From Catholic News Service:
“New Mass translation is ecumenically harmful, Anglican says“
New Mass translation is ecumenically harmful, Anglican says
Comments
37 responses to “New Mass translation is ecumenically harmful, Anglican says”
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What is the logic behind LA40?
Cui bono?Why is distinguishing so important?
This seems to be directly opposed to the Decree on Ecumenism. -
Among the many things the New Regime hates, high on their list is ecumenism, and those common prayers which Catholics run into at baptisms, weddings, funerals could “confuse” Catholics into thinking they could have all the beauty and spiritual nourishment of the liturgy and sacraments without having to put up with the heavy-handed authoritarianism of the Roman Curia. Can’t have THAT kind of confusion spreadin’ round the valley, this valley of tears that is, can we now? Could be that LA is the first time a Curial document mandates something directly opposite something encouraged by a Papal Encyclical: Ut Unum Sint of JP II praised the shared lectionaries and common translations.
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Tom – just another random thought – it appears to me that the higher value/goal is to work to heal the divisions within our own “catholic” tradition (protestant; east/west; etc.).
Yet, LA allows an over-emphasis on “literalism” to trump and retard a much higher goal and an enduring embarrassment for all Christians.
Your points and emotion are right on!
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What if it is the Anglicans who change their texts to diverge from those used by the Catholics: is that ecumenically harmful?
Where there are real differences in theology is it helpful and honest to disguise these by using texts that seem to be the same?-
Why raise a ‘what if” here?
We have theologically agreed texts, have had for decades.
What is the benefit of changing them?
Why change all the texts and not just EP1, the Roman Canon?
Why not keep one agreed ecumenical option? -
But in the case of the common texts — the Gloria, Sanctus, Memorial Acclamations, and Agnus Dei — there are no differences in theology that have to be either highlighted or disguised.
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Which is the greater problem complained of in the article?
1) “the Vatican discouraged Catholics from consulting ecumenically on the new translations”? Or
2) the goal of the translators to have English texts that set Catholic liturgy apart from other Christian liturgies? “He quoted ‘Liturgiam Authenticam’ . . . ‘Great caution is to be taken to avoid a wording or style that the Catholic faithful would confuse with the manner of speech of non-Catholic ecclesial communities or of other religions, so that such a factor will not cause them confusion or discomfort.'”
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Why ask which is the greater problem?
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I am reminded of Richard Giles’ words: :We have travelled a very long way in the last 40 years – backwards. As the cold winds of imperial papalism sweep across the ecumenical scene, it seems hardly credible that Pope Paul VI once recognised the Church of England as ‘our beloved sister church”, and welcomed Michael Ramsey, 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, with the words ‘by entering into our house you are entering your own house. We are happy to open our door and our heart to you.’” — https://praytell.blog/index.php/2011/02/15/roman-catholicanglican-relations/
Why isn’t anyone questioning the apparent refusal by the Vatican of any further engagement in ecumenical talks? Christ prayed for the unity of His church. Were the Anglican and other non-traditional ordinations the breaking point so that they are now considered so hopelessly heretical that there is no point to discussion with them?
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Tom
The answer is that critics of the changes to the Catholic texts who object that they diverge from previously common texts on the grounds of ecumenism should surely object if Anglicans make divergences too.Cody
Yes, there may be similarities in theology but if we gloss over differences we do not help develop mutual respect and trust.Mary
I think the Vatican is talking to others. There are talks with the Orthodox and the SSPX for starters. There is a quiet conversation going on with Muslims. But with the Anglicans the prospect of a general unification has been put back by the Anglican changes to have female clergy and practicing homosexual clergy.-
Good point. I’d forgotten about how Pope Benedict got rid of all the “practicing homosexual clergy” from the Catholic seminaries and priesthood.
Easy thing to forget when you watch Papal liturgies . . .
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Ha!
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🙂
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Beautiful!
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What is the point of raising the theoretical question about possible Anglican changes? If they did, same objections. So what, why raise a theoretical possibility with and already supposed answer. CoE did not make the changes. CDW did. Lets stick to the point.
What differences do you claim are being glossed over? These are texts we have been using agreeably for decades.
Nice that the Vatican is talking to others.
What does that have to do with throwing out things already agreed upon for decades?
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This whole translation gets more and more disgusting every day.
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“But with the Anglicans the prospect of a general unification has been put back by the Anglican changes to have female clergy and practicing homosexual clergy.”
Or …
But with the Anglicans the prospect of a general unification has been put back by the pope’s creation of Anglican ordinariates .
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How can the Ordinariates, created in response to certain Anglicans’ requests for unity with Rome, be considered a detriment to ecumenism? What is more unified than Anglicans becoming Catholic?
For 40 some years there have been all kinds of discussions with various Christian communities, and they all appear to be moving further and further from communion with Rome. Looks like the effort has been pretty one-sided.
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“How can the Ordinariates, created in response to certain Anglicans’ requests for unity with Rome, be considered a detriment to ecumenism? ”
Church Disunited – we’ve contributed in some ways to undermining their stability.
“What is more unified than Anglicans becoming Catholic? ”
– maybe mutual respect, recognition, and cooperation between Catholics and Anglicans, rather than a consumption of the Anglican Church by the Catholic Church … Protestants misunderstand ecumenism according to new RC ecumenism leader
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To Crystal’s two excellent linked articles, I would add the sermon by Archbsp of Canterbury Dr. Michael Ramsey, at the opening of the Lambeth Conference 1968, in which he spoke the following words on unity:
“Unity. Here Christendom is feeling the first tremors of a shaking which would have seemed incredible a few years back. What has been shaken? Much of the old complacency, much of the old contentment with our divided condition, much of the sheer ignorance of one another in theology and in practice, and above all much of the self-consciousness which gave absurdity to the dealings of Christians with Christians. But the shaking has gone deeper still. Christendom has begun to learn that unity comes not by combining this Church with that Church much as they are now, but by the radical altering of Churches in reformation and renewal. It is here that the Vatican Council has had influence far beyond the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. We all are stirred to ask God to show us what things are rightly shaken and the things not shaken which must remain.”
The Archbishop took his theme from Hebrews xii, 27-29. “This phrase ‘yet once more’ indicates the removal of what is shaken in order that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” Perhaps in his enthusiasm he did not realize how long a view one needs to take on that shaking-out process. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Anglican Communion, which has been so preoccupied with challenges to unity, reveals to all the ultimate consequences of V.II approaches to reform? http://anglicanhistory.org/amramsey/lambeth_opening1968.html
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Crystal
It is not just the prospect of unity with Catholics that was put back. Many Anglicans, notably in Africa, refused to go along with this and so the worldwide Anglican faith is split on the issue.
As for the ordinariate it may be worth thinking that those who considered themselves Catholic members of the Anglican faith saw that such moves prevented eventual union with Rome and so sought out the Ordinariate way. Remember that nobody is forced to join the Ordinariate. That may be seen as a split within the Anglican faith.-
Peter,
It’s interesting that the issues they believe are the ones that most cut them off from unity with Rome would be the ordination of women bishops and gay clergy in partnerships. Why have they not worried all this time about issues like the difference in the way the two churches see the eucharist, in the way they see the power of the pope, in the worth given to scripture vs authority, in the importance given to Mary, in the different levels of power given to the laity, in the validity or not of Anglican orders, etc? The fact that they’re only worried about the damage to the hope of unity now, when women are being made bishops, seems to say it’s not unity they’re worried about, it’s women.
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Thanks Crystal
I think you may have missed the point about Anglo-Catholics. They believed that they were fully Catholic whilst members of the Anglican church. Many believed that their orders were valid in Catholic terms and so the question of “re”ordination was delicate. So the theological points you raise are ones where they have not had to change their views. See Fr Hunwicke’s Liturgical notes blog.
Cheers
Peter
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Personally, I lament the loss of commonly agreed to texts. Catholics and Protestants live their daily lives in the reality that funerals, weddings, and baptisms, take each other into one another’s churches. As Roman Catholics “live into” their new Mass translation, they may actually find comfort in attending the occasional Episcopal or Lutheran liturgy where the prayers, as they have come to know them, are still prayed and the responses are still “And also with you.”
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“Among the many things the New Regime hates, high on their list is ecumenism”.
Yes, the situation is much graver than most people realize. To many in the Vatican, the Second Vatican Council is merely a blip on the radar screen of history — and good riddance to it. Just as after the damage of the French Revolution the Catholic Restoration brought a revitalized Catholicism up to the time of Pius XII, so the new Restoration inaugurated by JP2 (who praised Pius IX as a great pope and had him beatified along with John XXIII) is supposed to turn back the damage wrought by Vatican II and expel the smoke of Satan from the Church. The new restoration connects with the old restoration in its cult of Fatima etc. JP2 had at times an openness to other religions but this has been downgraded under B16 — the Secretariate for this being fused with the one for Culture. Some lip service is paid to Vatican II — by selective quotation, highlighting the conservative parts of the text and often leaving the surrounding innovations unmentioned — with the insinuation that any such innovation sins against “continuity” and must be decontaminated. The Vatican today do not believe in Vatican II; they consider it an immature council that may have had some merely pastoral relevance at the time but that has shown itself a failure in the longer perspective as discerned by the Holy See and the Curia.
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And foremost among those in the Vatican repudiating the council is the Congregation for Divine Mercy and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
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You’re not a bishop are you, Gerard?
Making fun of a Roman dicastery is actually a crime, along with thinking out loud and speaking one’s mind, under the “I am the Law” rules operating in the Vatican, punishable, for bishops, by removal from office.
And that’s before one starts dealing with the further and more heinous crime of making fun of a series of Polish-flag-inspired nationalistic devotions allegedly revealed supernaturally to a demented religious sister, banned for years by the Vatican but favoured by a former Archbishop of Krakow . . .
But you might remain safe if you keep your comments in this language – judging by much of the Pell-Moroney-Ward Missal to which they’ve given the confirmatio, there’s obviously no one in that dicastery who understands written English.
(Shades of “Don’t you still have family living in Berlin?”)
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It’s over 7 years ago, but it’s still current:
Noel Debien: So what actually happened to stop the Catholic church from participating in the Consultation on Common Texts and the other ecumenical consultation bodies?
Horace T. Allen: Liturgiam Authenticam. Read the paragraphs towards the end where it says the Catholic bodies concerned, mixed bodies concerned with the liturgy are not to engage in dialogue with other bodies, mixed bodies, if they do not sufficiently represent their churches or ecclesial bodies, or are not of sufficient numbers. Thus, Liturgiam Authenticam just took a direct shot at this whole consultative structure that had been built up beginning in ’64, and it worked. Out they went. The bishops’ committee the liturgy here in the US was represented by a certain Father Moroney, and every time the consultation meets, we meet twice a year in New York City, a general seminary, and every time we meet the first thing is reports from denominations. Increasingly Moroney’s report was a tight, or a duplicated statement which he handed out and read, and would take questions if we wished. But on one occasion he couldn’t be there, and he sent a nun who was working with the office, the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy he sent this nun and she handed out the same thing, but mistakenly, duplicated the copy he, Moroney, had given her which said at the top ‘Read this document but do not comment on it’, and she handed that out. You cannot imagine a more effective slap in the face to ecumenical partners in an enterprise that then was 30 years old.
see it all here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1099662.htm
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The problem with this entire line of argument is that at least so far as the Church of England is concerned it simply isn’t true. The CoE does *not* generally use the 1973 or 1975 ICET texts and has not done so for years. They either use BCP 1662 texts (whether or not its actually a BCP service) or (in Common Worship, since 2000) the 1988 ELLC text. So they already did make their own unilateral move away from common texts. They were thinking about -and in some places did – adopt the 1998 text – but then if the argument is solely about us all using the same texts there’s nothing to stop them adopting the final text we end up with either. (At least I hope not, insert Jeffrey Tucker’s usual copyright rant here)
In my experience the core texts actually used Sunday by Sunday up and down the country for Gloria and Creed in particular are very often the BCP ones, even in Common Worship services.
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You are making a distinction without a difference. ELLC is a continuation of ICET [and of CCT]. If the RCC is not party to the minor changes from ICET to ELLC, it is from lack of continuing participation by the RCC as described above.
The nothing to stop them argument is a return to ignoring who has deliberately created the discontinuity.
No one has yet answered my detective story question, “Who benefits” by deliberately removing ecumenically accepted translations in order to make RC language distinctive, as called for by LA#40?
Baker, Zarembo, Howard, Hayden, anyone toward the curial viewpoint?
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“. . . there’s nothing to stop them adopting the final text we end up with either.”
Except perhaps sensitivities to the quality (or lack thereof) of the translation. There are good reasons that many of the collects, and one of the Eucharistic Prayers, in Common Worship were taken from the corpus of material prepared for the 1998 Sacramentary.
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Seems a bit rich for an Anglican to be dismayed at the internal affairs of RC liturgy. Many Catholic were rightly dismayed, along with Orthodox, when the Anglicans proceeded with the ordination of women despite the adverse ecumenical consequences, and despite being strongly advised not to attempt such a thing.
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So you’re saying, Mark, that because Anglicans did something with “adverse ecumenical consequences” they now cannot have a voice on liturgical matters?
Should similar restrictions apply to the Roman Catholic Church, given its history on, say, clerical child sex abuse?
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Thanks, Peter. Much to think about.
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And to you too Crystal.
A couple of Anglicans in my running club say that what dismays about the CofE is the absence of any obvious sticking point. It is not the individual changes such as women clergy that cause concern but the feeling that the CofE looks not to the teaching of Jesus but to a democratic consensus. They would use different words.
Fr Hunwicke is fun and rather scholarly. Happy reading.
Cheers
Peter
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William Baker: The problem with this entire line of argument is that at least so far as the Church of England is concerned it simply isn’t true. The CoE does *not* generally use the 1973 or 1975 ICET texts and has not done so for years.
Incorrect, I’m afraid.
(a) As Tom already pointed out, the 1988 ELLC texts are simply the ICET 1971 texts re-copyrighted.
(b) Rather more importantly, a proportion of members of the Church of England have for many years been using not merely the ICET/ELLC texts of the Order of Mass but the entire 1973 Roman Missal. Some of these have now joined the Catholic Church via the Ordinariate, bringing their “patrimony” with them (!), but many remain in the Anglican communion.
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Did it ever occur to Rome in taking into account the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate, there are many more Anglicans who strongly object to the ordination of women, or to ordaining openly gay priests who aren’t in any way associated with the Anglo Catholic wing? They would never dream of joining Ordinariate, and they use the 1664 BCP or the 1928 rite.
Catholics seem to have a hard time realizing most Anglicans are not “high church”. They see themselves as part of the protestant or reformed tradition and they glory in it.
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