Wading through the press coverage surrounding the introduction of the third edition of the Roman Missal, as this post at GetReligion points out, can get repetitive quickly, particularly because of reporters’ insistence on covering the liturgical changes from the angle of a “controversy.” But regardless of whether the press’ inclination to ensure dissenting voices get their due (or, in many instances, undue) column ink is a calculated decision or simply the side-effect of a misguided belief in ‘fairness’ that every story should have competing voices, the real question remaining to be asked is about the source of this alleged opposition. Is there even a serious challenge to the Missal’s revision in the Church’s own ranks, or does the bulk of the criticism originate elsewhere?
Perhaps the most significant and coherent internal opposition came in the form of “What If We Just Said Wait?”, an online petition urging bishops to delay (not abandon) the introduction of the revised text. And, truth be told, this campaign really wasn’t all that significant: as of today, it has approximately 22,000 signatures, mostly laypeople (despite the New York Times’ number-immune assertion that “many” priests have signed it). And, in a country where an estimated 77 million citizens are baptized Catholics, 22,000 is a rather miniscule number.
For the most part, it looks as if even the Church’s most articulate internal critics have no desire to wage a protracted battle over the changes. Implementation seems to have mostly gone smoothly on the clergy’s side, and lingering resistance seems to be settling into “loyal opposition”—hardly ideal, but hardly a catastrophe or a civil war in the making. To take just one telling article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a prominent member of the local clergy, Fr. Michael Ryan, who is described as a “former critic” of the changes, is now publicly vowing to “make [them] work” as best he can. Though the newspaper seeks out a dissenting voice, it can only find it in “former priest” John Pinette, who lobs laughable hyperbole at the Church (the new translation, he blusters, constitutes “Vatican vandalism” by a sort of ecclesial “Tea Party” uncomfortable with “modernity and pluralism”).
Given the absence of any really significant or coherent opposition within the Church itself (and a laudable open-mindedness towards the changes even by ‘many’ clerics and laypeople who were formerly skeptical) it is becoming increasingly apparent that the only dead-set opponents of the changes are those outside the Church: ex-priests, professional critics, or reporters captivated by the prospect of another internal fight in the Catholic Church.
But surely, some may object, there must be a “silent majority” or significant minority of laypeople who are troubled by the introduction of more formal language, but simply do not have access to a platform to voice their distress. True, it’s hard to quantify precisely how much unease an average layperson feels at the recitation of “and with your spirit” (and whether the source of their angst is a genuine, thought-out resistance to the slate of changes or simply the challenge of un-learning and re-learning something familiar, an understandable practical matter discussed by some in the coverage) but again, the lack of a credible, vocal individual or group within the Church persisting in opposition is revelatory.
So who’s most upset with the new edition of the Roman Missal? In short, individuals who don’t seem to have a stake in the matter, nor any interest in acquiring one.
Matthew Cantirino is a junior fellow at First Things.
November 28th, 2011 | 3:02 pm
As someone who has been attending mass in both Spanish and English for a number of years, I don’t find the changes all that disconcerting – I was fine with “and with your Spirit” at mass, although I noticed a lot of people tripped on that one – we’ll get used to it. The Spanish language liturgy has always hewed closely to the Latin original, which makes sense since Spanish is a latinate language. For the most part, I appreciate the changes to the English liturgy that revive the more concrete imagery or more elaborate phrasing. However, a couple of changes in the wording of the Creed grate on me because they seem to have been made just for the sake of making the English text more latinate. “Of all that is seen and unseen” is much more poetic in English than “visible and invisible”, and I can’t see that the change makes any substantive change in the meaning (In contrast the Spanish “todo lo visible e invisible” has a real poetry in that language, whereas “todo lo visto y no visto” would sound clunky). The other change, from “one in being with the Father” to “cosubstantial with the Father” might be more theologically accurate, but I question whether the change was worth the loss of the much more musical sound of the previous translation. I wish the translators had at least tried to come up with a more English sounding equivalent for “cosubstantial” that would capture more precisely its meaning if “one in being with” was not theologically close enough to the mark. Just making phrases more latinate for the sake of sounding more latinate doesn’t work well in English.
November 28th, 2011 | 3:21 pm
So who’s most upset with the new edition of the Roman Missal? In short, individuals who don’t seem to have a stake in the matter, nor any interest in acquiring one.
I suggest reading Peter Steinfels’ post A Striking Contrast on the Commonweal blog and the 220 following comments (a record, or near-record number).
Then read his post The Aftermass and J. Peter Nixon’s post Teach Us to Pray.
It sounds to me like a significant number of people are quite upset, and a significant number of people are pleased. To those of us who go back to the days of the Latin mass, the new English translation looks almost identical to the old English translation in the the Latin-English missals, so there is nothing shocking about it, but a lot of it does look to me to be difficult to read outloud without approaching it like an actor. J. Peter Nixon’s example is
I am as close to being neutral on this as I think it is possible to be, but it is as if the translators were paid by the comma. Why not, “Almighty God, we pray [that] you grant your faithful the resolve . . . ” or even, “Almighty God, grant your faithful the resolve . . . “? It is kind of like reading Henry James. I like reading Henry James, but he isn’t the easiest author to read out loud.
November 28th, 2011 | 4:01 pm
Peter S, there is a good deal of difference between “seen and unseen” and “visible and invisible.” Something “unseen” means you can’t see it at the moment; it could be behind the door, or in another room, or just behind your back, but presumably you could find it and see it if you tried. “Invisible” means it is not seeable by you. Angels and archangels and all the company of heaven are not merely unseen, they are invisible to mortal man. The word “invisible” is therefore both more precise and less mundane, both of these things being characteristic of the new translation, from what I’ve seen of it.
November 29th, 2011 | 1:26 am
Judy,
Hmm,
How about “the seeable and the unseeable”
:)
November 29th, 2011 | 2:23 am
“So who’s most upset with the new edition of the Roman Missal? In short, individuals who don’t seem to have a stake in the matter, nor any interest in acquiring one.”
The smug, snide tone of the above quotation encapsulates everything that’s wrong with this new translation AND the process by which it came about. That quote talks down to the person in the pew. I DO have a stake in the matter, and I was not consulted, was I? Nor were any other lay people.
I’d say: Don’t pat yourselves too hard on the back over this ridiculous & unnecessary change of liturgy. It reads like a bunch of boulders in the road.
I grew up with the Latin Mass, and have been saying the English translation for all my adult life. And now, because some Vatican dolts didn’t get the translations from the Latin “right” in the previous century, I’m supposed to forget decades of prayer & start over?
Trust me, it’s not going to happen. Time goes forward, life goes forward; only the Catholic church hierarchy thinks it can successfully go backwards.
If you are trying to prod people to leave the church, you’re doing a good job of it in MANY ways, including by trying to shove this translation down everyone’s throats. Watch verbal participation and song participation at Mass go down.
“… the lack of a credible, vocal individual or group within the Church persisting in opposition is revelatory.”
Ha! As if you gave anyone any chance to provide opposition, much less persist in opposition, given that this was done in secrecy. Please, we are not that stupid (even though you evidently think we are).
What IS actually revelatory to the average person in the pews is how little the church hierarchy concerns itself with the way it treats its faithful lay members. We ARE the church. Keep this up and you will have ever fewer of us to interact with.
November 29th, 2011 | 7:30 am
That’s actually not true: “progress” frequently involves moving backwards to recover what is lost – usually following societal collapses or crashes.
That is because “progress” is not a single thing, but a number of different types of progress – technological and economic and military and so on. The Roman Empire ultimately collapsed because it had hit the outer limits of what its ethical and philosophical structure could support.
To give one example: their concept of fairness was too primitive to sustain their tax structure. They overtaxed little guys and undertaxed big guys, and the little guys were driven to make deals with the big guys – becoming part of their household, so as to avoid crippling taxation – in what eventually would become serfdom.
We have ethical issues that need to be addressed today. And the Catholic Church is at the very forefront of raising the questions that most people don’t want to think about, don’t want to hear. The Catholic Church is not so much “moving backwards” as addressing structural weaknesses in our foundation.
I think if anyone actually leaves the church over this, it’s safe to say there were deeper issues that just weren’t addressed and this is just an excuse.
November 29th, 2011 | 9:02 am
Sarah,
You might want to consider that the vitriol and bitterness exemplified by your post does MORE to make people want nothing to do with the Church (or your part of it) than any translation.
We all lack the ability to foresee what the full effects of this translation will be…only time will tell, and we should be hopeful there is a greater benefit we cannot see with human eyes. Could it be people might be caused to think more deeply about their faith? Or feel more connected with the communion of saints that have prayed this way before?
That said, the primary disappointment I have with the translation is the great expense of all the printings/lectionaries, that could have been spent on corporal works of mercy. Again, no way for me to know if the benefits outweigh the costs…
November 29th, 2011 | 9:05 am
My sense is that it’s another poor translation. Poor like 1970/73, just in a different way.
My personal feeling is less of anger and more of disappointment. I get angry when people are chased away from the Gospel by misbehaving leadership. I’m disappointed when opportunity is missed.
Except for the few places where the clergy will prepare their revised parts with attentiveness and care, people will latch onto the English that is more appealing: the Lectionary passages, the homily, and the texts of the songs at Mass. Good lectors, skilled preachers, and a superior musical repertoire will be more important than ever.
November 29th, 2011 | 10:37 am
[...] For the most part, it looks as if even the Church’s most articulate internal critics have no desire to wage a protracted battle over the changes. Implementation seems to have mostly gone smoothly on the clergy’s side, and lingering resistance seems to be settling into “loyal opposition”—hardly ideal, but hardly a catastrophe or a civil war in the making. To take just one telling article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a prominent member of the local clergy, Fr. Michael Ryan, who is described as a “former critic” of the changes, is now publicly vowing to “make [them] work” as best he can. Though the newspaper seeks out a dissenting voice, it can only find it in “former priest” John Pinette, who lobs laughable hyperbole at the Church (the new translation, he blusters, constitutes “Vatican vandalism” by a sort of ecclesial “Tea Party” uncomfortable with “modernity and pluralism”). [more] [...]
November 29th, 2011 | 12:00 pm
I was at a small Catholic church in a town surrounded by farm land this past weekend, at which we used little cards pointing out the changed words. The changes are so minor that I find it amazing that anyone would be “up in arms” about it. The priest said – it will take a little while for us to get used to some of the changes, but we’ll all get through it together.
Everyone participated and if someone was upset, I didn’t notice it.
As to the use of commas and unfamiliar sentence structures in the collects the priest says – yes, that’s probably true. Those prayers are almost never more than one or two sentences long. They require that we attend and think about what is being said a hair more so than was necessary in the “more simple” forms. I can’t understand why doing so would make people angry.
I’m very sorry that Sarah and others are so upset about these changes. And yet I honestly can’t see the cause of that anger in this new translation – it must mean something else to them than it means to me. Sarah seems upset that the laity were not consulted and suggests there is illegitimate force being used – but neither were we consulted about the change into English in the first place. The Church functions through a hierarchy, and always has.
In any case, how sad that the Mass itself should be the cause of dissension.
November 29th, 2011 | 12:30 pm
I see I’ve struck a nerve! Any bitterness I may have is not mine alone, but is shared by plenty of people who attend Mass each week. If you don’t know about it (or don’t want to know about it), that is typical. If you prefer to think I am a lone voice, that is also typical.
The Catholic church is trying to go backwards – to the 1950′s at least, and certainly it is repudiating Vatican II in every way possible. To think that those who grew up receiving a rigorous Catholic education would now not notice what is happening, is to insult the intelligence of each of us. You cannot put toothpaste back into the tube, but that is what the effort here is. (And it’s a very different matter than “recovering what was lost”.)
As for prodding people to leave the church, this may be, for some people, the last straw. Earlier straws include the church’s abysmal handling (and ongoing abysmal handling) of pedophilia in its midst. Surely that is the worst among many straws. Would that all the time, money, energy and fervor devoted to a new Mass translation had been, instead, devoted to addressing the church’s true ills. Do you wonder that a number of the faithful see the new Mass translation as not only unnecessary, but also as a smoke-screen meant to divert attention from far bigger issues that are not effectively being dealt with?
November 29th, 2011 | 1:36 pm
Sarah, I wouldn’t say you’ve “struck a nerve.” I’d say rather that your comments are striking for the way in which they sound so over-blown and unreasonable.
This whole “they’re turning back the clock” hyperbole seems to bear no relationship to reality, and the idea that the Mass translation is being used to distract people from the sex abuse crisis makes absolutely no sense. In what way would changing a few words in the Mass translation make people less attentive to such controversy? It makes no sense.
Nor are any people at my church seething with anger over the new translation. I’m sorry that you and others do feel badly, and I hope you find some peace soon.
November 29th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
Sarah, what you seem to be missing is a concern for what is true. It is true to correct the mistranslations of the Mass because the translations are wrong: no one disputes this, and indeed many have been stumped for decades on the obviousness of the mistranslations. Truth is not a matter of opinion, not a subjective issue that is decided by fleeting and changing emotions (aka opinion). Protesters to these corrections—and please, note they are corrections, not “changes”—are elevating their personal opinions over declarative facts. “But I don’t like it” is not an adequate defense against appropriate correction. That you see correcting what is inaccurate as pointless (or even worse, malevolent) is something upon which you might mediate for a few minutes.
You are placing your opinions over facts. This is embodied, unfortunately, in your own outrage at not having been “consulted” on the matter—as if, and I’m sorry to be so blunt, but as if your opinion on the matter is relevant. It is not. You are quite correct to abhor the Vatican’s and Bishops’ abysmal and immoral handing of the sexual predation, homosexuality, pedophilia scandals within its/their/our own ranks. That is a righteous indignation, because it is objectively wrong to do such horrible acts and lies, and an absolutely outrageous offense against God. Use that same sense of concern for truth–objective truth–to guide your other thoughts away from opinions can back always to God’s objective truth. Be concerned for what is TRUE, not what is opinion.
Also, I feel it must respond to your emphatic declaration that you and other lay people “ARE” the Church. You are not..I am not, either. You or I can come or leave the Church, love or hate the Church, and the Church is not affected—because the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ, not a body of humans. Perhaps at the center of this rage you express is a failure to truly hold and elevate the fact that the Church is a supernatural body—that the Catholic Faith is a supernatural Faith (and the only one, too). People change, season change, languages change, popes change…but the Bride of Christ does not change. This is why people leave her (laypeople and ordained, alike)—because she won’t “change” to suit their opinions. They get upset because she won’t “accept” their “homosexuality;” she won’t “accept” their paganism; she won’t “accept” female ordination; she won’t “accept” their lies. She cannot “accept” what is not true, as she is bound to truth through Christ.
November 29th, 2011 | 2:17 pm
Protesters to these corrections—and please, note they are corrections, not “changes”—are elevating their personal opinions over declarative facts.
Keri,
No, the changes are changes, not corrections. The philosophies behind the two translations were different. I have heard it described as the old translation aiming for “dynamic equivalence” and the new translation aiming for “formal equivalence” or “verbal equivalence.” Here’s an interesting chart classifying many versions of the Bible according to the type of translation.
November 29th, 2011 | 2:41 pm
The comments that the time and money to re-translate the liturgy could have been put to better use in corporeal works of mercy remind of Judas’ comment in the gospel story where he remarks that the money with which the repentent woman bought the perfumes and spices and with which she annoited the feet of Jesus, “could have been spent on the poor.” Jesus actually rebuked him for this comment. One, therefore, naturally wonders whether such comments are sincere or are simply a self-righteous cover for their indifference to worshipping and praising our Lord in a manner that is fitting.
November 29th, 2011 | 3:03 pm
I am in complete agreement with Sarah. Furthermore, the self-righteous indignation of the responses to her remarks leads me to believe she has hit a nerve. The institutional church has less exemplified Christ and more exemplified a frightened bureaucrat over the past ten or more years. It seems more concerned about power than souls and I feel the new translation’s crudeness and the Church’s reluctance to listen to the voice of the people and it’s priests demonstrates that. And yes, we are the church!
November 29th, 2011 | 4:06 pm
Being a MEMBER of the Body of Christ is not the same as being the whole body, or the head. We are MEMBERS of the Church. It is the sin of pride to presume to speak for all the billions of Christians that have gone before, unless that task has been specifically appointed by Christ (I think of the demands of the mother of the Zebedee brothers, and Jesus’ response that seats at his right and left had already been given by the Father). Even those appointed to the positions of supreme authority spend much time consulting others. This translation was deliberated by thousands–perhaps tens of thousands–of bishops, experts, and linguists.
To say it was not a matter of consultation is inaccurate. Everything need not be submitted to a democratic vote to be true, representative, or fair.
November 29th, 2011 | 4:37 pm
Sara, thank you. I do not find anything snide or off-putting about your tone. I find you speak the truth.
November 29th, 2011 | 4:42 pm
“So who’s most upset with the new edition of the Roman Missal? In short, individuals who don’t seem to have a stake in the matter, nor any interest in acquiring one.”
If you will also look at the http://www.praytellblog.com/
you will see that those most upset include those most competent in the matter.
A few in the Roman Curia pushed their jurisdiction beyond all previous limits and forced out those with academic expertise or experience. This translation is not the one which had wide consultation. This is a travesty which was imposed with no concern for English-speakers getting something functional but for the sake of avoiding inclusive language, ending shared language with Protestants just for the sake of distinctiveness, elevating the idea of a sacerdotal clergy instead of a servant leadership ministry. In the process, the Curial insiders arbitrarily discarded two decades of work which had already been approved by eleven different bishops’ conferences.
This palace coup already has struck down those with great stakes in the matter and finished the counter-collegialty agenda of the curialists. They took over the synods, they now create their own lists [ternae] of possible bishops instead of actually consulting local bishops, now they have steam rolled the episcopal conferences in this and imposed a rule of unanimity in making other statements. The power is re-centralized.
The people in the pews are being returned to passivity, exactly the opposite of what Vatican II intended. This process has been visible ans successful for more than two decades. So, if the author thinks the only relevant people, the only one with a stake in the matter, are the laity at Mass, there is no interest in making an issue of it. They are pretty well tuned-out and attending under penalty of law.
Nor will it drive many away. The truly angry are already gone. Changing the words will make it harder for them to come back comfortably. Maybe that was part of the idea.
November 29th, 2011 | 5:00 pm
Thank you to Hallie Wolfe and to David – you have understood what I wrote.
The rest of you are on your ecclesiastical high horses, full of presumption, judgment, and misunderstanding. Christ would recognize you by your similarity to the Pharisees.
And yes, I AM the church! I and *all* the people who believe and worship and attend Mass are as much the church as anyone, and we are no less the church than the hierarchy thinks itself to be!
November 29th, 2011 | 5:08 pm
Tom in U City: Well said! Thank you!
November 29th, 2011 | 5:18 pm
All this because people supposedly don’t like to say “And with your spirit” or “consubstantial”???
Wow. I must be missing something.
People need to take a deep breath and relax.
November 29th, 2011 | 11:04 pm
‘All this because people supposedly don’t like to say “And with your spirit” or consubstantial”???’
Well, yes. And all this because some people apparently didn’t like to say (and/or didn’t like us to say) “and also with you” and “one in Being.”
It seems a tad disingenuous to pretend that the issue is trivial, to suggest that an interest in the matter of language is childish or frivolous. Clearly, some in the Church take the matter very seriously indeed: seriously enough to have spent years on the production of a new missal. And rightly so for anyone to take this issue seriously. The language *does* matter, obviously, or else why bother with a new translation?
I’m not outraged by the changes, but I’m not thrilled by them either. But since I have so far attended only one Mass with the new translation, and since I don’t eagerly embrace change, don’t much like to be taken out of my comfort zone, I’m willing to admit that my initial response to the new wording (I don’t really like it) may be mere crankiness and grumpitude.
Judy K: yes, “unseen” can mean not seen or perceived at the moment (though potentially seeable by us if we opened the door or looked behind the couch or whatever), but it can also mean not seen or perceived by us at all because invisible (and therefore not seeable by us in the ordinary manner of perception). I’m pretty sure that nobody was ever in any danger of misinterpreting “unseen” as ‘just hiding behind the couch,’ say, and I agree with Peter S. that “Of all that is seen and unseen” is much more poetic in English.
I will readily concede that some of the language of the English-language Mass on which I was raised (post-Vatican II, so I never knew the Latin) was too flat and pedestrian. But I worry that the new translation is neither fish nor fowl: a latinized English that is not Latin, but not good English either.
And yes, “consubstantial” does seem like a poor word choice to me: while “one in Being” is difficult to grasp, it at least offers access to vulgar laypersons such as myself to the contemplation of a mystery. Whereas “consubstantial” sounds not only inelegant in English, but also overly technical, academic, and obscure, if not obscurantist.
November 30th, 2011 | 3:37 am
To understand the task faced by any translator, look at a (hopefully) non-controversial example.
Juvenal wrote:
“Magnaque numinibus vota exaudita malignis”
Literally translated, in the same order
And great/by spiritual powers/vows/having been heard (agreeing with “vows”)/malign (agreeing with “by spiritual powers”
This is plainly gibberish.
“And great prayers that have been heard by malignant powers” reproduces the meaning, but is flat and pedestrian; it conveys next to nothing of the experience produced by reading the original.
Dr Johnson translated it as “Enormous prayers, which Heav’n in vengeance grants,” expressing, not only the sense, but something of the rhythm and cadences of the original – hence, his elision of the last syllable of “Heaven.” Above all, it preserves the terse, epigrammatic style of Juvenal.
Has any modern translation of the Missal approached Johnson’s standard? In my opinion, no. Cranmer, at his best, approached it, in some of the Collects, but that can now only be appreciated by someone thoroughly at home in with Elizabethan English.
Genius, alas, is not to be had for the asking.
November 30th, 2011 | 4:57 am
I am in complete agreement with Sarah. Furthermore, the self-righteous indignation of the responses to her remarks leads me to believe she has hit a nerve.
If she really feels that her church fathers are “dolts”, then I think her problem is much deeper than a mere translation. It is a problem of faith in crisis – either she needs to get right with her Church, or she needs to leave it for a congregation that is more in line with her beliefs about authority and leadership.
December 1st, 2011 | 9:04 am
“The rest of you are on your ecclesiastical high horses, full of presumption, judgment, and misunderstanding. ”
*Eyebrows raised in amusement* To quote Billy Crystal from the movie “The Princess Bride”, “Look who knows so much!”
Sarah, Jesus had some harsh words for hypocrites, too, though the irony your statement provides gave me a morning laugh!
December 1st, 2011 | 9:38 am
For anyone whose heart is open enough, here is a great 8 minute video explanation by the Lifeteen people on the New Translation that demonstrates, among other things, why Tom from U City is mistaken:
December 1st, 2011 | 7:51 pm
I understand why the changes are desired by the church, that it/the leadership desires things to be closer to the original latin. However, the text that has been chosen is both ungrammatical, with repetitive phrasing, words that have little meaning in English, and floating sentences w/o true beginning or conclusion. Latin was not the word of Christ; it was the word of the Church 300 years following. Man has rewritten the texts of our Lord over and again. What we need is a text that flows from our lips, is understandable, and leads the believers to pray as a unified Church. This does none of that.
December 4th, 2011 | 6:27 pm
Matthew Cantirino asks an excellent question, “Who is actually upset with the [new translation of] the New Roman Missal”.
It seems to me that the answer is the same folks who had been pushing a new translation for the better part of a decade, a translation that was severely criticized and ultimately scrapped and replaced by the one implemented just recently.
This abandoned translation featured, among other things, a new version of the Our Father, and other very disruptive changes that were ultimately canned. So I find it interesting that stumbling over new phrasing seems to be the main thrust of the lingering opposition to the new implementation.
I am having trouble understanding the specifics of Deb’s criticism. While I see that everything she said applies to the old translation, I haven’t encountered any of these problems in the new yet, or at least they are no worse. As for the second part, surely she understands that it is the Roman Missal that is being translated here, and not the Greek New Testament?
December 6th, 2011 | 11:45 am
I’m going to be perfectly honest, I do not like the new translation simply because of the clunky way it flows. I think the pursuit of beauty in the name of God is a worthy one, and also feel that the changes are just negligible enough that the adjustment is not set to further my appreciation and understanding of the mass. All I feel about the changes is inconvenience, and a bit of grief for the loss that my children will now never get to hear. The masses of my childhood stick with me in large part because of the flow and calm motion of the words. Not spitefully, I continue to use the old version in mass, and will probably do so for some time. I just can’t justify the change to myself.
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