Current translation may have masked truth and beauty, says Melboune Archbishop, Denis Hart, in the lead up to the implementation of the new English translation.
By Anthony Barich
The current Missal translations that the English-speaking world has used for the past 40 years have hidden the Church’s true faith, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne said.
“While very successful in many ways, this translation has, in many cases, hidden rather than revealed the true treasures of the Liturgy,” Archbishop Hart, the Australian bishops’ representative on the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), said in Melbourne’s Catholic journal Kairos on July 26.
The ICEL is working on a retranslation of the Latin Liturgy into English, ordered by the Congregation for Divine Worship under Pope John Paul II in 2001.
While he said the process was “nearing the end”, Archbishop Hart would not specify when.
“Just as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel were dulled by smoke and grime, so the vivid colours of the Sacred Liturgy were dulled by a limited use of vocabulary and a pedestrian style of sentence structure,” Archbishop Hart said.
“Like the earlier, unskilled attempts at restoring the work of Michelangelo, so the rich imagery of the original Latin text was often obscured or removed altogether.
“Most tragically, in some places our current translations have actually hidden the Church’s true faith. An ancient saying, ‘Lex orandi, lex credendi’ (‘the way we pray is the way we believe’) teaches that if our prayers are robbed of their full meaning, so also our faith is impoverished.”
The Vox Clara Committee, which includes Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, was formed in 2001 under Pope John Paul II to advise the Holy See on English-language liturgical books and to strengthen cooperation with the conferences of bishops in this regard.
This task required “the preparation of (new) liturgical books marked by sound doctrine, which are exact in wording, free from all ideological influence, and otherwise endowed with those qualities by which the sacred mysteries of salvation and the indefectible faith of the Church are efficaciously transmitted by means of human language to prayer, and worthy worship is offered to God the Most High”, the Congregation for Divine Worship said in 2001.
The texts being prepared by the ICEL will be common to the entire English-speaking Church.
The bishops’ conferences of Canada, England and Wales, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and the United States have been involved.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops announced on July 17 that they have approved four liturgical texts for use in English-speaking countries.
The original Latin text of the Liturgy is the result of many centuries of faith and tradition, parts of which go back to the very earliest times of the Church, he said, and centres on the Sacrifice of the Mass – “the greatest treasure of the Church” – in which saints and martyrs and bishops and priests and people join together with the angels ‘as one voice’ to praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
However, he said that English, like Latin, is also capable of “bearing many layers of meaning. English, like Latin, can accurately express and convey the truth of our Faith,” Archbishop Hart said.
The Archbishop warned that the introduction of the new texts would “take some considerable effort” by the laity and would require much patience and “a firm degree of solidarity” with the bishops and the whole Church.
Priests and people will also need to be pastorally prepared through a period of catechesis.
“However, I am sure that when this great work of restoration is completed and we are all able to experience the result for ourselves, we will rejoice to see the revelation of the hidden treasures of the Liturgy – a treasure fresh and restored for the Church today and for many future generations,” he said.