Archaic translations (ICEL)

[johnquinn39]

I'm not sure about some of the words in the new translation of the Mass.

Aren't Gibbetts the insides of chickens?

Does ineffable mean that you are not allowed to use unacceptable language?

[VML]

The bits I used to put in soup or pate were giblets..

[festivaltrumpet]

Whatever one may think about the new translation, one is not going to affect any change to it now. Our challenge will be to implement the new texts in as positive a manner as possible.

The language will certainly be richer and might even broaden the vocabulary of some of the faithful. The church traditionally has a role in education!

Any congregation using the hymn "Immortal, invisible" will already be familiar with the word ineffable.

[musicus]

Whatever one may think about the new translation, one is not going to affect any change to it now.

<pedant mode on>
effect
<pedant mode off>

Sorry, but perhaps not inappropriate in a thread about language.

[NorthernTenor]

Classical refutations of use of the vernacular in the Roman Rite have warned of the dangers of the transitory and the mundane. Criticism of the use of resonant language such as "gibbet" and "ineffable" tends to bear this out. I write this without an axe to bear - I've never attended a usus antiquior mass in my life.

I also suspect that the majority of those who criticise the language of the new translation on grounds of intelligibility fully understand it, but are in effect saying that the average catholic in the pew won't (sometimes they say this outright, e.g. Bishop Trautman's toe-curling comments on "John and Mary Catholic"). Whatever the intention, such criticism has an air of the patronising about it.

[nazard]

Surely anyone who actually wants to know what these words mean will find out? Dictionaries are common enough. We even have one in the parish library. Gibbets still get mentioned in history lessons, even if they are a touch unfashionable at the moment. Actually, they are so unfashionable that the last time I drove through Caxton Gibbet in Cambridgeshire all the village signs had disappeared, or perhaps they are so fashionable that the signs are now collectors items. Have Madame Tusauds still got a gibbet on display?

[Southern Comfort]

Surely anyone who actually wants to know what these words mean will find out? Dictionaries are common enough. We even have one in the parish library.

Slightly unrealistic to expect that people will carry dictionaries with them to Mass. What was that word he said? I'll just look it up.....

The question we're talking about is whether we want a sacral language which distances people from their everyday lives and which may not be totally comprehensible, or whether we want liturgy to be part of our lives and our lives part of the liturgy and achieve this by allowing the liturgy to communicate directly to people.

I've never attended a usus antiquior mass in my life.

I was brought up on them, before Vatican II. I dislike this Latin descriptor because it seems to be trying to imply that the older usage is therefore more valid. It is an older usage, but it's by no means the oldest. What Vatican II attempted to do, in part, was take the Church back to the pristine simplicity of the early centuries, before the preconciliar usage (a much more accurate term) was "born or thought of". To promote a usage on the grounds that it's older than the current one seems to me to be at best an affectation, at worst deliberately misleading. (I'm not saying that Northern Tenor was doing that, just commenting on the terminology.)

[docmattc]

The question we're talking about is whether we want a sacral language which distances people from their everyday lives and which may not be totally comprehensible, or whether we want liturgy to be part of our lives and our lives part of the liturgy and achieve this by allowing the liturgy to communicate directly to people.

Whether we want a sacral language or not is now irrelevant, the time for that discussion (if ever it existed) has long gone. We will get the new translation. I agree with festivaltrumpet that we have a duty to implement the new texts positively, with catechesis as to why the change and explaining difficult words if we really think they are beyond the comprehension of the people. What the Church has given us is a mid-point between a sacral language (ie exclusively Latin) and the rather banal texts with which we have become familiar.

I suspect the real issue is that we don't like change.

Is it a bad thing to have liturgy that is removed from the everyday? I suspect not, as long as it is not so far removed that the congregation are denied their participation (whatever that word means!)

Is the liturgy primarily communication to the people or communication with God? Discuss with reference to the following examples:
"Father, you are holy indeed"
"Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give You thanks"
"Lord Jesus Christ, You said to your apostles..."
"Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation"
"Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ"

[johnquinn39]

[
We will get the new translation. [/quote]

Yes - but will it be of any use?. If it does not make sense then why not just have Mass in Latin?.

I know a priest who stated (of the new translation) that 'It's not English, it's not Latin, it really doesn't mean anything at all. Priests simply won't go out and buy it. They will just use what they already have'.

[docmattc]

Yes - but will it be of any use?

I think it will bed in surprisingly quickly if handled properly. Problems will occur only if its suddenly imposed with no warning, people are told its bad, they won't like it, Father doesn't understand the long words etc etc.

It's what we're getting, so let's just accept it cheerfully and even if we don't like it, make the best of it.

Personally, I think much is an improvement, but some bits aren't.


A more useful question to tackle will be "How do we prepare for the new translation?"

[NorthernTenor]

The question we're talking about is whether we want a sacral language which distances people from their everyday lives and which may not be totally comprehensible, or whether we want liturgy to be part of our lives and our lives part of the liturgy and achieve this by allowing the liturgy to communicate directly to people.

I'd suggest that's a false antithesis. The text of the liturgy is, of necessity, full of specialised words and concepts that we understand because the Church and their use in the liturgy have made us familiar with them. Consider, for example, the celebration of the sacred mysteries; our prayer to the blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints; our praise of the One who is seated at the right hand of the Father; the holy gospels; our acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. These and many other parts of the liturgy employ ideas and terms of depth and complexity that are hardly the currency of everyday life. So, too, the words and phrases have a poetic resonance that gives them meaning and effect at more than the surface level. Indeed, some of the best loved and most powerfuly moving liturgical and devotional prayers are known in stylised, sacral English translation - consider the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Hail, Holy Queen.

The post-Conciliar Church in the English-speaking lands has retained such complexity and poetry in its public rites because they encapsulate and convey our faith in ways that go beyond the everyday. ICEL is to be congratulated for the latest development of its translation, which proves to us that the vernacular does not have to bow either to the transitory or to the mundane.

[NorthernTenor]

I've never attended a usus antiquior mass in my life.

I was brought up on them, before Vatican II. I dislike this Latin descriptor because it seems to be trying to imply that the older usage is therefore more valid. It is an older usage, but it's by no means the oldest. What Vatican II attempted to do, in part, was take the Church back to the pristine simplicity of the early centuries, before the preconciliar usage (a much more accurate term) was "born or thought of". To promote a usage on the grounds that it's older than the current one seems to me to be at best an affectation, at worst deliberately misleading. (I'm not saying that Northern Tenor was doing that, just commenting on the terminology.)

I see a number of issues with that, of the kind that are likely to send me off to a celebration of the older usage to find out what the fuss is about, but I'll stop now before the good Musicus realises we're going off-topic.

[Hare]

Any congregation using the hymn "Immortal, invisible" will already be familiar with the word ineffable.

I think you might mean "O worship the King, all glorious above"

The word in "Immortal, invisible" is "inaccesible".............. (Just realized the unintional humour there - er, no, as you were, I withdraw that after what happened last time I tried to make a joke on here... ! )

[Southern Comfort]

Getting us back on topic, the last time we discussed this in this thread http://www.ssg.org.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=658, I said

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.

With all due respect to doc, I don't think it's good enough to say "They're coming whether we like it or not, so just make the best of it". The question is whether it's actually going to be possible to make the best of it. I suggest a re-read of the samples in that thread will demonstrate only too clearly what is at issue.

I am quite sure that a significant proportion of clergy will simply not use the new texts, and there has already been correspondence in the Tablet about this several times. The situation in South Africa, where they jumped the gun and introduced the new texts, is chaotic. Some places are using them, some places are refusing to. But what is certain is that the imposition of something which people can tell is not helpful to their prayer life is and will continue to be a cause for disunity and for the departure of some.

In all of this, there has been absolutely no pastoral consideration given to what is going to happen. The Missal texts which ICEL and the English-speaking Bishops' Conferences sent to Rome in 1997 was a vast improvement on what we currently have, and it was framed with pastoral needs in mind. It is not our fault that reactionary elements in Rome moved the goalposts so that they would not have to approve what the English-speaking bishops of the world had already approved. This was nothing less than a cynical political move.

The fact is that the new texts are not an improvement, and we should dig our heels in and continue to press for something better.

[Southern Comfort]

Yes - but will it be of any use?. If it does not make sense then why not just have Mass in Latin?

It has already been stated many times that perhaps this is the underlying Roman agenda - to put people in a situation where returning to Latin if the English is unusable is seen as a better option. Hmmm.