihilo, who cannot tell the New Vulgate from the old one.
But the most worrisome thing about LA is that what it lacks in factuality it makes up with naked aggression. It speaks words of power and control rather than cooperation and consultation, much less charity. Asserting a right to impose translations on episcopal conferences (104), or take charge of any translation that might be used in Rome itself (76) are the kind of thing I mean,… No less scary is the stipulation that everyone involved in liturgical translation, “including the experts,” are to be bound to confidentiality by contract (101). This will certainly insulate them from political pressure groups bent on twisting the translations, if there are any. But it will also insulate them from everyone else, including many people who, though not under contract, could have been helpful with Biblical language, theological terminology, the linguistics of the vernacular, as well what is “suitable for being set to music” (60). The translators and experts are, after all, performing a public service to the whole church, not a private service to the bishops or the Vatican. …
It is particularly embarrassing that all this muscular Christianity comes to us vested and mitred in the most ignorant statement on liturgy ever issued by a modern Vatican congregation. But in a millennium when a Pope can apologize to the Jews, it is not too much to hope that the Dicastery, too, will find the courage to lead by example, and practice what it preaches on the matter of accepting correction. …
Liturgiam authenticam should be summarily withdrawn, on the grounds that it was released prematurely, before proper consultation with a sufficient number of experts had been completed. Then only the hard part will remain: what to do about the issues and tensions that produced it.
Peter Jeffery, Translating Tradition: A Chant Historian Reads Liturgiam Authenticam (Liturgical Press, 2005), 97-98, 100-101.
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