While celebrating Mass yesterday for the memorial of St. Ambrose, I was struck by the new English translation of the collect:<\/p>\n
O God, who made the Bishop Saint Ambrose \/ a teacher of the Catholic faith \/ and a model of apostolic courage, \/ raise up in your Church men after your own heart \/ to govern her with courage and wisdom\u2026<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t remember any petition in the former translation articulating with such clarity that Church governance be limited to those of the male gender. Sure enough, when I checked the RM1974 translation I discovered this:<\/p>\n
Lord, \/ you made St. Ambrose \/ an outstanding teacher of the Catholic faith \/ and gave him the courage of an apostle. \/ Raise up in your Church more leaders after your own heart, \/ to guide us with courage and wisdom\u2026.<\/p>\n
This, of course, sent me to the underlying Latin text from MR1970-2008:<\/p>\n
Deus, qui beatum Ambrosium episcopum \/ catholicae fidei doctorem \/ et apostolicae fortitudinis exemplum effecisti, \/ excita in Ecclesia tua viros secundum cor tuum, \/ qui eam fortiter et sapienter gubernent\u2026.<\/p>\n
It should be clear that the Latin text definitely refers to human beings of the male gender by its use of \u201cviros\u201d. I assume, therefore, that the request is that God will raise up more men to serve AS BISHOPS in the Church after the model of Ambrose the bishop. In that sense the RM1974 translation probably extended the meaning too widely by referring to \u201cleaders” in general.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, without making it explicit that \u201cmen after God\u2019s heart governing the Church with courage and wisdom\u201d refers to the role of bishops, the RM2011 translation may cause problems for those who recognize that baptized humans of either gender may in fact exercise some forms of governance within the Church. I suspect that a pastoral solution would be to offer some catechesis on the collect text, indicating that we are praying on this day specifically that God will raise up bishops after the model of Ambrose and that on other days we will pray for leadership exercised in other ways in the Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While celebrating Mass yesterday for the memorial of St. Ambrose, I was struck by the new English translation of the collect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[362,24],"tags":[1723,1722,719,575,477],"class_list":["post-12640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-saints-mary","category-translation-new-missal","tag-catechesis","tag-collect","tag-comparing-translations","tag-ambrose","tag-translation-issues"],"yoast_head":"\n