Can anything good come out of ICEL? Maybe. The following was published in Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal in 2000, two years before the author was appointed the new executive secretary of ICEL.
Ancient Rhetoric and Modern Prayer:
The Case of the Roman Canon
Bruce Harbert
On a hot day, comfort is a cool breeze or a cold drink; on a cold day, comfort is warmth—a fire perhaps, or a thick coat. From the hottest climates to the coldest, the equator to the poles, at almost every latitude on the surface of planet Earth, the Roman Rite is celebrated. But when we pray in the Roman Canon that God will grant to the dead
locum refrigerii, "a place of coolness," our petition is more readily connectible with the experience of sweltering Africa than with that of shivering Antarctica.
For this reason, when the time came to translate the Roman Rite into vernacular languages for liturgical use, the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy warned against translating
refrigerium literally. The 1969 Instruction on the Translation of Liturgical texts, often known by its opening words in the original French,
Comme le prévoit states : "Sometimes the metaphors must be changed to keep the true sense, as in
locum refrigerii in northern regions."1 So it came about that in the English version of the Roman Canon we pray that the dead may find a "happy" environment rather than a cool one:
May these and all who sleep in Christ find in your presence light, happiness and peace.2
It was certainly desirable to provide some guidance for liturgical translation. There was a long tradition among English-speaking Catholics that a faithful translator followed the Latin as closely as possible, using a predominantly latinate vocabulary. A classic example of this was the Douai Bible, produced in the late sixteenth century by English priests in exile, translated from the Vulgate and intended to correct what were seen as the errors of new Protestant translations made from the Hebrew and Greek. This translation contained latinisms that were very difficult for most people to understand, and in subsequent editions these were gradually dropped, though Douai still said "sing to the Lord a new canticle" where the Anglican Book of Common Prayer had "sing to the Lord a new song." Catholic English continued to be full of latinate words incomprehensible to others such as "indult" and "rescript," and it is still common to speak of "consuming" the Host at Mass and "purifying" the chalice, thus avoiding in a sacral context the simple English words "clean" and "eat."
Many translations of the Missal into English were available before the Second Vatican Council, and the best of these adopted a simple, direct style of translation. But some indulged in excessive latinism, such as this version of the Collect for the Octave Day of the Epiphany:
O God, whose only-begotten Son appeared on earth in the substance of our flesh, grant, we beseech Thee, that we merit to be reformed interiorly by Him whom we have known exteriorly.3
I doubt if that ugly translation would be of much help to the worshipper in the pew. Read aloud by the priest, it would make the vernacular liturgy appear as remote and strange as the Latin ever did.
Principles of Translation
The composition of
Comme le prévoit was also motivated by a concern among liturgists that translators should be aware of the specific characteristics of liturgical Latin. For instance, it might seem appropriate to translate the Latin devotio by English "devotion," but in fact in classical Latin devotio means "an act of consecration," and it often retains this meaning in Christian Latin, so that
nostrae devotionis oblatio in the Prayer over the Gifts for the first Monday of Lent (from the Veronese Sacramentary) is more appropriately translated as "the sacrifice we offer" than as "the sacrifice of our devotion."
A fuller treatment of the same topic was published soon after the appearance of
Comme le prévoit by one who had been influential in its composition: Antoine Dumas.4 Dumas gave a long list of Latin words that can easily be misunderstood when they occur in early Christian texts, including
sacramentum,
mysterium and
memoriale. His work has had its effect, for awareness is now widespread among Catholics of patristic notions such as "the sacrament of the church," "the paschal mystery," and "the memorial sacrifice of the eucharist," which were unfamiliar thirty years ago.
Dumas and Comme
le prévoit were concerned principally with such terms—the comments in
Comme le prévoit concerning refrigerium being a rare excursion into the realm of metaphor. The Consilium summed up as follows its purpose in producing the document: "One must try to communicate faithfully to a particular people and in its own language that which the Church wished to communicate by the original text to another people in another language."5
However, the document’s focus on what cannot be simply transferred from Latin into English rather than on what can be so transferred may have encouraged similar, but stronger negative tendencies in the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). In translating
Comme le prévoit into English, ICEL considerably widened the document’s scope, including many more examples than the original of terms likely to cause problems for the translator. Among these were
beatus and
beata ("blessed"),
beatissima ("most blessed"),
clementissime ("most merciful"),
dignare ("deign"),
famula ("handmaid"),
gloriosa ("glorious"),
humilis ("humble"),
maiestas ("majesty"),
quaesumus ("we implore"),
sanctus ("saint" or "holy"),
servus ("servant") and
venerabilis ("venerable"). It will be seen at once that all these terms in one way or another indicate a difference between persons. They belong to a stratified view of society in which the king is superior to the subject, the master to the servant, the saint to the sinner. It was in such societies that the language of Christian worship developed in the first Christian millennium. ICEL was raising the question—one which the Consilium had not raised—of whether or not such hierarchical language was suitable for modern worship. It put the matter as follows:
Many phrases of approach to the Almighty were originally adapted from forms of address to the sovereign in the courts of Byzantium and Rome. It is necessary to study how far an attempt should be made to offer equivalents in modern English.6
ICEL had in fact already made its study and come to its conclusions—the results of which are readily discernible in its translation of the Roman Canon, which first saw the light of day in 1967 and is still in use with small modifications today.
While there is widespread dissatisfaction with the English liturgy currently in use, not all its critics are able to say clearly what is wrong with it or what they would prefer. Though we have been promised a revision for some two decades, the Roman dicasteries seem to grow ever more critical of ICEL, and it appears less and less likely that they will approve the revised texts at present before them. The Holy See has called for a rethinking of the principles of liturgical translation. The recently revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal lays new emphasis on the need for fidelity in translation. In this confused and confusing context, I offer here an analysis of one of ICEL’s earliest works to demonstrate the thinking that shaped it and consequently influenced all of ICEL’s work.
The Roman Canon
"We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving": most people who know these words as the beginning of the Roman Canon assume that they are a faithful translation of their Latin original,
Te igitur, clementissime Pater. In fact, they are not. A more accurate translation would read: "Therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliants pray and implore you." We have already seen that ICEL regards
clementissime as a word that must be treated with caution. The notes it published to accompany the translation of the Roman Canon explain more fully: "To translate
clementissime directly would violate English usage, which rarely attaches an adjective to a vocative; the meaning of clementissime is carried into the English by the tone of the first two lines."7
Both of these claims are, in fact, untrue. English usage is actually most hospitable to adjectives attached to vocatives, since nearly every letter written in the language begins with one: "Dear so-and-so." The "tone of the first two lines" is dominated by thanksgiving in ICEL’s text; there is no allusion to God’s mercy or a suggestion that we might need it. While the English translation seeks to establish continuity between the Canon and what immediately precedes, the Latin begins with a change of mood. In the Preface we have thanked and praised God for his goodness already shown to us and, in consequence (igitur, "therefore"), we find ourselves able in the Canon to implore his mercy for the present and future.8
As for "we suppliants pray and implore you" ("
supplices rogamus ac petimus"), ICEL pronounced: "In many instances Latin words such as
supplices and pairs of words such as
rogamus ac petimus are employed for reasons of Latin rhythm and style or rhetoric; they do not represent thought content which need be or should be explicitly translated in another language."9 The separation made here between style and content is misleading. The style of any utterance is part of the message that the utterance conveys. For instance, if a doctor tells a patient that he is about to die, the news can be given either gently or harshly. In either case, the information conveyed about the patient’s prognosis is the same, but the tone that the doctor uses will give the patient further information, enabling him to judge his doctor’s character: whether or not the doctor is kind or cruel, well or ill disposed towards him, likely or not to make efforts to alleviate his condition. In the well-known slogan, "the medium is the message."
The Roman Canon in its original Latin begins with allusions to God’s mercy and our suppliant response to it. The English is entirely different. Whereas the Latin continues the atmosphere established by the Preface of worshippers being swept up into the liturgy of heaven, the English intrudes a verb with no equivalent in the Latin, "We come," suggesting that the rapprochement of God and man that takes place as the Canon begins is due to human action and initiative, not divine. There is no sense of humble approach, of what Catherine Pickstock has called the "liturgical stutter" born of a sense of awe in God’s merciful presence.
Divine Te and Human "We"
The custom arose in the middle ages of decorating the initial "T" of the Canon so that it became a cross on which Jesus was depicted. In manuscripts, and later in printed missals, the first page of the Canon became an artistic genre in its own right, setting before the celebrant on the left-hand page as he began the Canon of the Mass an image of God’s merciful love shown in the crucifixion. The Latin editions of the new Missal continue this tradition, but the English ones have abandoned it. It could have been continued, for the Canon in English could have begun with the initial "T" of "Therefore." But the English version has replaced the divine pronoun
Te with the human "We." This change is emblematic of the difference between our English liturgy and its Latin original: God has been demoted; man promoted. The justifications offered by the translators for this momentous change, however, have not been theological, liturgical or devotional, but stylistic.
The translation of the opening phrase sets the tone for the whole prayer. God is addressed more as an equal than as a superior. Where the Latin speaks of God "deigning" to do things, using forms of the Latin
dignor (lines 10, 51, 91, 93), the English has no equivalent, but seems often to be issuing orders to God. The original ICEL version (1967) of the prayer for the church reads:
Watch over it and guide it; grant it peace and unity throughout the world.10
When this translation was published, objections were raised to its peremptory style, and a more cajoling note was introduced with the addition of "Lord:"
Watch over it, Lord, and guide it; grant it peace and unity throughout the world.11
ICEL has explained the change thus: "The word ‘Lord’ has been inserted to soften the tone of the several imperatives."12
For the most part, however, the ICEL Roman Canon has remained harsher than the original in its address to God. In the prayer over the bread and wine ("Father, accept this offering"), God is commanded rather than asked or entreated: "Be pleased (
placatus), we pray (
quaesumus) to accept" would be closer to the tone of the Latin. Another failure to translate
dignor (line 51) yields the peremptory: "Bless and approve our offering; make it acceptable to you." One whole line, whose theme is God’s majesty, has been omitted from the prayer that God’s angel will carry the people’s sacrifice to God’s heavenly altar
in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae, "in the sight of your divine majesty."
God is not asked to grant (
concedas,
indulgeas) our requests or to be placated (
placatus) by our prayers. A touching picture of his "favorable and gracious countenance" (
propitio ac sereno vultu) is lost in the bald "look with favor on these offerings." "Lord" (
Domine) is dropped in favor of "Father," a substitution that ICEL was to use constantly in its subsequent work, preferring a title implying a familial relationship to one implying social stratification. Feminist criticism has cast doubt on the wisdom of this change.
Similarly, Christ is twice denied the title "Our Lord" (
Dominum nostrum): once at the beginning of the Canon and once immediately after the Consecration. Within the narrative of the institution of the eucharist itself, twice the delicate word-picture of "his holy and venerable hands" (
sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas) is omitted, and that of Christ raising his eyes to heaven, (like that of his Father’s countenance), is so simplified as to be barely noticeable. Then the phrase "so blessed passion" (
tam beatae passionis) is reduced to "his passion." The prayer’s picture of Christ and our relationship to him is thus hardened and coarsened.
Honor and Supplication
Jesus’ mother, too, suffers from deprivation of her titles. The Canon honors her "in the first rank" (
in primis) as "the glorious ever-Virgin Mary." In 1967 ICEL reduced this to "We honor Mary, the Virgin," though this bare phrase was subsequently enriched to "We honor Mary, the ever-virgin." ICEL’s policy of denying Our Lady her traditional titles has been pursued steadily ever since, so that in the revised ICEL Missal now awaiting confirmation from Rome, these titles are consistently left untranslated and Our Lady is not once given the title "blessed" in the eucharistic prayer.
The apostles and martyrs are denied the title "holy," and the petition that we may be admitted into their company (
intra quorum nos consortium . . .
admitte) is left out. God’s angel is no longer "holy," Abel no longer "just." Melchisedek is no longer a High Priest (
summus sacerdos), being reduced to the rank of "your priest" and his offering, once "a holy sacrifice, an unblemished offering" becomes merely "the bread and wine."13
Humans, meanwhile, have their status raised. To begin with the pope: he is no longer called "your servant." Nor is it permitted to speak of "this offering of our service" (
hanc oblationem servitutis nostrae), which is reduced to "this offering."14 God’s people are twice referred to in the Roman Canon as "your servants and handmaids" (
famulorum famularumque tuarum)—once the living and once the dead—but these allusions to servile status are omitted, together with a reference to the worshippers as "your [that is, God’s] servants." Notice that what is being obliterated here is not only a claim to servant status on our part, but also an affirmation that, being God’s servants, we belong to him. ICEL offered a justification for these changes: "Because of the restricted meaning of the word ‘servant’ in contemporary English, it was necessary to seek an equivalent expression used for the members of the church."15 Denied the status of servants, we were also denied that of suppliants by the omission from the translation on two occasions of any equivalent for
supplices. Similarly,
quaesumus ("we pray") was omitted.
It was not only expressions implying humble status on the part of the worshippers that were omitted, however. There is one place in the Canon where they are called
plebs tua sancta, "your holy people," but, in the relentless process of leveling that epithet, distinguishing the church from the rest of humanity was also dropped.
Even the Blessed Sacrament is demoted, "the holy bread of eternal life" (
panem sanctum vitae aeternae) becoming simply "the bread of life." The chalice loses the
x`, "this noble chalice." Finally, the cosmos is collapsed: Christ’s "glorious ascension into heaven" becoming "his ascension into glory," and God’s blessing losing its epithet "heavenly." This was a foretaste of numerous omissions in subsequent ICEL texts of references to heaven.
Abolition of Difference
Critics of ICEL texts often speak of them as "drab," "dull" or "bland." The texts give this impression because the translators were so reluctant to represent one person or one thing as different from another. By abolishing difference, they abolished variety. Though they gave their reasons as stylistic, they were also socio-political. It is not only the rhetoric of ancient Rome and Byzantium that has passed away, but also the social structures. Over the last two centuries, democratic models of society have gained favor worldwide, and monarchical or hierarchical ones have been abandoned. ICEL has followed that trend. In the United Kingdom at least, ICEL’s liturgy is often branded "American," although the translators are an international team and there are few distinctively American linguistic usages to be found in the prayers. But the egalitarian assumptions that have shaped these texts are a fair indication that their authors feel at home in the land of the free. The strong Irish component in the anglophone Catholic population should also be taken into account: resentment of the Protestant Ascendancy made Irish Catholics reluctant to use expressions like "King," "Lord" and "servant," and those who left Ireland to settle elsewhere often carried their resentments with them.
The language of social stratification, however, is not only found in our liturgy: it is integral to Scripture as well. Saul is a king, and David is his servant. Then David becomes king, but when addressing God, David speaks of himself as God’s servant. In Jesus’ time, the people longed for a king, and many thought that Jesus would claim that title. The notion of the kingdom was central to Jesus’ preaching, but the picture of it that he handed on to us was a subtle one: his kingdom is invisible (for instance Mt 13:31-33), "not of this world" (Jn 18:36). Jesus likened his followers to servants (Lk 12:37), and taught them to use that term of themselves (Lk 17:10), though John’s Gospel records that at the Last Supper he said "From now I will not call you servants . . . but friends" (15:15). "Lord" is a term constantly used for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly as a substitute for the Tetragrammaton when that is written to represent the Divine Name.16 Jesus’ followers called him "Lord" (for example Lk 6:46), and Jesus encouraged them in this (Jn 13:13). To this day, "Our Lord" and "The Lord" are very common ways for Christians to speak of Jesus Christ. Our Lord himself taught us to use all these terms with care because their evangelical meaning is different from their secular one.
Space travel and astronomy may have made some people reluctant to speak of heaven, or of God as "up there," but it may be doubted how many Christians have ever really imagined that God lived in the sky. To speak of God as "above" us is metaphorical, a pictorial way of saying that God possesses power and goodness in infinitely greater measure than we ourselves. The limitations of our intellect prevent us from conceiving or speaking about such difference in any other than spatial terms. We even speak of numbers in such terms (a hundred is "higher" than ten.) Spatial metaphor is inseparable from human thinking. Talk of "heaven" as distinct from "earth" is a variant of such metaphor. It is found in the first verse and in the penultimate chapter (Rv 21:1) of the Christian Bible.
The concept of heaven is inseparable from Christian prayer. Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father who art in heaven" and "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The diptychal structure of the Lord’s Prayer rests on the distinction between heaven and earth: its first half being focused on the will of the Father; its second on the needs of his children.
Bipolarity of Prayer
Prayer is essentially bipolar, recognizing the difference, the distance between man and God. Stratified societies, both in biblical and in early Christian times, have provided metaphors for speaking of God’s superiority over us and our dependence on him. A homogenized, rankless society does not offer such metaphors; so it seems to me that ICEL has been mistaken in abandoning the social vocabulary of an earlier age. Similarly, in a cosmology that does not allow us to speak of "up" and "down," it is hard to find a place for any image of God.
Moreover, the polarities in the worldview of early Christians structured their rhetoric. The prayers of the early sacramentaries are full of parallelism. The Collect for the Octave of the Epiphany quoted earlier is an example—
per eum quem similem nobis foris agnovimus intus reformari meramur, where the stylistic device of setting two adverbs in parallel,
foris and
intus—draws the mind towards the desirability of our outward recognition of Christ being matched by an inner reception of his grace. Such paired concepts—God and man, heaven and earth, mind and body—structure much of the euchology of the Roman Rite; but they have been insufficiently respected in translation into English. For example, towards the end of the Third Eucharistic Prayer we look forward to the time "when he [that is, Christ] will raise the dead in the flesh from earth and make the body of our humility like the body of his glory" (
quando mortuos suscitabit in carne de terra et corpus humilitatis nostrae configurabit corpori claritatis suae). These words, mostly taken from Philippians 3:21, express both a likeness between ourselves and Christ (we all have bodies) and an unlikeness (our bodies are lowly while his is glorious). Mention of "the earth," where our bodies lie, implies a further contrast with heaven, home of the glorified body of Christ. This elegance of structure and complexity of thought is collapsed in our current version: "When Christ will raise our mortal bodies and make them like his own in glory."
God’s people may need to develop, indeed may already be developing, a new religious language and imagery based on our present views of the universe and society. Certainly, the astonishing discoveries that modern astronomy reveals almost daily are no less awe-inspiring to the modern mind than pictures of a bearded old man on a cloud. A society that aims for just sharing among all members of the human family is no less suggestive of the divine presence than one that makes it easy for the strong to oppress the weak. But this will happen gradually, and it does not mean that we should abandon our inherited liturgical language, any more than we should abandon the language of Scripture, although it may be unfamiliar to our culture.
Refrigerium, "coolness," is as important to inhabitants of the Holy Land as it is to the people of Rome. The experience of the desert was central to the history of Israel. Jesus himself will have absorbed that experience as part of his people’s collective consciousness from an early age. His forty days in the Judean wilderness after his baptism were a reliving of Israel’s forty years in the desert of Sinai after the crossing of the Red Sea. When on the Cross he cries, "I thirst," his cry echoes the cry of an entire people, feeling itself abandoned and calling on God for deliverance, the cry of Israel which at that moment became the cry of the church, stranded in the desert of this world. The desert experience found its way into the psalms:
O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where no water is. (Psalm 62/63:1).17
The church, making her own the prayer of the Psalms, has appropriated this experience and used it to illuminate both the ascesis of Lent and the experience of aridity in the spiritual life. Every Christian needs to learn about the desert. Living in England, I had no direct experience of desert terrain until I visited the Holy Land. Before then, brought up on stories and films about Lawrence of Arabia, I had a mental picture of Jesus among rolling sand dunes. To discover the rocky and treacherous terrain in which he spent his forty hungry days and nights was an illumination. But I shall never know that country as well as Jesus or his people: it will always remain to some degree a country of the imagination, a land of metaphor.
I was ten years old when Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey—a perfect age to enjoy the parties and presents that accompanied the event. We were taught the parallels between our own and other coronation rituals, particularly between the anointing of our Queen and that of King David. But we also recognized without difficulty that the constitutional monarchy of the House of Windsor was a very different matter from the hard-won and easily-lost supremacy of the House of David, the shepherd-king. Study of the Bible many years later revealed to me how the biblical writers had structured and idealized David’s story, so that his
kingship became an imaginative focus, a metaphor, for Israel’s national pride and aspirations.
Nobody would think of rewriting the Bible to make its world more familiar to our own. We recognize that Christian catechesis involves becoming familiar with the biblical world and its stories. The same is true of the liturgy. As was made clear in
Comme le prévoit, the Roman Rite has its own vocabulary and concepts which need to be respected and absorbed by those who use it. This cannot be done without some awareness of, and respect for, the environment in which the rite developed. Through the rite, the early Christian environment provides us with a metaphorical world to inhabit, make our own, and develop.
Respecting the Roman Canon
In the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council, some of the most highly respected theologians alive pointed out what they saw as inadequacies in the Roman Canon. In particular, the Canon was said not to be a truly "eucharistic" prayer, because its theme was not so much thanksgiving (Greek
eucharistia) as propitiation; it was held to be unlike almost all Christian eucharistic prayers in lacking a true
epiclesis, a prayer for the sending of the Holy Spirit. Proposals were offered for reform or even abandonment of the Roman Canon. Some authors composed new prayers designed to replace it. Such was the climate in which, after the Council, other eucharistic prayers were admitted into the Missal alongside the Roman Canon. The climate will also have encouraged the ICEL translators in the rough handling they gave it, which resulted in an English version so unlike the Latin.
Looking back over more than thirty years, it can be seen that the opposition mounted against the Roman Canon was excessive, failing as it did to take into account the status of the Canon itself, which had been in constant use in the Western Church for a millennium and a half. That fact gave it an authority that even the impressive consensus among scholars in mid-century could not remove. As Aquinas said, the established custom of the people of God holds the first place among the data of theology.18 So ancient a prayer should be seen as a yardstick (the original meaning of the word "canon") by which to measure other texts. Some voices were raised in defense of the Canon, but they were drowned out.19 The time has surely come to restore to the Roman Canon the respect that is its due. That means acknowledging that the hierarchical world in which it was composed has something to say even to the democratic, collegial church of today.
Renewed respect will require a new English translation. The opening of the Canon, with its emphasis on supplication, should be restored, and the phrase "with praise and thanksgiving," intruded in the 1960s to suit the fashion of those days, should be removed. The many omitted honorific titles and epithets expressing difference should be restored.
Missale Romanum 2000
The revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal, published this year, contains an entirely new final section (Chapter 9) on local adaptations. It is a valuable complement to
Comme le prévoit, in which some had found encouragement to concentrate on what could not be preserved from the Roman Rite as it passed into the vernaculars. The new Instruction stresses the need for continuity. It speaks of the qualities to be looked for in vernacular versions of Scripture produced for the liturgy, and then passes at once to discuss translations of liturgical texts. The juxtaposition is significant: the care we owe to the text of Scripture is matched by the respect due to the words we use in the liturgy. Liturgical translations must be faithful: "Conferences of Bishops should take great care over preparing the translation of other [that is, non-biblical] texts so that, while the character of each language is preserved, the meaning of the original Latin text is rendered fully and faithfully."20 The language of liturgical translations must be accessible, but it is recognized that not all the expressions used in Scripture or in the liturgy can be immediately intelligible to all: "The language used must be suitable for the faithful of the region, but noble and of literary quality, always allowing for the need for catechesis about the biblical and Christian meaning of some words and expressions."21
The document emphasizes the enduring value of the Roman Rite which, though originating in Rome, has absorbed into itself elements from elsewhere, and thus acquired an international character. To hand on the rite is to hand on the faith; the loss of elements of the rite can be detrimental to the faith. To preserve unity in the rite among the various national groups that use it helps to preserve unity in the faith. Finally, the adaptation of the rite to local circumstances does not mean the beginning of the development of new ritual families.
In the earlier years of the liturgical reform, there were those who thought and acted as though national rites were destined to grow away from the Roman Rite and acquire independence. Now the tide has turned; even ICEL today is seeking greater faithfulness and a more dignified style in its translations. More is needed, however, particularly in regard to the Roman Canon, which has been changed very little in ICEL’s recent revision of the Missal: the new version is redolent as much of the 1960s as of the fourth century. Yet the liturgical reform that gave us vernacular liturgy was intended to be, not so much a fresh start with a clean sheet, as a recovery of primitive tradition. It is the delicate task of a liturgical translator to treasure the old while forging the new.
Notes1 "Instruction sur la traduction des textes liturgiques pour la célébration avec le peuple," Notitiae 5 (1969), 3-12. English translation,
Instruction on Translation of Liturgical Texts (Washington, D.C.: International Commission on English in the Liturgy), 6.
2 Quotations are from
The Sacramentary: English Translation Prepared by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1985), 547.
3
Daily Missal with an introduction by Robert I. Gannon, S.J., (Birmingham, England: C. Goodliffe Neale, 1953), 178.
4 Antoine Dumas, "Pour mieux comprendre les textes liturgiques du nouveau missel romain," Notitiae 6 (1970), 194-213.
5
Comme le prévoit, 4. (my translation)
6
Instruction on Translation of Liturgical Texts, 10.
7
The Roman Canon in English Translation Together with their Notes on the Text (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), 28.
8 ICEL’s translators accepted Bernard Botte’s view that the sense of
igitur here is weak. See
Third Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal (Washington, DC: International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1992), 69. See also the counter-argument of G. G. Willis,
Essays in Early Roman Liturgy (London: S.P.C.K. for the Alcuin Club, 1964), 127.
9
The Roman Canon in English Translation, 28.
10
Instruction on Translation of Liturgical Texts, 14.
11 Third Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal, 69.
12 Ibid. Note that ICEL’s use of "several" in this note is not in accord with modern usage.
13 ICEL’s rejection of "high priest" as a misleading interpretation of Genesis 14:18 (
The Roman Canon in English Translation, 36-37) is unconvincing, since the commission’s brief was to translate the liturgical texts, not Scripture.
14 ICEL follows Botte and Christine Mohrmann in referring this phrase to the ministers at the altar (The Roman Canon in English Translation, 32), but this does not justify the omission of all allusion to service: "This offering of our ministerial service" might have been an appropriate rendering.
15
The Roman Canon in English Translation, 29.
16 When the
Jerusalem Bible was first published in the United Kingdom, the Tetragrammaton was simply transcribed as "Yahweh," but when it was adopted for liturgical use, this was replaced by the more traditional "Lord." ICEL has followed the same policy in its Liturgical Psalter.
17 Psalm 62/63:1. Text is from the New Revised Standard Version.
18 Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae 2-2ae q10 a12c.
19 See Klaus Gamber,
The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background (Harrison, NY: Una Voce Press, 1993), passim; G. G. Willis, "The New Eucharistic Prayers: Some Comments," Heythrop Journal 12 (1971), 5-28.
20 Section 392. (my own translation from the Vatican web site)
21 Ibid.
Labels: Comme le prévoit, ICEL
