{"id":3203,"date":"2010-07-17T18:03:33","date_gmt":"2010-07-17T23:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=3203"},"modified":"2011-02-02T08:07:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T14:07:53","slug":"peter-jeffery-on-liturgiam-authenticam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/17\/peter-jeffery-on-liturgiam-authenticam\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Jeffery on Liturgiam authenticam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 0.18in\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>Chant historian Peter Jeffery is, in his own words, is \u201cas conservative as one can get without rejecting Vatican II\u201d (17). In 2004, four remarkable articles by him on the Vatican instruction on translation, <\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">Liturgiam authenticam [LA], <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>appeared in the journal <\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">Worship. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>These articles were later reprinted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Translating-Tradition-Historian-Liturgiam-Authenticam\/dp\/0814662110\/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1296655786&amp;sr=8-2\" target=\"_blank\">in book form<\/a>. Given the recent news about a small group from the <\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">Vox Clara Committee <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>completely reworking the translations prepared by ICEL and submitted by the national bishops\u2019 conferences, his words are eerily prophetic: \u201cLiturgical scholars and translators are not afraid to have their work reviewed by Church authorities. What we fear is having it \u2018revised\u2019 by people who invoke Church Fathers they haven\u2019t read, whose theories of language and culture were created <\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">ex nihilo<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>, who cannot tell the New Vulgate from the old one.\u201d We highly recommend Peter Jeffery\u2019s book. Here, <\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">PrayTell <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>offers an excerpt. Emphasis ours.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 0.18in\">\u201c<span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">The readiness to see one\u2019s own work examined and revised by others is an essential trait\u201d for those working with liturgical texts, <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>LA<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"> warns us (75). Who can deny it? The work requires, as <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>LA<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"> says, both a \u201cspirit of prayer\u201d and \u201ca rare degree of expertise.\u201d 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 <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>LA<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"> 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\u2019s 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 \u201crevised\u201d by people who invoke Church Fathers they haven\u2019t read, whose theories of language and culture were created <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>ex nihilo<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">, who cannot tell the New Vulgate from the old one.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">But the most worrisome thing about <em>LA<\/em> is that <strong>what it lacks in factuality it makes up with naked aggression<\/strong>. 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,\u2026 No less scary is the stipulation that everyone involved in liturgical translation, \u201cincluding the experts,\u201d 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 \u201csuitable for being set to music\u201d (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. \u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\">It is particularly embarrassing that all this muscular Christianity comes to us vested and mitred in <strong>the most ignorant statement on liturgy ever issued by a modern Vatican congregation<\/strong>. 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. \u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><em>Liturgiam authenticam<\/em><\/span> <\/strong><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><strong>should be summarily withdrawn<\/strong>, 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.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 0.18in\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, Arial;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><em>Peter Jeffery, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Translating Tradition: A Chant Historian Reads Liturgiam Authenticam<\/span> (Liturgical Press, 2005), 97-98, 100-101.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[106,865],"class_list":["post-3203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-new-missal","tag-liturgiam-authenticam","tag-peter-jeffery"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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