Here’s a taste of his evening with Cardinal Dolan:
Colbert took the opportunity to needle Dolan about the new English-language translation of the Roman Missal, the text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass. The translation was introduced last fall in U.S. parishes to initial grumbling over what critics called stilted language. A focus of the complaints was the translation of the Nicene Creed, replacing the phrase “one in Being with the Father” to “consubstantial with the Father.”
“Consubstantial?” Colbert said, as Dolan shook his head and laughed. “It’s the Creed. It’s not the SAT prep.”
You know, Stephen has a serious point there.
September 16th, 2012 | 8:05 pm
Amen. I like “of one Being with the Father,” but that’s just the version (apparently the ICET, according to Wikipedia) I’m used to…what would be wrong with “of one substance,” since this is what con-substantial means and is used in some versions?
September 16th, 2012 | 8:12 pm
I also think that “of one Being” is acceptable. In either case, the context makes it clear that it’s the God/Christ relationship under discussion at this point in the creed, not the Christ/man or God/man relationship.
September 17th, 2012 | 6:12 am
I cannot see how the complex circumlocution (talk about ‘stilted’) “of one in being with” offers any improvements over “consubstantial with”. The same people who complained that the parishioners would be muddled by such a big word are the ones who –in other circumstances– argue that we have the most sophisticated laity in history.
September 17th, 2012 | 9:00 am
“One in being” is too fuzzy and does not teach and does not adequately teach…liturgy should be formative
September 17th, 2012 | 10:36 am
“Consubstantial” was actually a good change in the new mass, I thought. Most of the other changes I would have favored a more readable translation which approximated the sense, but the fact is that some words and concepts used in the Mass are -intentionally- untranslatable. “One in being” doesn’t make sense in the natural sense of English grammar and neither does “consubstantial”, but that’s because we’re talking about the Supernatural here. Some words are untranslatable; I think Wittgenstein would agree with me on that. Benedict does, anyway.
In Pope Benedict’s JESUS OF NAZARETH (2007), on the last page of the book he wrote that:
“the First Council of Nicea adopted the word CONSUBSTANTIAL (in Greek, HOMOOUSIOS). This term did not Hellenize the faith or burden it with an alien philosophy. On the contrary, it captured in a stable formula exactly what had emerged as incomparably NEW and DIFFERENT in Jesus way of speaking with the Father.”
September 17th, 2012 | 10:50 am
Ah, the liturgical wars erupt on the pages of PMC! I will say that Colbert’s (admittedly funny) retort missed the deeper and bigger and catholic and Catholic point concerning the nature and purpose of the text: it is the Creed — and the early councils’ and creeds’ main point was to define the being and nature and person of Christ over against all sorts of naturalistic heresies; in order to do so, however, they employed pagan philosophical terms, but they necessarily enlarged and transformed them. Ernie Fortin has a nice treatment of how this worked with the formula of the Council of Chalcedon in the collection of essays included in Philosophical Christianity. You’ll want to read Fr. Sokolowski’s The God of Faith and Reason for the deeper theological (and philosophical) issues. And, of course, the philosophical-Pope has written tons on the providential meeting of the two cultures of the Logos/logos, which entailed a mutual critique and enlargement. Peter, if you want your Christian personalism, you’ll probably have to be more sympathetic to the latinate consubstantial (which tried to transliterate the Greek). One more Tocquevillian point: Colbert’s (admittedly funny) quip misconstrued the nature and purpose of the Creed, and did so in a typically democratic (i.e., dumbing down) way. In the spirit of Tocqueville, one might argue that late-modern democrats need not only the literary precision of the Greek and Roman classics to elevate their minds, but also the technical precision of the Creeds. Just saying … .
September 17th, 2012 | 10:54 am
geez: I didn’t know it was THAT serious a point. Send your comments to Colbert, not me.
September 17th, 2012 | 1:45 pm
Exactly one word clunks in the recital of the new translation, and consubstantial is it. That’s because it’s the one word not often used in ordinary speech.
September 17th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
We Anglicans have always very much enjoyed, “being of one substance with the Father.”
September 17th, 2012 | 2:44 pm
Maybe just for fun, I dug up a text from an exchange between Augustine and Jerome on liturgical translations that shows the perils of introducing new translations: it detaches the worshiper from the liturgy itself. Maybe even more than with law, in liturgy innovation breeds contempt. So with that being said, I think the new translation is clearly better as a translation. But a more interesting question might be whether the improved translation is worth the disorientation of the faithful (a question the translators in the 60′s, of course, never thought fit to ask; or, better, the disorientation was precisely their point).
Anyway, here’s the bit from Augustine’s Letter 71: “A certain bishop, one of our brethren, having introduced in the church over which he presides the reading of your version, came upon a word in the book of the prophet Jonah, of which you have given a very different rendering from that which had been of old familiar to the senses and memory of all the worshippers, and had been chanted for so many generations in the church. Thereupon arose such a tumult in the congregation, especially among the Greeks, correcting what had been read, and denouncing the translation as false, that the bishop was compelled to ask the testimony of the Jewish residents (it was in the town of Oea). These, whether from ignorance or from spite, answered that the words in the Hebrew manuscripts were correctly rendered in the Greek version, and in the Latin one taken from it. What further need I say? The man was compelled to correct your version in that passage as if it had been falsely translated, as he desired not to be left without a congregation — a calamity which he narrowly escaped. From this case we also are led to think that you may be occasionally mistaken. You will also observe how great must have been the difficulty if this had occurred in those writings which cannot be explained by comparing the testimony of languages now in use.”
I also agree with Paul: liturgical texts shouldn’t always be super easy to understand, since God’s not himself super easy to understand.
September 17th, 2012 | 10:15 pm
A good reason just to keep the whole N.O. in Latin.
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