Shome mishtake shurely?

[johnquinn39]

CURRENT: God our Father,
help us to hear your Son.
Enlighten us with your word,
that we may find the way to your glory.

FORTHCOMING: O God, who have commanded us
to listen to your beloved Son,
be pleased, we pray,
to nourish us inwardly by your word,
that, with spiritual sight made pure,
we may rejoice to behold your glory.

- What on earth does 'O God, who have ... ' mean?

Shome mishtake shurely?

[VML]

Who have, You have. We are addressing the Almighty in the second person singular. I suppose that is the reasoning.

[alan29]

Slavish adherence to Latin syntax produces Yoda speak. It is just shameful!

[nazard]

This example shows us beautifully how I believe we have gone wrong over the last fifty years. The new text is a correct translation of the latin text. It looks odd because the latin is odd. It starts by addressing God, but then puts in a clause reminding God that He told us to listen to His Son. Now, there is no need to remind God of what He said. I am sure He knows perfectly well. This clause is there as a reminder, a piece of instruction to us. Why are pieces of instruction muddled in with the prayers of the mass? I think that the council's instruction to simplify the rites meant, inter alia, to get rid of these odd clauses, but it was never done. In fact the new parts of the new mass introduced new ones. These clauses break the flow and hamper the understanding of the latin, and carried across to the english, continue to perform their function. I believe it is time to produce a good latin text for the new mass, then vernacular texts will come comparatively easily.

The text also shows a relatively mild example of the creative tendencies of the translators of the present version. Where did they get the idea of "help" in the imperative voice from? Out of the same black hole they found the phrase "Earth has given"?

Please be discerning about whether you criticise the translators or the writers of the latin text.

[quaeritor]

It looks odd because the latin is odd.

No - it looks odd because we've forgotten how to speak English (haven't we just had this in another thread? - "O God, who have . . " is correct even if rarely used.)

This in no way invalidates any of your more substantive points, Nazard - just me with the midnight grumps.

I'll go to bed!

Q

[FrGareth]

there is no need to remind God of what He said. I am sure He knows perfectly well. This clause is there as a reminder...

...not a reminder, but because the standard and traditional form for any collect is:

Beginning of address to God - mention of a reason why God is to be worshipped - continuation of the request we are addressing to the Almighty.

In this case, we are not reminding God that he spoke to us through Christ, but worshipping Him because, inter alia, he chose to speak to us through the incarnation.

FrG

[presbyter]

As i posted in the other thread.....

This sounds odd because the second person singular verbal form has fallen into desuetude ............. but not in parts of God's own Northern County from where I originate

Compare the opening of the Lord's Prayer - Our Father, who art in heaven.

[presbyter]

I'd still like to know why "O God, you have commanded us........." is not acceptable. Is that not in the spirit of LA?

[John Ainslie]

Please be discerning about whether you criticise the translators or the writers of the latin text.

Mgr James Crichton wrote this c. 1970 (italics his):

The very form of the collect is the product of a particular culture and indeed of a particular era within that culture. It is highly probable that the Roman collect began to be written in the fifth cen tury. By the ninth century at the latest the art was lost... The collect is the expression of a very hieratic type of worship (the utterance of the president was thought to be all-important) and its literary form with its conciseness and brevity makes it a difficult prayer-medium for modern Christians whose minds do not work in that way... There are whole situations which demand a different kind of expression, and this we shall eventually we shall have to find for ourselves.

ICEL took up the challenge at that time with their new, alternative series of collects for Sundays, which we have enjoyed saying or hearing for the past 38 years - and which we will now lose.

There is a whole problem of communication here, for the Roman collects were never written to be understood by the hoi polloi - and certainly since the eighth century, the language of the liturgy has not been understood by the vast majority of them. Now we wonder why we have difficulty translating them, let alone communicating their content to the laity in a way in which they can not just understand the words but mentally and spiritually engage with them and make them their prayer...

[nazard]

John, I think we are fundamentally in agreement. My point was not about grammar, as some have thought, but about style. The style of the latin collects is rather classical, or "up market" compared to the Vulgate or the ordinary of the Mass. It is more like Virgil or Cicero who loved to put material into subordinate clauses which most people would have put in separate sentences. It leads to sentences which are difficult to understand. Such sentences are not fashionable in any modern language which I know. The problem is that if the translators decide to divide these long sentences into two or more parts, which I would support, they have to provide a few more words. This is where they get the scope for being creative, and where the previous translators, in my opinion, overstepped the mark. That is why I think that it is time to rewrite the collects, but that is not the translators' job. It has lead us to the position we are in at the moment where the church's mass differs from country to country in its detailed meaning.