Gwyn wrote:The prayers at the foot of the altar in the Trad Mass are beautiful and now sadly denied us.
Those prayers are Psalm 42(43). Not denied at all! Or has someone banned the psalms at Mass and not told us? And check the back of the Lectionary to see how often parts of that psalm crop up....
... actually we'd be celebrating in Aramaic, with Greek for the recklessly modern. I daren't put in print my true feelings about the version we have now - I fear a ban would descend that would be longer than this lifetime. Suffice it to say that I have a private "Percy Grainger Award" for prayers that go the furthest in their avoidance of Anglo-saxon rooted vocabulary. So far the list is bulging.
musicus wrote:give us a noble, simple and correct English vernacular translation?
Therein lies a conundrum: in the world of global communications 'correct English' and 'vernacular' both become rather nebulous and often at odds. The global influence of the US, marketing and business-speak all contribute to a constant evolution of the 'English' language. Achieving a form of words that can be understood and used by 'ordinary people' - who are certainly not a homogeneous bloc in our multicultural and highly mobile society - is an enormous challenge. I suspect that any such translation would require revision with each passing generation: is that a desirable goal?
BobHayes wrote:Achieving a form of words that can be understood and used by 'ordinary people' - who are certainly not a homogeneous bloc in our multicultural and highly mobile society - is an enormous challenge.
One which the compilers of the present translation appear to have had no interest in meeting, albeit their hands were tied by Liturgiam Authenticam which makes a positive virtue of achieving the opposite. "International" English is characterised by a simplification of vocabulary, syntax and so on. Despite that, it is still a sufficiently precise tool for use as the lingua franca of contemporary business, science, technology (and a host of other fields of which I know less). As usual, the Curia knows better - intelligibility not required.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the first use of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. It gave a certain frisson to the Opening Prayer, oops, sorry Collect ....... O God, from whom all good things come. Close, but no cigar.
