Congregations will need to ‘tune in’ to liturgy’s mystery says Bishop
By Anthony Barich
CATHOLICS may make a surprising discovery if they pray the new Missal “as the Church prays” and apply their minds to it, says an Australian Bishop set to visit Perth for the February 4-7 Australian Bishops’ liturgy conference at Novotel Langley Hotel in Perth.
The programme to help priests and the laity understand the new translations will also be launched at the conference.
Lismore Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett, to whom liturgy has always meant a great deal having grown up with a “deep experience of beautiful worship” in the Anglican Church, said that with a positive attitude from Bishops and clergy, the new Missal would more fully express the Catholic faith and nourish it.
In fact, the new translations will make the liturgy so much more profound and powerful that “priests will find they can write a whole homily on some of the new phrases in the Mass, as something just leaps out of the accurate translation that wasn’t there before”.
This is not a criticism of the 1973 text, he said. By introducing the new translations, the Church is “consciously striving to translate the liturgy in the most accurate and beautiful way possible for the future”. Bishop Jarrett said the new Missal is crucially important for the faith as the Christian life of the Church for each individual reaches its high point in the celebration of the liturgy.”
“Our life is focused toward the liturgy, which is the worship of God, and derives its spiritual strength and power from God’s gift to us in the liturgy.”
He said that the new translation will require priests to read and rehearse the texts as they will have the key role as the celebrants of the liturgy.
While its introduction in early 2011 will require “considerable explanation and preparation” by Bishops and clergy, Bishop Jarrett told The Record that the new translations completed by the International Commission for English in the Liturgy will make the liturgy more powerful by enabling it to speak its essential meaning more profoundly.
It will also require Bishops to give leadership to priests who already have many commitments, “to respond to this wonderful initiative and see it as such, to be very positive about it, and to discover the riches that are there and how it will make liturgy a more beautiful and meaningful celebration, and to help the priests see that”.
The key, he said, is a positive attitude.
“This is great step forward. We’re all going to benefit; the spiritual life of people worshipping at Mass is certainly going to benefit,” Bishop Jarrett said.
After the Second Vatican Council it was often assumed that the English in the liturgy had to be simplified down to “the most everyday sort of language so that the man in the street could immediately relate to it”, he said.
“It was believed you had to strip it down to more of a paraphrase – under a sort of ‘dynamic of equivalence’ – you weren’t aiming to produce a translation as such, but aiming to express the equivalent of what the translator thought the prayer was saying.”
“So you weren’t translating necessarily words that appeared in the original, like gracia for grace, but what the man in the street could relate to – like ‘love’.”
However, the original Latin text from which the new translations derive is important, he said, as “we are praying with the Church, and we might make a surprising discovery if we pray what the Church prays and apply our minds to it”.
“We are praying with the church, we’re not adapting for ourselves what we think the Church should pray in our language,” he said.
While the precise meaning of the phrase may puzzle some, he believes this is a good thing, as it prompts people to think about them and let the meaning come through.
“The language challenges us,” he said. “It’s not everyday language because (worship) is not an everyday thing. It’s a much elevated thing – worshipping God, and entering into communion with Him … ultimately no human language will be sufficient.”
Elements of Scripture and liturgy, when translated in any language, are not immediately easy to understand as there is “so much of God’s being and purpose involved” in these texts”, he said
“This is why that dynamic of equivalence flattened it out, making it more understandable but there’s not much mystery or beauty left in it.
“There’s not terribly beautiful English in the liturgy; now there will be, as is in the English we know in theatre and poetry; and we’re going to have to tune into it.”
This is why the program to be unveiled at the February 4-7 conference in Perth for introducing the new translation into parishes across the country is necessary, he said – to encourage the faithful to “tune into what the prayers are saying”.
While there is some apprehension from priests and lay about the new translations, he says there is nothing to fear but getting used to the new phrases.
Most changes are to what the priest says, and relatively few changes have been made to the congregation’s responses.
“There are some who would be happy to continue with the present texts, but I’d say that of the people who have read and seen the new text, by far the majority are saying this is better and will aid our worship and will introduce us more deeply into what the liturgy is praying,” he said.