ICEL new Missal texts sampler

[Southern Comfort]

Prepare to be somewhat depressed.....

I recently received a copy of the Proper of Seasons in "grey book" form - i.e. this is a revised version of the original drafts, and its proponents think it is reasonably final. This was sent out to bishops' conferences last June, but some are only voting on it now.

Now sit back and imagine yourself in the pews on the 1st Sunday of Advent 2XXX under the new regime..... This is what you would hear the presiding priest utter:

COLLECT
Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that your faithful may resolve
to run forth with righteous deeds,
to meet your Christ who is coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord . . .

PRAYER OVER THE OFFERINGS [sic]
Accept, we pray, O Lord, the gifts we offer,
gathered from among your blessings,
and as the fruit of our temporal offering
grant us the reward of your eternal redemption.
Through Christ our Lord.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
May the mysteries we have celebrated profit us, we pray, O Lord,
for even now, as we journey through this passing world,
you teach us by them
to love the things of heaven
and hold fast to what will endure.
Through Christ our Lord.

What is depressing is that these are the very first texts you encounter when you open the Missal. The problem is one of slavishly following the Latin syntax to a point where the words just become gobbledy-gook. They simply haven't been designed to be heard, only to be read. And assuming that you can even decipher the syntactical construction as a listener, what do these texts actually mean anyway?
When was the last time you resolved to run forth with righteous deeds? And what has running forth got to do with it? (Yes, I know the imagery is of running forth to meet Christ, but by the time you get to that point you've been derailed by what went before.)
How about that hanging clause "as the fruit of our temporal offering" in the Prayer over the Offerings? It's clear that the fruit refers to the reward in the following line, but when you listen to it, you won't be sure whether it's God who is the fruit and is being asked to grant, or whether it it's us who are the fruit, or what, particularly after that particularly convoluted first line of the prayer.
The Prayer after Communion is better in this respect, but there's another convoluted first line there too.

Let's turn the page. Two of these texts are re-used on the first Monday of Advent, so we'll move to Tuesday. How about this?

COLLECT
Be moved by our pleading, Lord God, we pray,
and in our trials
grant us the help of your compassion,
that, consoled by the presence of your Son who is coming,
we may be tainted no more
with the corruption of former ways.
Through our Lord . . .

Hmmmm.

PRAYER OVER THE OFFERINGS
Be pleased with our poor prayers and offerings,
O Lord, we pray,
and since we have no merits to plead our cause,
come to our rescue with the protection of your mercy.
Through Christ our Lord.

Hmmm, again. And shouldn't there be a comma before "since" in line 3? (Lots of instances of this throughout the texts.)

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
Replenished with the food of spiritual nourishment,
we humbly beseech you, O Lord,
that, through our partaking in this mystery,
you will teach us to judge wisely the things of earth
and hold firm to the things of heaven.
Through Christ our Lord.

Here's a strange mixture: the words "beseech" and "partake" rubbing shoulders with the ICEL translation that we currently use:

Father,
you give us food from heaven.
By our sharing in this mystery,
teach us to judge wisely the things of earth
and to love the things of heaven.

And, although it's fairly obvious that it's we who are replete, that unwise hanging first clause could allow someone listening casually to construe it as the Lord who is replete.

Or how about this, from the first Wednesday of Advent?

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
We implore your mercy, Lord,
that these divine provisions,
which have cleansed us of vices,
may prepare us for the coming feast.
Through Christ our Lord.

Well, if they had remained even closer to the Latin, they'd have said "divine subsistences" and "expiated our vices", but surely using the word "provisions" brings back memories of going down to the grocer or delicatessen in the days before supermarkets. It intrudes a profane note into what is obviously intended to be a sacred moment, and then we are derailed once again by the use of the word "vices". Here's the current translation, by contrast. Not perfect, but certainly more comprehensible:

God of mercy,
may this eucharist bring us your divine help,
free us from our sins,
and prepare us for the birthday of Our Saviour,
who is Lord for ever and ever.

And here we are, only four days into the liturgical year. Imagine what the cumulative effect of these new texts is going to be further on. I can't help fearing that a lot of people are going to walk away from them as irrelevant to their lives. The tone is frequently reminiscent of Anglican collects from the pen of Cranmer. That may have been fine for people in those days, but we live in a different age. Our language has changed, and so have we. Liturgiam authenticam would say, of course, that it's important to have a sacral language which is noticeably different from everyday speech. But nowhere does the author (yes, there was only one) of that document show any sense of the need for accessibility, listen-ability, or sheer pastoral common sense. There's a difference between simplicity and banality, and between good English and flowery language. When we say "humbly beseech", "partake", etc, we subsconsciously know from period dramas on TV, if nothing else, that this is the insincere language of the flunky who knows that his request may not otherwise be granted and who therefore lays on unctuousness and flattery with a trowel. We just don't take it seriously on TV, and we won't be any different in church.

At the very least, in order to extract the most from these texts, we will have once again to become people of the book, saddled with a read-along liturgy, our eyes glued to the page. Communication and participation will suffer, and the sense of communal celebration will be lessened.

Again I say, I believe these texts are going to pass right over the heads of young families with children and probably many others, too, and I fear that our attendances will diminish as a result. For this to happen as a result of an ideology-driven agenda is simply tragic.

[Reginald]

I for one will be glad to see the back of the ICEL texts that sometimes impose their own agenda on ancient prayers. I'm not suggesting that these prayers are perfect, but just that I want prayers that are 'faithful' to their Latin originals rather than just conveying a sense of them.

If the Church has deemed it appropriate to continue to use prayers from the 6th/7th/8th etc centuries then so be it. Of their very nature they are complex, packed with layers of meaning and frequently deferential in tone - until such time as someone feels fit to change the Latin of the prayers so that they conform to the idea of the Church conveyed by the ICEL texts I don't see that there's a way out of this. The sad fact is that the English speaking Church has, for some years, not prayed all of the concepts in the collects.

I think you make a valid point about how difficult it may be to proclaim these prayers - the punctuation will need to be revisited and, dare I say it, the celebrant is going to need to have read them before Mass starts if he is to convey the sense of them. Moreover, it is going to take time for us to re-acclimatise ourselves to the traditional tone of Catholic worship...but the Church survived on this fare for centuries, and often in a language that the average punter in the pew couldn't understand either...not suggesting that we want to go back their either, just that it's probably not the end of the world as we know it - if we choose not to let it be.

[Southern Comfort]

My point is not so much that it will be difficult to proclaim these prayers (though that is indeed true), rather that the listener will not be able to take them in, make sense of them, and indeed find that they can feed his/her spiritual life. I am all in favour of preserving the richness of the old collects, but in a way that enables people to be nourished by them, not via a kind of robot-speak. That necessarily means moving away from the Latin cursus, since that is so alien to our way of speaking and thinking that those of us without a classical education (which must surely be 95% or more these days) will find them irrelevant and lacking in any impact. It means translating them into a modern syntax, accessible by those who hear these prayers. It does not mean diluting the concepts in these prayers.

The translation that ICEL sent to Rome in 1997 would have done all of this and more, but alas those in the curial citadels, who mostly have not an iota of pastoral experience worthy of the name, decided that they knew best. It would be comparatively simple to revisit the 1997 version, but no one is talking about the advantages of doing that. In the meantime, we are faced with having to try and justify a change which will, far from being an improvement in what we have now, be an impoverishment of our post-Vatican II liturgy.

And this may well be the underlying agenda. After all, it is on record that Cardinals Ratzinger and Medina made a pact in the early 1990s to undo what they saw as the damage wrought by the Second Vatican Council and its liturgical reforms. We are now reaping the whirlwind of that secret agreement. One of those men is now pope, the other has left a legacy in the Congregation for Divine Worship that needs to be dismantled without further ado.

In other words, if we despair of what is to come, there will be one obvious alternative: return to the 1962 Missal, Mass in Latin facing away from the people, and a passive spectator liturgy instead of the full, conscious and active participation which, SC proclaimed, is the very essence of the liturgy and the right and duty of the faithful.

[presbyter]

If the use of the present ICEL translation is never abrogated, perhaps priests will just continue to use it.

[Southern Comfort]

Indeed. Many priests within 5-10 years of retirement age will consider it all too much effort and simply won't bother to change. And neither will their congregations. The Roman powers-that-be will have succeeded in creating a kind of liturgical anarchy - exactly the opposite of the control they wanted to exercise.

In the same way as B16 (or his advisors) claimed, erroneously, that the Missal of Pius V had never been abrogated when any fool can see that it had been, perhaps the way will be open for others to claim that the Missal of Paul VI and its current ICEL translation has never been abrogated (even if it has been) !

[contrabordun]

but just that I want prayers that are 'faithful' to their Latin originals

But what do you mean by 'faithful'?

[docmattc]

Surely its too early to be crying doom. There is no way to tell whether these will work until they are tried with an open mind. If celebrants are determined from the outset that they won't work, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

True a prayer with many layers won't be grasped in its entirety by the listener at first listening, but how much of the current versions are taken to heart by the listener? Within 30 seconds of the current prayers being prayed I couldn't tell you what had been said. I'm not sure I'd even notice if one got missed out. Perhaps some element of these texts might lodge, perhaps not, but some element is better than no element at all. It is about time that the Proper prayers gained some gravitas. All too often at the moment they are merely fillers between different bits of the Mass.

That said, I agree that being chained to Latin syntax is very poor workmanship indeed. It doesn't work in English and even less so in spoken English.

After we've got used to using the new translation, we can probably expect it to be superceded in 30/40 years time by another one. The Post-VCII pendulum is on its return swing, but given time it will swing back, each time with a lessening amplitude.

[alan29]

There is no special magic in this or that way of expressing the same idea or truth, unless it is a creal statement that needs assent.
All I expect is that the powers that be do me and my fellow worshippers the courtesy of not mangling our language. I find it deeply patronising and offensive.
Alan

[presbyter]

[b]PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION
............,
that these divine provisions,
which have cleansed us of vices,

More of a pious hope than a fact in my case!

[presbyter]

Isn't the problem not so much the translation of the Missal but (dare I say this?) the Missal itself?
If the Roman Rite in itself is impeding the full, conscious and active participation of the faithful - revise it at its root.
But then some documents (not to hand but I can look tomorrow) might seem to give the impression that the Latin text is of almost the same inspired nature as the Scriptures.

We don't worship the Roman Rite. The Roman Rite is the vehicle through which the faithful worship God.

.......... leaves having deposited feline among feathered flock

[presbyter]

ICEL do have an unenviable task on their hands. But their mandate is not to follow the Latin slavishly.

"While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer, the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet." (Liturgiam Authenticam 20)

Might that mean we could get rid of the ut and form shorter sentences for the sake of clarity? Perhaps the redundant "we pray" could go too. The prayer is opened with the presidential "Let us pray", after all.

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that your faithful may resolve
to run forth with righteous deeds,
to meet your Christ who is coming,
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord . . .

........might become......

Almighty God, grant
that your faithful may resolve
to run forth with righteous deeds,
to meet your Christ who is coming.
Gathered at his right hand,
may they be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord . . .

I suggest that's a sober and discreet adaptation. But if it is unacceptable, the manner of presidential proclamation is going to have to be carefully rehearsed:

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that your faithful may resolve
to run forth with righteous deeds,
to meet your Christ who is coming, [LONG PAUSE for the intention to sink in]
.
.
.
.
.
so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord . . .

[oopsorganist]

Wickedly I think

your faithful May Resolve will run fourth with Righteous Deeds to meet Your Christ who is coming
into the home straight etc

but hopefully in the event of hearing it I will just ignore it and read ahead to the readings or the next piece of mashed up music we are about to do. Which is what I do with all those bitsies we have now.

Thankyou to Presbyter for saying that about the Missal. I am glad someone said that.

[contrabordun]

"While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer

Well quite. And the example quoted above is blatantly anything but a "flowing vernacular text".

How about printing the missal in 2 parallel columns of text? The ICEL text, which the priest would read out, could be printed in the left hand column and the congregation could follow the English translation given in the right hand one.

[Reginald]

Isn't the problem not so much the translation of the Missal but (dare I say this?) the Missal itself?
If the Roman Rite in itself is impeding the full, conscious and active participation of the faithful - revise it at its root.
But then some documents (not to hand but I can look tomorrow) might seem to give the impression that the Latin text is of almost the same inspired nature as the Scriptures.

We don't worship the Roman Rite. The Roman Rite is the vehicle through which the faithful worship God.

.......... leaves having deposited feline among feathered flock

Whilst I'm not a fan of wholescale revision of the Missal - I think Presbyter's approach would have more integrity than our current situation. My issue is that I can't help feeling that our current translations are a little 'deceitful' in that they don't try to render the Latin so much as give it a post Vat II spin - thinking particularly now of the number of times that almighty and ever-living God in the Latin becomes 'Father' in the English, the way that the salvation of all is presented, the times when reliance on the grace and mercy of God is eliminated from translations etc. If the Church prefers the image of God the Father over almighty and ever-living God so be it, but let the Latin reflect that so that the entire Church moves in that direction rather than the English speaking Church going off on its own tangent.

There then of course remains the issue of our apostolic character...if we're no longer happy to think of God the way our spiritual ancestors did, then to what extent are we a Church in continuity with them?

[Reginald]

Sorry, the solution's just struck me - based on contrabordun's suggestion:

Mass in Latin and you choose a parallel version Missal with a translation that you trust/want...or did that already happen sometime?