Well, it looks like the current ICEL is leaving a trail of sacked experts in its wake. It should consider itself lucky that there are thinking, intelligent people who care about the way we speak to our creator and redeemer. One wonders who will be left in ICEL in the end... and what we will be left with.
To put it bluntly, we're in a hierarchy, folks, and no matter how many tantrums we throw, they will only be storms in a teacup. At the end, we will get a translated text, no more, no less. Not a literary text, fit for proclamation, but an English rendition of the Latin, I'm afraid. And like good British people, we will rant and rave until we get to the church door, and then we will go in, meekly saying what we have been given to pray with.
immediately reminded me of a stand up act at my kinders' Christian school...... (talent show). Apparently the comedian was dyslexic and struggled to read through his coursework - "I tried reading the New testaments, (sighs, long wait) -
how does that end then?"
Merry Christmas all especially to Alan - may he find better things to do with his time!
Did I tell you the one about the old carpenter? Perhaps not.
This whole episode is very sad, not least because Fr Alan was such a persuasive advocate for the new texts at Summer School, winning over many who were sceptical of their introduction. Introducing the new texts is bound to be difficult because so many people in the pews are comfortable with what they know and dislike change. It will be even harder to effect the change if those best able to "sell" it to reluctant clergy and congregations are alienated and the texts themselves harder to "sell".
Recently I went to Mass where "Yahweh I know you are near" was one of the hymns on the menu and when I pointed out that this was specifically prohibited got an answer to the effect: "Yes, we know. We stopped using it, but then heard that everyone else in the Deanery was still singing it, so we went back to it." Given that level of indifference to official directives I can well imagine many parishes deciding that the new texts are obscure and un-congregation-friendly and sticking with the old ones. Indeed, several years ago I heard a priest say that he disagreed with the new texts and did not intend to introduce them: how many others will take this line for fear of alienating congregations and driving them away with a text they perceive as getting in the way of their understanding? What would happen if they did? Would someone try to argue that a text valid on the Feast of Christ the King is no longer valid on the First Sunday of Advent 2011 and that the Transubstantiation that occurred in response to those words on the former occasion did not occur in response to the same words on the latter occasion?
Peter wrote:Recently I went to Mass where "Yahweh I know you are near" was one of the hymns on the menu and when I pointed out that this was specifically prohibited got an answer to the effect: "Yes, we know. We stopped using it, but then heard that everyone else in the Deanery was still singing it, so we went back to it." Given that level of indifference to official directives I can well imagine many parishes deciding that the new texts are obscure and un-congregation-friendly and sticking with the old ones. Indeed, several years ago I heard a priest say that he disagreed with the new texts and did not intend to introduce them: how many others will take this line for fear of alienating congregations and driving them away with a text they perceive as getting in the way of their understanding? What would happen if they did? Would someone try to argue that a text valid on the Feast of Christ the King is no longer valid on the First Sunday of Advent 2011 and that the Transubstantiation that occurred in response to those words on the former occasion did not occur in response to the same words on the latter occasion?
I know a lot of clergy who are thinking this way. Whether they will act on what they are thinking is another matter.
The response to Peter's final question is "valid but not licit".
Given the number of parishes not yet singing the present translation, what hope that they will take on board its successor?
In 2008 I carried out a survey in one diocese. Of those parishes who replied that they do sing the liturgy, more than 20% were using Israeli Mass and it metrical brethren. And that's without mentioning the parish which only "allows" the assembly to sing the Sanctus when the choir is on holiday! And then there's the parish priest who insists on a strophic Gloria sung to the tune of The Ash Grove.
It's taken 40 years for us to come this far. And now that we have to start from scratch, with new settings to be tried and tested before any become widely sung, I can't help thinking we have a long way yet to travel.
Were I pastor of a parish which is, to date, getting it right, I'd be asking my musicians to engage with the new texts but, given the recalcitrance of St Polycarp's up the road where they still sing American Eucharist, I doubt I'd be asking them to throw out the baby with the bath water.
Apologies, Mr Bear, for going up Tangent Boulevard with only the flimsiest of maps.
That's OK, Nick. Actually, the question of how priests and people will respond to the new texts is a very important one, deserving of its own thread, so let's keep this one for ICEL and its doings.
