Is this fair dinkum? New Translation of the New Mass...
I don't know if this translation fair dinkum or not. I found the link on Louise's page. It looks close enough to former drafts I have seen to be authentic, and the one or two changes that have been made add authenticity to it. You will note a rather better Sursum Corda than in previous editions--and check out the translation of the Sanctus, where an "is" has crept in. I don't like the "O" in "O God" in the Gloria. Sticks out like a stylistic sore thumb, since it is the only place the vocative is used in the entire piece. I didn't like it in previous drafts either. Oh well. They don't ask me.
posted by Schütz @ 4:03 pm
8 Comments
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8 Comments:
The problem will be that the translation (in English) which we have now has become traditional. So any new translation, no matter how much better it may be, will have to work against traditionalism.
Maybe somebody will take a leaf out of the Anglican book and start a Society for the Preseveration of the Sacramentary. :-)
My problem is not that I like the current ICEL/ELLC texts, but rather that I grew up with the Lutheran English service which followed pretty closely the old Book of Common Prayer translations, and always thought that they were pretty accurate and elegant translations. Oh well. One is thankful for improvements on the current version.
When I was/if I still were a Catholic, I would say the problem with a better translation of the novus ordo is that it's a better translation of the novus ordo.
Pro multis is a joke. Having had a ringside seat for Vatican II, the mistranslation was intentional, to convey inclusiveness which is supposed to have been what the text really means regardless of what it actually says. Which in years to come only led to the whole qui propter nos homines thing.
I remember a priest, a convert from Judaism, once telling me ICEL really stood for International Conspiracy against English in the Liturgy, however being a "good Catholic" he did what he was told and used the texts.
Just personally, I thank God that at the age of 56, 36 years after the promulgation of the novus ordo, I do not have to try to be happy that they finally got a translation closer to right! Nice going, guys. Real guardians of the faith there.
The whole situation is beyond absurd, and unfortunately, not beyond tragic.
I'm sorry, PE, but what is "beyond absurd" but "unfortunately, not beyond tragic" is the fact that you give a damn. For goodness sake you belong to a church which not only uses the ICEL/ELLC texts in their own liturgy (Divine Service II--you have retained the old BCP language in Divine Service I) BUT WHICH COMPLETELY STUFFS UP THE EUCHARISTIC CANON in a way that even the not even the most liberal Catholic liturgist could recognise as valid. So why on earth are you bothering us with your opinion on this matter?
Brother Schuetz, I'm going to take a break from our exchange of volleys to express my condolences to you on the loss of your grandma. Having lost both parents, one parent in law, all grandparents and my wife, I get it about deaths in the family. And I have no doubt that she and all those who live faithful lives in relative obscurity are saints.
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Now, as to the post subject, I don't give a damn. I post on your site because we came across each other on Pastor Weedon's blog -- a pastor who in my opinion represents Lutheranism at its best -- and I was intrigued by your case, and, insofar as one can say this of someone one has never met personally, I like you. We (here meaning LCMS) do lose pastors sometimes to Rome or Constantinople, but more often the latter. Just before encountering you, we had such a case, John Fenton, of whom you may know (he knows of you, your blog is on his blogroll!) and who contributed much to the synod in the way of liturgy, and whose blog I still read though I cannot share his current beliefs. That said, I do not post there, except once to ask him if he had been aware during his conversion process of Eastern Rite Lutherans, which he did not answer. (A Lutheran Ukrainian divine liturgy is linked to on my own blog, which you may visit any time.) But I do not otherwise engage because he is a Western Rite Orthodox, as opposed to Roman Catholic, and I can understand that, but not share that, as an answer to the problems that plauge our synod in particular and Lutheranism generally. But the Roman Catholic Church, it being neither Roman nor Catholic any more except by the most thorough sleight of hand -- now that I had to check out. If you were Othodox, I would not be here. If you were "cradle" Catholic, as we used to say, or a convert from something other than Lutheranism, I most certainly would not be here.
Now in regard to this thread, I specifically labelled my thoughts as those of an ex-Catholic, thoughts I would have and had quite independent of being a Lutheran now, which came years later. Speaking as one who for some years tried to do as my parents did and trust that things will eventually right themselves, I am just happy that I do not have to miserably hang on, as a sign that this is happening, to the appearance thirty six years after the fact of a reasonably accurate translation of a text not beyond my third year Latin class to render.
And, I specifically avoided a Lutheran critique of the matter, or of things Lutheran, this being a "Catholic" blog. But since you point to their absence by way of rebuttal, here they are. As to the adoption/adaptation of the novus ordo in contemporary Lutheran worship, which here in America largely began with the Lutheran Book of Worship, I think it is the most lamentable development in Lutheran worship since Pietism and will be far more harmful, and find LBW and that of it which continues in later service books such as our Lutheran Worship and now our otherwise fine Lutheran Service Book, to be the most wretched pieces of Vatican II for Lutherans wannabe crap, not fit for use even as toilet paper.
That said, even the stinking LBW, which served the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA, it being neither evangelical nor Lutheran but apostate from both, if you want to know!) until it recently came up with an even worse service book, managed to get some things right the boys in Rome missed. As an example, the kyrie. Came the Revolution, we were told that one of things about our miserable old Mass and its tie to mediaeval monarchial triumphalism (their words, not mine)is the kyrie, which sits with no rhyme or reason in our (then) current rite as a vestigial remain of the Eastern liturgy, a response to a bid minus the bid, seemingly asking for mercy after the confession of sin, therefore needs to be reformed back to something of its Eastern nature. Whereupon they did nothing of the sort, but merged it with the confession of sin, something entirely foreign to the Eastern kyrie (for the times we have ..., Lord, have mercy)! At least even the LBW got it right, preserved the "In peace let us pray to the Lord" and then proceeded with the ancient bids. Even the LBW got it better than the dunderheads in Rome, in a service book that otherwise is a chamber pot of foul and wretched wannabeism!
Confessional Lutheran congregations more often use the Common Service, which I admit I do not know if it had currency in the LCA (the A being Australia, not America -- we had an LCA too!). And you are right, the Te igitur,(which is not, per se, the canon) is entirely absent, retaining only the verba. You know why this was done, and I agree it is an over extreme reaction, from which the LSB does retreat, on praying eucharistically. That said, here I stand as a Lutheran since you point to its absence, over reaction or not, it removes that which stands the mass entirely on its head in either the novus ordo or the ordo it replaced, making Christ's inexpressably wonderful gift to us somehow a work on our part that one miserably prays that he will accept, as if he had not already done so and now attempts to feed you his saving body and blood in an act so marvellous that, to borrow Luther's phrase, who would not faint for joy at the thought of such a Saviour!
So, that is why I participate in this blog, and those are my thoughts on the things whose absence in my prior post you offer by way of rebuttal, and why they were intentionally absent.
If you wish me to retire from this blog, I will. If that is the case, in fact in any case, my hope would be that one day you will, for example, leave aside the miserable subjunctive mumbling after any form of the Confiteor in Roman ordos new or old, and again pronounce the words that, having myself been a mumbler, bring tears to my eyes with their Gospel clarity: Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Thank you for your condolences, PE.
No, I am quite happy for you to comment on my blog. I guess there is just something about the two of us--travelling in entirely different directions--that means we sort of "cancel each other out".
That being said, while I do get interested in Lutheran theological discussions from time to time, it is not to condemn one position or another or one liturgy or another as "toilet paper". I respect and acknowledge all positions suggested by various Lutheran theologians. Occasionally I may say that one idea or another is more authentic to Luther's own theology, or one position or another is more faithful to the Confessions. But my main aim is to try to suggest how the various Lutheran understandings might relate to or be corrected by traditional Catholic theology.
I would thus understand your comments on my blogs if you approached them as a Lutheran, and tried to argue how Lutheran theology would correct them, but you seem to approach them as some sort of disaffected SSPX member, arguing that my opinions or the opinions of other contemporary Catholics are faulty because they follow Vatican II and/or are not authentically Catholic.
Then you confuse me entirely by saying that even if they were authentically Catholic (the thing you criticise them for not being) they they wouldn't be worth "toilet paper".
I believe that if a certain Christian teaching is true, then it is true for all Christians, not just for a single communion/confessional family. I would like to know if a certain teaching is true or not, if it is faithful to the Christian tradition or not, not whether it is Roman or Lutheran or Orthodox.
Again, a Monty Pythonism suggests itself (from "Life of Brian"): Schutz: Why do you keep going on about Catholics, Past Elder?
Past Elder: I want to be one.
I sure don't come out well in Monty Python psychoanalysis!
No, I don't want to be a Catholic.
So I'll try again. But later! To-night it's just too late and I'm too tired to do it now.
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