Pray Tell reported earlier on the “Misguided Missal” website. Now the National Catholic Reporter has a story on it – “Group offers petitions, protest letters to Catholics unhappy with translation.”
More from “Misguided Missal”
Comments
84 responses to “More from “Misguided Missal””
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Do they really think that petitions will make a difference? The bishops seemed to totally ignore the 22,000+ who signed What if We Just Said Wait.
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Where in Canon Law did you read that the Roman Catholic Church is a democracy?
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Ray, I make it a point never to think a single thought that isn’t in Canon Law. 😉
But seriously, your comment suggests that you’ve constrained the subject into political rather than theological categories in your own mind.
Try this: It is about communication within a community of disciples. It’s about serving the mission of Jesus Christ together, with mutual respect and discernment of the Spirit. If 22,000 members of the Christian faithful politely told me something, I’d feel it appropriate to listen carefully and to respond with respect and attention to what they are saying.
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I tend to agree with Rita. The bishops don’t appear to care much at all about their constituency. Their loyalty is clearly to those with the power to advance their careers.
Meanwhile I am working on a new theory. It has been said that a period of post-conciliar “experimentation” has been brought to an end by Redemptionis Sacramentum, the GIRM, Liturigam Authenticam and the Ratio Tranlationis. In effect, however, a brand new period of experimentation has begun.
The theory of “A Sacred Vernacular” has been proposed, and a huge experiment has begun to see if a sacral vernacular will result in the retention of practicing Catholics and the reacquisition of those who have lapsed.
The bishops seem to have thrown in all their chips and are taking a wild gamble on the sacral vernacular theory – so we are taking a step beyond mere experimentation and wagering the future of the Church in the English-speaking world on an the unproven theory of a handful of powerful prelates.
“Leaders” who are willing to throw the dice in such a flagrant, desperate attempt to forward their own careers will be the last ones to care about petitions and other expressions of concern on the part of those entrusted to their care.
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Well said, Jim. The great “sacral vernacular experiment” is on and we’re the lab rats!
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Thanks Rita, and thanks for your hard work on this very important blog.
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Or we can think of ourselves as pioneers? But I don’t think sacral vernacular is that new.
But on the bright side, at least some people here will understand the feelings of apprehension when the liturgy changed in the 1970s. Or the feelings some poor members of Christ’s faithful have to endure with ad-libbing Priests, readers who don’t actually read the texts, or Dioceses telling people not to kneel at their accustomed places in the Mass. Maybe at the end of it all, we will gain greater compassion of each other?
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Putting “sacral” in front of “vernacular” and hoping to make it mean something is, in my opinion, rather like putting “pinkish” in front of “blue”. If it’s vernacular, it is vernacular. If it is not vernacular, why insult us by using that word?
Vernacular is the native language of a place. It is not “some words lifted from the dictionary of a place and thrown down in random order”. There is very little native about the language of the 2010 missal.
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Simon,
About gaining compassion for each other, I certainly hope so. Up to now, there has been none whatsoever for many of the laypeople in the Church. Some people generally have felt perfectly justified in saying awful things about the laity in the pews, things that were not at all warranted. We have been poked, prodded, scolded on a regular basis, lit up like Las Vegas, subjected to words in hymns that don’t make any sense at all like “sing a new church,” and finally called too stupid to understand anything more than a 4-word sentence. And I’m not complaining about what was done to us in 1960-1970. I’m complaining about what’s routinely done to us now. It needs to stop, and stop now. This kind of behavior is not Christian in the most basic sense of the word.
Paul, vernacular, particularly in the case of English vernacular, is NOT merely the language of A place. English is spoken throughout the world, from Manchester to Los Angeles to Bangalore. And it has a history of great literature which is widely known internationally. The English you speak is a particular dialect of English and if it’s modern American English, it’s a rather poverty-stricken dialect of it, as the English language goes. English didn’t even originate in the US, you know; English-speakers from England, my family among them, brought it here in the 1600s and it was fully recognizable as English then, even though it was somewhat different in vocabulary and prosody than ours now. It’s not reasonable to think that everything should be driven by the abbreviated and shallow modern American sense of English, in the style of a lowest common denominator. Moreover, other languages take as their base the English translation, so it needs to be closer to the Latin than it has been. Think of someone besides yourself, Paul.
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Jan, thank you once again for insulting me.
I am English. I live in England. I had, mostly, noticed that the language we use here is English. The clue is, after all, in the name. I often despair at what our American cousins have done to the language, but really, truly, the language of the 2010 missal is not vernacular English, nor vernacular American, nor vernacular New Zealand, nor vernacular Australian. None of the English-speaking Indians I know use language in that way either.
I note that you also do not use English in the way we find it in the 2010 Missal. Why is that? Do you fear that nobody around you will understand it?
Not even Shakespeare used language as hard to understand as that. Sure, his vocabulary was a little different, yet he never structured his text in such a way as to make the meaning quite so hard to decipher as our good friends at Vox Clara have. I haven’t read very much Chaucer either, but he also didn’t layer the clauses so deeply, and he used the vernacular of his day.
Because I disagree with you, that means that I think only of myself? Nice move. No. I think of the beautiful six year old sat next to me as I type this., who is going to learn that he has to construct sentences using complex language and arcane vocabulary if he is to pray to his creator and his redeemer. He learns that the church is far removed from his life, and lacks relevance and currency.
He may stay. I pray that he does.
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Jan,
I neglected to address a couple of points in my last note…
If the English translation is used as a base for other translations, then it is being used for a purpose other than that for which it has been designed. As it has been suggested on this forum (by awr, I think), if the English text has two disparate uses, maybe we need two disparate English texts. One intended for translation, which sticks as close to the Latin as possible, and one intended for prayer and proclamation that works in that context. Forcing one text to do two such different things is going to mean that it can do neither well.
Having lived in the fair city of Manchester for three years, I can confidently state that the vernacular of that place would scare you silly.
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Not even Shakespeare used language as hard to understand as that. Sure, his vocabulary was a little different, yet he never structured his text in such a way as to make the meaning quite so hard to decipher as our good friends at Vox Clara have.
I can’t answer for Shakespeare off the top of my head, but Milton’s Paradise Lost is definitely more baroquely structured than the new collects.
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What a laugh attempting to compare (It would make some sense to contrast them.) Milton’s Paradise Lost with the new interlinear hybrid of English words and Latin syntax!
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Hi Paul,
As a colour-blind person, I do have difficulties identifying pink, blue and purple. Thanks for saying that the way I try to convey what I see, despite my deficiency, insulting.
That there are different registers of a vernacular is quite obvious. I could have conveyed the point in the first paragraph quite differently, but I respect you as a child of God. That there could be different register in liturgical prayer is not difficult – Chinese has it.
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Simon,
I’m going to assume that you’re not deliberately missing my point.
Having never seen you write “pinkish blue”, you can safely assume that I was not poking fun at colour-blind people, merely suggesting something that is logically impossible.
I apologise for offence caused.
Paul.
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Jan Baldwin, that other translations are made from the English is not an argument for producing an English translation with Latin syntax for liturgical use. It is an argument for producing a study version of that kind which may be used to make other translations but which is inappropriate for use in the liturgy in an English-language context, inappropriate for public proclamation and inappropriate for prayer.
And by the way, it’s ‘different from’ not ‘different than.’
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I sincerely wish that the editors of this website would stop encouraging protest and dissent. This will not stop the implementation of the new Missal. It will not bring about change in the short-term.
What might be effective is a concerted effort to educate and persuade officials in the American hierarchy and in the Curia in Rome.
Newsflash: the Catholic Church is not a democracy. It is a monarchy. Democratic political techniques — like petitions, e.g. — do not work. In fact, they exacerbate one’s opponents — particularly when those opponents understand how court politics work and endeavor within those boundaries.
Remember: only 40 years ago, the perspective driving the dissent represented by the “Misguided Missal” website was in the ascendant. It has been supplanted now because the alternative position’s adherents worked diligently within the existing structures to bring about the change we’re currently undergoing.
The answer is not to blow up the structure; nor is the answer to take your ball and go home. The answer is to live with the change for now (like the currently ascendant folks did for 40 years) and work your butt off to win the future.
In the meantime, the negativity is getting annoying.
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We all know that the leaders of the Church have conducted themselves as monarchs at least since the 4th century. But Jesus taught unequivocally that those who aspire to places of honor (i.e. James & John) must be willing to be servants for “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve”. The apostles were warned not to conduct themselves like worldly leaders. So where did this idea of monarchy come from? It clearly came from the imperial courts of both the East and the West. The Church was immersed in a world whose traditional order was crumbling. Its leaders sought to exercise power that would bring about a new Divine Order. The intentions were no doubt pure, but as Lord Acton would observe much later: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Huge numbers of Catholics including lots of upper and lower clergy along with countless laity were convinced that Vatican II had ushered in an unanticipated but refreshing and sweeping change in how the Church conducts itself in the world. We knew that religious orders had practiced forms of leadership which permitted the full participation of all members. We knew that the Pope himself is elected through a process that requires participation of all Cardinals. Now it appeared that a more collegial form of leadership would be practiced by Popes and bishops alike. Structures emerged (synods, episcopal conferences, and regional conferences) that confirmed this observation. Diocesan and parish councils became commonplace. Surely we didn’t imagine all these more “democratic” structures.
Then came the reaction. The “spirit of Vatican II” was hatched as the overarching bogeyman responsible for abuses and errors that were ruining the church. A longing for a return to monarchical ways reared its head with a vengeance. A coup overthrew ICEL. Vox Clara was spawned. LA was imposed. And the rest of history is unfolding as we speak.
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What might be effective is a concerted effort to educate and persuade officials in the American hierarchy and in the Curia in Rome.
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Both have had 42 years to be educated. They either failed the course, or never bothered to attend class. What’s more this is not an issue of good or bad translations. It is an issue of power politics.
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Two strategies adopted by “misguided missal” are intriguing: 1) the anonymity of the leadership, and 2) waiting until a month has passed of experience of the new missal before gearing up fully.
Those strategies might work well if one assumes that the new Missal will be a big catastrophe. If that happens the web site could be seen as merely helping people rather than as fomenters of dissent, as a movement from below rather from above.
The local parish which began using “and with your spirit” in late September is still struggling with it now more than a month later. Now they announce before the Mass that there are five times for saying “and with your spirit.” Before the first one, the priest says “and now for the first time,” then “and now for the second time”, etc. The five reminders get compliance but how long are these extra phases going to continue. Perhaps some people just decided they liked the old way and will go back to it when the priest is no longer coaching their behavior. I would have thought everyone would have learned the thing within a month.
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Dylan, your post contains a lot of wisdom. The let’s “blow up the structure” stuff is interesting. I had no idea that a few people really felt so strongly about a political view that they might try that, but apparently I was wrong on that point.
We shall see, Jack. I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next. One thing is sure — it will be interesting.
[I’m laughing at the demands for openness and collegiality that hide behind a website, refusing to be open. Do some people not notice these contradictions or do they wish to ignore them?]
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Well, they’re not bishops accountable (supposedly) to the whole church, so I don’t think it’s a valid comparison. They’re a private group of the faithful. Furthermore, it is the church authorities who have created the situation in which Catholics aren’t free to speak out without possibly suffering reprisal. So their need to remain confidential is entirely understandable to me, and it takes nothing from the strength of their rightful calls for church leadership to be open and transparent.
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What about the thousands of people who have agonized over the previous translation and have waited for this new Missal for decades? What do you do Father with their rightful aspirations? Those who are pleased with the work, acknoledging it could be better, nevertheless implementing it and teaching their lay parishoners the parts that will be changing? So it is only Bishops that you think should be open and transparent?
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“[I]t takes nothing from the strength of their rightful calls for church leadership to be open and transparent.”
Some of us would disagree with that assertion. Personally, I think it utterly empties their calls.
Demanding transparency while remaining hidden under the cloak of anonymity: you can’t spin that into a virtuous act by blaming it all on the “authorities”. They boast of their advanced degrees and cleverness, yet their facelessness makes this impossible to actually verify. They want “dialogue”, “consultation”, “collaboration”, yet their self-enforced anonymity makes that impossible. They want “brave leadership”, yet are unwilling to set the example they themselves are demanding!
Their desire to remain anonymous may be understandable, but that doesn’t make it right. It is sheer hypocrisy! They can’t criticise bishops and priests for being concerned about promotions, power and red hats while they themselves are so concerned about “reprisals” and their own possible loss of influence/power that they remain nameless.
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Mr Hazell, your contribution exhibits a certain dogmatic intransigence and naivety, at the same time.
The culture in which we are operating is one of secrecy and cloak-and-dagger. Bishops, priests, religious and laity are being “delated” to Rome. Behind-the-scenes (usually priest-) secretaries in nunciatures across the globe are cutting and pasting reports from local newspapers to the Vatican on a weekly basis recording the views of all on religious matters. They’re taking stock of who has ever said anything in favour of women priests or married priests; who has spoken in favour of general absolution; who has spoken in favour of recognising Anglican or Lutheran orders etc. so that they can block them from being appointed to lead diocesan churches.
And you pick on this group for acting anonymously?
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Jan Baldwin, you are behaving like a troll: (Wikipedia:) a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
Please keep your tone down, or else people will learn to ignore your comments.
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Fr. Ruff,
I’m not sure what kind of reprisal you might mean, unless the people in question are employees of the Church or secular faithful who happen to be secular priests of some particular diocese.-
I believe those are specifically the kind of reprisals that would take place.
No diocesan priest or church employee can speak the truth about the Vox Clara text without endangering her/his career.
I guess that goes particularly for bishops.
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Fr. Blue & Paul (excellent, concise analysis above) – this is a just posted article by Rita Ferrone on a different issue and yet the dynamics of papal, episcopal, and clerical behaviors rings true if you replace “sex abuse” with “new translation”.
Key points:
“The first is the mistaken belief that a diocese is run by the bishop and the priests together. “The fact is we are totally excluded from any say . . . Priests are effectively disenfranchised.”
The other difficulty is loyalty. Priests live isolated lives. “The dynamic of our ministry is that friends are very few and far between, but there is extraordinarily strong loyalty among the clergy. We were not people who would challenge the status quo. Those who would were weeded out in the seminary.” Then there is the perennial problem of being “at the bishop’s mercy” in relation to transfers and advancement. And thus the silence. Does it all sound a bit self-serving? “Yes, it’s fair to say that it was self-serving. That lack of moral courage.
…..The liturgists were amazed because they presumed there was no opposition, as they hadn’t seen it before,” says Hoban. . . .
It demonstrates what a cold place the church can be for a dissident, says Hoban. “And we have reaped the whirlwind . . .”
Second key point is taken from a book by a MN priest, “Clerical Culture”:
– If we are serious about changing the conditions which enabled (@new translation), we must look at clerical culture.
– His analysis of the “contradictions” that shape the particular world that Catholic clergy inhabit is incisive.
Formed Inside Clerical Culture for Responsibility Outside It
Promised to Celibacy but Ill-Equipped to Live It
Accountable Within Clerical Culture for Ministry Outside It
Priests Are Dependent and Independent
Shepherd of the Flock and Corporate CEO
Priests Are Highly Circumscribed in Ministry Yet Broadly Trusted
Wanting Relationships in Ministry But Obliged to Caution
A Community Leader But Personally Lonely
Ministers of Unity in a Fractured Clerical Culture
Called to Simplicity But Living in Privilege
Moral Authorities in Public But Privately WinkingThe section about winking alone is worth the price of the whole book. It notes that not only priests and bishops, but also the laity on parish pastoral councils and in parishes “look the other way” at sexual misconduct, mismanagement of parish funds, and putting forward false reasons for decisions that are made, even when they’re known to be false.
While cold, judgmental attitudes on the part of priests are out of order, so, too, is the failure to draw proper moral boundaries or laughing about it. … [P]riests’ winking signals a certain decay in the clerical culture as a whole. It suggests that, at some level, the members of the culture think that their convenience is more important than the Gospel, that their discomfort about engaging one another to think again outweighs moral virtue, that sustaining the illusion of warm feelings toward one another is more critical than ill-using or scandalizing the faithful.”
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Bill, thank you for referencing my review at Verdicts.
Here is the link, if anyone is interested.
http://commonwealmagazine.org/verdicts/?p=705
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The local parish which began using “and with your spirit” in late September is still struggling with it now more than a month later.
Well, realistically, people who have said “and also with you” for 40 years just aren’t going to learn “and with your spirit” in a month. They will eventually learn it, though. The past has shown that people who said “et cum spiritu tuo” for 40 years learned to say “and also with you.”
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Actually, they did. I’ve been to a few parishes in my archdioese, and no one has problems with “And with your spirit” after one month. They still have problems with adding “holy” to the response to the Orate fratres.
In fact, we changed the translation of the Our Father too to follow the rest of the English world. Some still make mistakes with that, but most are getting it.
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I am curious what supporters of a different translation, or the shelved 98 translation, or the revoked 73 translation would say to all the people who love the new translation, work to implement in their parishes and support their Priests and Bishops who have done their best to make implementation as smooth as possible. If your agenda would be accomplished and you destroy support for the new Missal we have what would you say to all those people? And there will be many…Thousands and thousands of people are going to be using it and have been preparing for it for a long time. Do you just say now we are doing it my way? The same that you feel is being done to you, now? Because you would have too. Because you will never get the entire Catholic Church to agree and cheer in unison for any translation. So all you are advocating is putting the power to decide back in your hands for what would be favorable to you this time around and cast aside another group, those satisfied and happy, creating turmoil where none existed before. I truly hope and pray this whole Missal translation experience turns into a realization that for many reasons Latin should be used for the part of Mass that is unchanging, just as Popes have said and the Vat II Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy asked for. The less vernacular, the less to argue about.
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Amen.
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Personally, I would tell them to sit down with an 8-year-old child and read some of the prayers to them, and ask them what the hell that was about. These 8-year-olds are taking their first Communion, their second major stage of initiation into our church. They are future priests, bishops and popes.
Are we telling them that this language, far removed to anything they experience in everyday life, is more holy than the language they know? Are we telling them that God is this huge and distant creature of Mind that we cannot pray to in our own words? Are we only able to talk to him using arcane language? Are we telling our children that they need to wait until they’ve got degree-level theology before they can thank God that their friend is going to be OK after falling from a tree?
This is what I would say to them. I find the language exclusive. My children simply cannot understand it.
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Not exactly my question. We are assuming they have done that being that they have embraced the translation and are teaching their parishes and children. And for those who love it, and with a bit of active participation, have looked things up that may have been unfamiliar, they continue to embrace it as part of the evolution of the vernacular until the next translation rolls around, perhaps in their children’s lifetime. What do you say to all these people who despite your roadblocks, say their children are learning it and they support it? If a child could not understand Algebra many a parent gets down into the books and makes sure they help them to get it before a test. Why shouldn’t it be the same for a few new vocabulary words? And Algebra is alot harder than this Missal. The children will persevere and surprise everyone. They are one smart bunch today.
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Mitch, it’s far more than just a few new words. It’s a whole new way of constructing sentences.
I stongly dispute your assertion that algebra is harder than this new language structure. Algebra is really really easy and takes about five minutes to explain to a child.
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I would say that they’re probably vastly outnumbered by those with a significantly different point of view.
And for many reasons, Latin should be eliminated from the Mass. That’s not going to happen – even in my parish we use a little bit of Latin sometimes, but not much and rarely, which is ok. We use Spanish sometimes too. And occasionally other languages. But, we have at last count more than 40 first languages among the parishoners.
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Mitch, we would say let’s have both. And why not?
The Episcopalians have Rite 1 and Rite 2, these translations are similar to the 1973 translation and the 2011 translation.
We have lots of choices in liturgy, why not this?
We can receive in the hand or on the tongue.
We have many other Eucharistic Prayers other than the Roman Rite I.
We have several styles of Reconciliation.
We have several styles of Baptism.
We have the OM and the EM.
Why not two translations?-
Because the ones in power don’t like the 1973 (or 1998)translations. They don’t want people to prefer it. They want it to go away.
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Because the very existence of options and choices drives the most ardent traditionalists crazy. There’s a raft of tired talking points about how bad that is…..
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Gerry, when in the past did the people respond “et cum spiritu tuo”? Certainly not in the Tridentine mass I grew up with. Only the altar server made those responses.
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Perhaps your parish did not have a Dialogue Mass but that does not mean it was not allowed or around in other Diocease.
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The dialogue Mass in my large Boston 1950s-60s parish was only for us school students. Sunday dialogue Mass would take longer than 45 minutes — horrors!
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In my parish, everyone did, Anne. Apparently not all parishes were alike in this respect. Now that I think of it, we did it at the diocesan cathedral here too. I clearly remember it. We sang too.
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Dylan — The Church is not a democracy, I agree. But the Church is a monarchy? I didn’t find that anywhere in the Dognmatic Constituion on the Church. Which Lumen Gentium translation are you reading??
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There is only one thing that will make the bishops pay attention. Stop giving money.
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RP, true the laity has that option. Those of us who were suckered in by the “bait and switch” don’t have options that are quite that simplistic.
Actually, if you look at the data, what you suggest is already happening. The second largest denomination is “lapsed Catholics,” many of which are now contributing to fundamentalist megachurches.
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Two things, first, I do not think WWIII, in the Catholic Church, will errupt over this text. Most people in the pew will hardly notice the difference. No, WWIII, will errupt over ceremonial and music. Secondly, I truly believe we are in the process of dividing into High, Broad, Low, and perhaps a few Ultrahigh parishes. Perhaps we are already there.
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The only problem with having liturgically high/low/broad churches is the way priests are assigned to parishes. Around here, the priests change every 6-12 years. It seems that priests, regardless of how liberal, conservative, or pastoral they consider themselves to be, like to change things to suit their taste. That means the liturgically progressive church might get a “reform of the reform” priest who changes everything followed by another progressive a few years later who changes it back. Another example would be how our Traditional Latin Mass community had to find another parish when the new pastor ended up not liking traditional liturgy and the old Latin Mass.
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If you would excuse the technical term, BINGO!
I see nothing wrong with parishes ranging from ultra high to low – especially in the United States with so many sub-cultures. I agree that the real problem is clergy coming in and treating the entire parish community as a personal fief. In the worst cases, entire parish staffs are fired and replaced with syncophants. I know of one parish that very carefully remodeled and updated its 40 year old building only to have the current pastor come in and add statues, shrines and windows at random. What was a coherent whole is now a mish-mash, much of it kitsch! In another case, a priest disbanded a Latin men’s choir. While I find the Latin Mass cold, others in the area do appreciate it. There is a weekly Latin Mass in a near-by parish. Why couldn’t these groups have been been brought together to their mutual enrichment?
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My bishop has not disturbed the rectories of the diocesan “high church” parishes. These parishes celebrate both the EF and OF. The OF is “tridentinized” for lack of a better term (ad orientem, choreography by Fortescue, etc.). Not surprisingly, there is no opposition to the new translation at these parishes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pastors have already unpacked the new Roman Missal and set the ribbons for Advent I.
Both parishes are financially self-sustaining and have very devoted parishioners of all backgrounds. The churches also act as collectors for clergy who would have serious difficulties fitting into the culture of a progressive parish.
I don’t see why more bishops create parishes that are safe havens for high church clergy and laity. Some priests should probably not be moved, since doing so would upset parishioners at the old church and unsettle or even anger parishioners at the new church.
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Ray Marshall, where in Canon Law did you read the Catholic Church is a dictatorship or to be controlled by a few?
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William,
Ray never implied that. Really, dictatorship and oligarchy aren’t the only alternatives to democracy. There isn’t even only one model of democracy. And how to apply secular government models to describe the Church is itself quite a convoluted matter.
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They did precisely that towards the end of the second century. Why do you think bishops still wear purple clothes?
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My dear Simon, did I say that dictatorship and oligarchy are the only alternatives to dictatorship? Now that you have mentioned them, it seems they are the models that are being followed. What is Vox Clara? They are not bright. They do not know or understand English but they do control now, don’t they?
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Dearly beloved William,
If the Church is not a democracy, as Ray said, there are other possible descriptors besides dictatorship and control by a few. But I wonder why you should make reference to these, since I wouldn’t.
I’ll leave judgement of whether they know or don’t know English to someone more qualified than I am.
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In order to characterise, you observe the behaviour and see what it looks like.
We have a pope. What he says goes. In simple terms, this is the very definition of a monarchy.
In a dictatorship, it is common for the person at the top to have a large group of loyal followers who constantly jockey for position and try to further their goals within the organisation. A dictatorship is often sustained by keeping people in their place, and fostering a network of informants at all levels of society, such that dissent is a perilous occupation.
In a secular dictatorship, people’s lives and the lives of their families are threatened. In a sacred dictatorship, the stakes are even higher, as it is the people’s immortal souls that are on the line.
So, when you look at it, the Church looks more like a dictatorship than a monarchy at the moment, and I wholeheartedly support Misguided Missal’s policy of anonymity.
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I don’t think we are just wrestling with a translation here, or even with the inner workings of ecclesial decision-making. Our final use of the liturgy we know ‘by heart’ will happen on the Solemnity of Christ the King, with a gospel reading from Matthew that shows us the King of Kings and Lord of Lords standing in judgment over all of creation. But his judgment of each of us rests upon the remarkable statement that whatever we did to ‘the least’, we did to Jesus himself. This gospel passage gives us both the transcendent Christ the Lord as well as the immanent Jesus who intimately identifies himself with every single one of us, whatever our vocabulary or education or station in life. Aren’t we required to address our public prayer to the Jesus who is one with the beggar as well as the Christ who reigns in endless glory? Isn’t the whole point of the Eucharist the mystery that stands at the heart of this God who is both transcendent and immanent, king and servant, priest and sacrifice, shepherd and lamb, sower of the wheat-field and bread that is broken?
How odd that the prayer that Jesus himself taught us is so simple, yet we can only address him worthily as a community if we use some sort of ‘sacral’ and other-worldly language. It seems to me that the new and very Roman Missal returns us to the almost exclusively transcendent Christ of the Council of Trent, when the faithful gazed at the far-off altar and prayed the rosary while the clergy, backs turned at the high altar, spoke in a language only the Lord Almighty could hear or understand.
I mourn the loss of balance in what is being imposed. What a shame that we can’t continue to work with the vision in this statement: “The liturgy has dimensions both local and universal, time-bound and eternal, horizontal and vertical, subjective and objective. It is precisely these tensions which give to Catholic worship its distinctive character” -John Paul II In a talk to US bishops in 1998.-
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, Glenn. I might be misunderstanding you, and for that I reget it, but why must the lowest denominator be the language that makes everyone feel “at one” with the Lord.
The new liturgial texts are not in any way so inaccessible either. There may be flaws here and there, but to say “that the new and very Roman Missal returns us to the almost exclusively transcendent Christ”? If anything, the new translation has a much better balance in the tension between the supposed 2 extremes than anything that we have seen so far in the 1973 or 1998 texts.
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Simon,
The Church’s mission is to serve the poor. This does not mean just those lacking money, but any who are lacking in whatever God wants for them.
Sacral language is a choice for the elite. God does not need it, preferring humble hearts. It is for the initiate, the elite who have been given “catchesis” to understand it. Not a true catechesis that echoes Christ, but one that teaches a second language as the way to encounter Christ. It is not the choice the Church should make IMO. At the very least, the Church should try to speak to be heard and understood not just by the people in the pews, but by everyone.
That is a rejection of a guiding principle of LA. Whether this translation lives up to this I cannot say. It seems to have fallen short on most of LA’s other principles. But this is not a question of implementation, but a critique of principles. Will the new translation speak to the hearts of the poor? Does it even try?
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Jim,
a) The Church is not just a super-duper social service agency. It’s a lot of things to a lot of people, and rightly so. Even in Scripture, it’s that way. Too bad more Catholics don’t know Scripture.
b) There are many ways to characterize the word “poor.” Mother Teresa used to say that Americans were citizens of the poorest nation on earth, because they tended to have no sense of the holy and the good. The American culture encourages us to treat everything as if it were a commodity and things that can’t be transmogrified into a commodity get lost here.Here’s something new to consider: What if the poor are those who cannot get anything out of an overly simplified text or a song such as “Sing a New Church?” In fact that song has been mentioned many times by laypeople as quite completely incomprehensible in the context of Catholic worship. How about that?
Or another one: What if the poor are those in the pews who have been treated like dumb worthless crap for decades because no one apparently thinks they can read. But they can! They are good businessmen, doctors, scholars, scientists, craftsmen and civil servants-and more-who go about their lives very well, and many of them can apparently read better than the liturgists can, based on what the liturgists say and do. And they’ve read many of the documents of the Church and know what’s in them!! But they are poor because they are still treated like garbage by the pompous lay ministers who deign to call them names, scold them and attribute illiteracy to them every single Sunday.
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Your charges are at best exaggerated, at worst scurrilous and false. I’ve been around for 70 years and have served many parishes. Your point of view may reflect only things that you believe or personal preferences. The church has been flourishing in my area as people are called to holiness within the context of a worship experience that truly praises God while nurturing our love of neighbor and self.
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Jan,
For the most part, I agree with what you have written, though I do not much like the pompous tone. But you apparently don’t like it either? The Church is meant to be Catholic, all encompassing, so all needs should be met. Not an easy task at any time or place, but one entrusted to us by Christ.
These things are only made harder by sacral language. If we cannot speak to people as they speak, they cannot hear the riches we have to offer. The text should enable us to speak eloquently to others of what we believe, but it cannot if we can only use it in Church.
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Simon- Although I never used the word “feel”, I have no problem with the terms “lowest” and “everyone” to refer to the people of God gathered to pray. Jesus spent his days on earth among the lowest of common people, telling them stories, expressing the most profound truths about God and life and eternity by using vivid images of sheep and fishnets, harvests and lost coins, water and bread.
The new missal, in returning to the language of Trent, locks in place a vocabulary both far removed from the common people of the 16th century and also from the people of the 21st century. Clearly the Council Fathers of Trent were not attempting to shape a liturgy that would be understood by the people of God gathered to pray, since most 16th century churchgoers were uneducated and didn’t speak Latin. The council’s theology was strongly rooted in the transcendent, the universal, in God as approachable only by the pure intellect. Read your neo-scholastics.
The counterweight of God as immanent, embodied in a particular time and place, approachable in all the messiness and unpredictability of human experience, was not welcome in their theology. We find it in the gospels juxtaposed with the transcendent, but we are hard pressed to find it in the theology of the Council of Trent.
So why have we chosen to freeze our prayer at that one particular point in the evolving liturgy of the church? Were 16th century church members holier than 1st century or 9th century or 21st century church members? Was the 16th century heierarchy closer to God than the apostles or Francis of Assisi or Pope John XXIII?
The transcendent and the immanent are not two “supposed” extremes. The debate is ancient and real and important. And language is important, too. If God must be addressed in formal and sacral words, distance is created and maintained. But Jesus said we may also address God as ‘Abba’, ‘Daddy’. No principle of translation should give us one but not the other.-
Jesus [expressed] the most profound truths about God and life and eternity by using vivid images…
And part of the purpose of the new translation is to better represent the vivid imagery present in the prayers of the Mass. “From the rising of the sun to its setting”, the sending of the Holy Spirit being “like the dewfall”, even the busy bees of the Exsultet.
Trent
I’ll have to spend more time with the documents of Trent and the Tridentine Catechism to know if your assessment of Trent’s theology (transcendent to the near-exclusion of immanence) is accurate.
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Did we just shift to talking about the latin texts? I don’t think anyone here suggested to freeze the latin texts in the 16th century. In fact, some people are quite upset that the latin Missale had made quite a bit of changes to the older texts.
The new translation, based on my own experience of praying and listening to the texts, strikes a good balance between God, who is beyond all Names and comprehension, and God who became incarnate and moves among us as man. It is not merely only distant all the time.
Unfortunately, many people posting here tend to exagerate. That’s quite common, I’ve noticed among students, so I’ve learnt to lower their superlatives by afew notchs. But I wonder if some kind of frenzy is being whipped up by some people here.
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Glenn,
I absolutely agree that this is an ancient theological discussion among Christians. I submit to you that what we have now, before November 26:
a) portrays God as nearly completely immanent-as your buddy and your pal-and has for about 40 years, and
b) is intolerant of a portrayal of God as transcendent.Without pretending to conclude that old theological discussion on one side or the other, I would say that with the one extreme completely dominating the other, we have had a problem for the period of time that this has been going on. So, we do need to move back toward a situation where both understandings of the nature of God are readily visible, and rightly, neither excludes the other officially based on our own personal preferences. After all, how these two ideas-immanence and transcendance-relate to each other is still an open question, theologically.
Now, how people pray in the privacy of their own rooms is not my business. But the public face of the Church-which is the liturgy and the people who have authority over it-cannot just lop off characteristics of God based on someone’s personal preferences. God is our “Abba” and he is personal, but he is also the almighty Creator of the all that is, who watches over all and regulates existence by his primal and original goodness, here and in heaven.
The other interesting, but not often clearly thought-about facet of this, is the business of how these theological ideas interplay with the common-sense framework present at any given time in history. I believe that should be discussed with reference to the 16th century before we start indiscriminately heaving rocks and insults at our predecessors in the faith. And honestly, it’s also food for thought now.
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Gerard Flynn :
Mr Hazell, your contribution exhibits a certain dogmatic intransigence and naivety, at the same time.
The culture in which we are operating is one of secrecy and cloak-and-dagger. Bishops, priests, religious and laity are being “delated” to Rome. Behind-the-scenes (usually priest-) secretaries in nunciatures across the globe are cutting and pasting reports from local newspapers to the Vatican on a weekly basis recording the views of all on religious matters. They’re taking stock of who has ever said anything in favour of women priests or married priests; who has spoken in favour of general absolution; who has spoken in favour of recognising Anglican or Lutheran orders etc. so that they can block them from being appointed to lead diocesan churches.
And you pick on this group for acting anonymously?Only comments with a full name will be approved.
And why shouldn’t they do this? It is like any company where its’ employees participate in subterfuge against policy. These Priests knew what the Church was about and swore oaths to defend her when they were supposedly called to God and Ministry. They were not called to topple the Papacy from within. This is simply good business practice. Why would anyone promote individuals whose agenda is to take down the organization by attacking its’ very foundations? This would be foolish. If they no longer agree with their vows they should request to be laicized. Not try to undermine a Church that millions of others support.-
“It is like any company”
That is one of the saddest descriptions of the Church I have ever seen. It’s probably accurate, which makes it even sadder.
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Have you any idea how doctrine develops? To critique the current theological position on any point in order to ensure that it speaks to the women and men of our day is one of the primary responsibilities of every Christian.
You make the church sound as if it’s one of these agencies where the members have no role in developing policy and where their only task is to toe the line without using their God-given intelligence to evaluate what is being proposed. Or you make it appear as if the church is like the Nazi party between the wars in Germany: the line that the Party decides is to be adhered to at all cost. Thinkers not wanted.
What model of faith and belief are you working from?
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No, I just don’t think every member can possibly be consulted. The Vatican is often referred to as a bureaucracy, which would infer too many people involved. So just as you may be upset about the translation process if it had gone another way, a translation to your particular liking I doubt you would be lamenting the fact that not enough people were involved in the consultation process. And from Parish implementation sites and any number of other blogs and personal opinions, there are many people excited, happy, relieved, and edified by this version of translations. And I believe that all those people “think”.
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Jan- I’ve heard “buddy” and “pal” comments before, but I’ve never seen a concrete reference to anything in the current liturgical texts, other than accusing “And also with you” of being the equivalent of “Right back atcha, Father.” (Is that how we talk to buddies? “And also with you”? Seriously?) Could you give some examples?
The current text I have here in front of me is filled with transcendent language- “Almighty and eternal God”, “All glory and honor are yours, Almighty Father”, “As we sing with the angels and saints Your hymn of endless glory,” just to name a very small sample. Yet it is your feeling that for 40 years we have had “the one extreme completely dominating the other.” We could go through it line by line and classify each statement and count them up, but it probably wouldn’t alter the fact that you have felt excluded, and the new missal leaves you feeling vindicated. But how any one of us feels or doen’t feel doesn’t change God, who is relentlessly both transcendent and immanent, universal and particular, omnipresent and intimately present in a personal and individual way. If the church’s liturgy fails to express this balance, people will look for it elsewhere, like the mideval church looked to morality plays and devotions outside of the Mass- or the rosary during Mass.
As for indiscriminately casting rocks at the 16 century church, all I did was accurately describe their dominant theology and suggest people read the neo-scholastics to confirm what I said. Hardly and insult. You would probably enjoy them!-
You’ll find that the neo-scholastics are theologians of the 19th and 20th century and may or may not reflect the opinions of medieval theology. It’s in many ways quite different than medieval theology.
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I suggested reading the neo-scholastics because they tend to embody and enshrine what went on at Trent, as opposed to the earlier scholastics who were more representative of the universitiies. I think I can make a good case for the idea that what was handed on to us as ‘eternal truth” in the 1940’s and ’50’s was a legacy of that neo-scholastic approach. (Sorry about misspelling medieval- my typing skills are sadly lacking.)
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Jesus never intended all of the high classed intellectualizing that is going on here. He took bread……. He took a cup filled with wine….. You all make it sound like you need a
STD in order to have an understanding. It is not that complicated!!!!!!!!!!!-
Well, hard to say. After all, human intellect with all its tortuous excursions is a gift from God Most High. The author of Ecclesiastes too forrayed into tortuous reasoning. Both simple thoughts and complicated reasoning can be pleasing to him as long as they are grounded in Truth, I’d say.
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Was it Aquinas who said: “Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver” ?
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Yes, and what receivers we have! Identify with the poor, like Jesus does. Why are you trying to impress with your intelligence? Will that save you? I am not anti-intellectual. This is getting a bit out of hand.
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Well said, William. Speaking from the perspective of age, I recall how careful the seminaries were in the old days to balance Saint Thomas Aquinas as the rule of study with Thomas a Kempis as the rule of spirituality: “I would rather feel compunction than know how to define it. Write as learnedly as you will about the Holy Trinity, it will get you no thanks from the Holy Trinity if you’re not humble about it. At the end of our lives we shall not be asked what we have read but how we have lived” (The Imitation of Christ, tr Ronald A. Knox, I think: working from a rapidly fading memory).
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Yes, indeed Professor! There was wisdom there.
And what about “Those who go abroad often, seldom become holy.” (Try telling that to certain globe-trotting hierarchs!)
or
“Few are improved by sickness.”
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Brigid Rauch :
If you would excuse the technical term, BINGO!
I see nothing wrong with parishes ranging from ultra high to low – especially in the United States with so many sub-cultures. I agree that the real problem is clergy coming in and treating the entire parish community as a personal fief.One time, when we changed pastors, we found when the new missals for the following year were delivered, that the pastor had “decided” that the new missals would not include the printed text of the readings and psalms. The pastor’s logic was that you were supposed to listen to the readings, not read them.
The next brought the printed readings back, but fired the organist of 30 years, because he wanted the organist work 12 additional hours per week, without any change in pay, and the organist refused, finding a job for more money and less work at a different parish.
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Paul Robertson :
In a secular dictatorship, people’s lives and the lives of their families are threatened. In a sacred dictatorship, the stakes are even higher, as it is the people’s immortal souls that are on the line.
Or at least the church has made sure that we’ve been taught to believe that it is our immortal souls that are on the line.
That’s a powerful way of controlling. “Do what we say and do it our way, or you will be eternally tortured.”
Sounds like a loving God.
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