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Recent Editorials:
 WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN
Vol. 40 No.2 - June 2010
Amidst much talk of great achievement and the long and complex process of preparing the new translation of the Missal, it was announced on 30 April 2010 that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments had approved the definitive English text. Vox Clara held a celebratory dinner and presented the pope with a copy bound in white, and Cardinal Pell came away with a handsome volume bound in red with gold edges which he displayed at the Australian bishops meeting and clutched for a photo in The Australian. I think it is reasonable however to ask what has been approved. The ‘final approved’ text is not available to bishops, educators or publishers because there is still a huge task to edit out the mistakes and inconsistencies. Once this is done, the bishops conferences might get to see what they themselves are supposed to have prepared and approved.
And once the self-congratulatory hubris has abated, we are left with the sobering thought that this is the first liturgical book in English whose approval has been confirmed by the Holy See for twenty-three years. The last was the Order of Christian Funerals in 1987. That approval broke new ground because, for the first time, the Congregation granted a confirmatio subject to a long list of amendments. In other words, the Holy See claimed the final say over a translation approved by the bishops conferences of the English-speaking world. Still, like its predecessors (the 1982 Pastoral Care of the Sick and the 1986 Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), it had incorporated new texts written in English and some pastoral adaptation. At this time, work was already underway for the revised Sacramentary: consultations on the revision were held throughout the English-speaking world in 1982 and 1986.
A lot has happened in this last quarter of a century. A second edition of the Latin Marriage Rite was prepared in 1990. It greatly enriches the introduction, adds new texts, provides new blessing rites, a communion rite and a rite of marriage before a lay minister, and revises existing texts and rubrics. We do not have it in English. ICEL draft translations and local modifications were never approved. A second edition of the Latin Ordination Rite was promulgated in 1989. We do not have it in English. ICEL revised the existing translation incorporating all the changes and offered it to bishops conferences in 1993. After several years, it was rejected by the Holy See with comments critical of the existing texts as well as the new sections. The Congregation issued ultimatums and deadlines, stressing the absolute urgency of this project. An entirely new translation was prepared taking into account all the comments, but was again rejected by the Holy See. In the meantime we have also had new Latin editions of the Rite of Exorcism (1999) and the Roman Martyrology (2001-2005) neither of which has been translated into English. A final ‘white book’ translation of the Dedication of a Church and an Altar was prepared on the eve of Liturgiam Authenticam.
The chain of events after 1998, when the revised Sacramentary was completed and approved by all the English-speaking bishops conferences, is well known. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments imposed a new constitution on ICEL in 2000, issued the new charter for translation Liturgiam Authenticam in 2001, published the new edition of the Missale Romanum in 2002 and, within a few months, rejected the translations of the revised Sacramentary and the Rite of Ordination, also establishing Vox Clara to oversee the new translation of the Missal which has now been confirmed.
By the time the old ICEL was decommissioned in 2000, the next phase of the comprehensive revisions program was already complete in its first draft, only to be buried in ICEL archives. This was a new book entitled Order of Christian Initiation of Children, the result of a consultation throughout the English-speaking world in 1993. Designed as a companion to the RCIA, it incorporated a new translation of the Rite of Baptism for Children, the Rite of Confirmation, and the chapter from the RCIA on children of catechetical age. By placing these rites together, the book was able to articulate the Roman model of confirmation before or with first communion, while making allowance for those places which celebrate confirmation at a later age. Following the model of the RCIA, additional rites and pastoral notes were prepared for the periods before infant baptism, between baptism and confirmation / first communion, and for the continued growth in faith through the years of childhood.
Where to next? An ICEL report presented by Archbishop Denis Hart to the members of the Bishops Commission on the Liturgy and the National Liturgical Council in February 2010 indicated that two ‘grey book’ translations were ready to go to the bishops conferences for their vote – the Dedication of Churches and Altars and the Rite of Marriage – though bishops conferences have not yet been consulted on drafts of these books. Several ‘green book’ translations for consultation were also said to be ready: the Book of Exorcisms, the Rite of Confirmation, the Rite of Consecration of a Virgin, Blessing of an Abbott and an Abbess, and the Institution of Readers and Acolytes. At the time of going to press, none of these has materialised in Australia. Perhaps these days ICEL needs to await Rome’s permission. ICEL has also been discussing future translation projects. Suggestions include the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rite of Baptism. The report from September 2009 mentioned the Liturgy of the Hours and the Rite of Ordination.
Forty years ago, a group called the Carpenters sang We’ve Only Just Begun. It is not liturgical music, but it might be a suitable theme song for ICEL. After the sorry saga of the last twenty years, there is a big backlog to clear.
Tom Elich, Editor
The New Translation: Dread or Delight?
Vol. 40 No.1 - March 2010
Notwithstanding the languishing and musing of the consumptive Romantic poet John Keats, I found the movie Bright Star a profound cinematic experience, one that led me to dig out my old poetry books to rediscover some of his verse. The fourteen lines of the sonnet which gave the movie its title form but a single, difficult sentence. I needed to read it aloud over a dozen times before I began to get it right. Our newly translated collects may only rarely have the poetic lucidity of John Keats but, like the sonnet in its complexity, may require a dozen attempts aloud before we begin to get it right. How should we approach the new translation of the Missal?
At the outset, I suppose I should declare my hand. In my judgement, the 2001 charter for translation, Liturgiam Authenticam, is a poor document, an embarrassment for the Church. It wrongly presumes that languages correspond literally, verbally and grammatically. It reduces the mandate of bishops conferences who prepare the vernacular liturgical books, restricting them to translating the Latin without any new compositions or pastoral rearrangement of the rites. It wrests overall control of the process from the local bishops conferences in favour of the Holy See. Yet this is the document in possession and there is no indication that its provisions are open to revision or dialogue. This is the document which established the new ICEL (International Commission on English in the Liturgy) which is responsible for the translation we are about to receive.
I also need to say that I was involved in the work of the old ICEL during the 1990s, most notably in the preparation of the Revised Sacramentary. This twenty-year project, approved by all the English-speaking bishops conferences, was summarily rejected by the Holy See. Prepared according to the previous charter for liturgical translation, Comme le prévoit, this work incorporated not only subtle and supple translations from the Latin, but also extensive new material, both pastoral notes and new prayer texts. In the last decade, this rich version of the Missal has been studiously and publically ignored. The forthcoming translation is always compared with the text we have used for almost forty years and never with the text we should have already been using for a decade.
I find myself smiling at the rhetoric of the new ICEL and the bishops involved with its work. Not until this translation project, we hear, did they understand the rich biblical allusions to be found in the liturgical texts, not until now has the nuance and theological depth in the Latin texts been revealed. It is a little like the colonial explorer who presents a personal discovery as a new reality. What they discovered invariably was always there and was appreciated by other people for generations before them. Certainly those involved in the old ICEL well understood the riches of the liturgical texts and, I would suspect, many of those who prayed these texts for a lifetime did as well.
The real issue is how our Missal translation provides eloquent and transparent testimony to the theology of the liturgy, its feasts and celebrations. Forty years ago our scholars sought clear, simple sentences which could be readily understood in the hearing. The rites should be marked by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people’s powers of comprehension and as a rule not require much explanation (SC 34). We have learned over the last half century that people can handle a more extensive vocabulary and a greater level of grammatical complexity, which allow for a fuller expression of our liturgical praying. This is what the Revised Sacramentary attempted to do a decade ago.
The forthcoming translation however takes it much further, using convoluted expressions, incomprehensible words and ungrammatical sentences in its attempt to be faithful to the Latin. Here I am agreeing with American Bishop Donald Trautman who has thus criticised the new translation. At the insistence of Liturgiam Authenticam, these texts seem to be primarily about the Latin; the Second Vatican Council tried to get beyond the Latin by introducing the vernacular and encouraging local expression.
Now however the decade for comment and feedback has expired. Criticism from bishops and liturgical scholars has certainly made some difference as ICEL revised drafts and presented final texts to the Holy See and bishops conferences. Next – if the first part of the Missal to be approved (the Order of Mass) is anything to go by – the Holy See, assisted by the Vox Clara committee, will revise the text at whim, and we will have it to print in our new liturgical books. This is it. It is accomplished. How then should we approach the new translation of the Missal?
I do not think I can pretend before our people that we are getting lucid, poetic prayers. But this is what the Church has produced for our use at this time. I willingly accept that the translators, bishops and administrators who have laboured to produce these texts over the last decade have done so as sincerely, faithfully and generously as we ever did in the old ICEL. Irrespective of any disagreements, we all seek to do the best for the Church and, at this juncture, that means enabling the Church to retain its voice at prayer. We must learn how to use these words for our prayer – to praise, bless and thank God, to ask for God’s help in our need. If we face a Collect and ask ourselves, What on earth does it mean?, we have no option but to study the text and analyse its grammar, to read the text aloud and to repeat it until it begins to gel in our minds and hearts. Whether we like it or not, such hard work will have the benefit of leading us more fully into the beauty of liturgical prayer.
Tom Elich, Editor
Reformation: 500 Years Ago
Vol. 39 No.4 - December 2009
JOHN CALVIN was born a middle-class Catholic five hundred years ago this year and lived for fifty-five years. We may take this birthday anniversary as an opportunity to remember the half century of his life. In 1509, Martin Luther was a twenty-six year old, recently ordained as an Augustinian priest and just appointed as a lecturer at the University of Wittenburg. Ulrich Zwingli was twenty-five, a priest for three years and pastor at Glarus in Switzerland. Thomas Cranmer was a twenty-year old student at Jesus College in Cambridge, a decade off ordination. Martin Bucer was only eighteen but had already been a Dominican for three years. In 1509 the Christian world in the West still held together but all that would change drastically in the decades of Calvin’s lifetime.
Antonio Ghislieri was a five-year old shepherd boy in 1509. He would become Pope Pius V twenty months after Calvin’s death and would work strenuously to implement the reforms of the Council of Trent, producing the Roman Catechism in 1566, the Roman Breviary in 1568, and the Roman Missal in 1570. But by this time the horse had well and truly bolted. Western Christianity was bitterly divided and dozens of church leaders had been beheaded or burned at the stake.
The pope in 1509 was Julius II. He had been made a cardinal and given a handful of bishoprics by his uncle at an early age and he fathered three daughters. As pope, he was a bellicose ruler of the papal states and a great patron of the arts, notably of Raphael, Michelangelo (whom he had paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling) and Bramante (who began St Peter’s Basilica for him). His successor, Leo X, a polished Renaissance prince, spendthrift and pleasure-loving, had been made a cardinal at thirteen years of age and pope at thirty-eight. He promoted the funding of St Peter’s by the sale of indulgences. After Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg, Leo condemned and excommunicated him, and granted Henry VIII the title of Defender of the Faith for writing a book on the sacraments against Luther, but there was no real engagement with the theological issues or understanding of the revolution which was beginning.
In his brief pontificate, the ascetic Dutch pope, Hadrian VI, was ostracised as a foreigner and so failed to reform the culture of the Roman Curia which he saw as a primary cause of the Reformation. His successor Clement VII (1523-1534), again a cultivated Medici prince and patron of the arts, was paralysed by his vacillating political alliances and procrastination. He evinced no support for renewal or reform in the Church and during his pontificate England moved into schism and Switzerland and Scandinavia adopted the Protestant reform. It was at this time that the new theological thinking began to find expression in sweeping liturgical reforms written into local Church Orders, city by city, principality by principality. Martin Luther simplified the Roman Mass and truncated the canon in the Formula Missae of 1523, taking it further in 1526 with the Deutsche Messse. In these two years, he produced baptismal rites, the first a cautious revision, the second eliminating most of the ceremony. Likewise in Switzerland, Zwingli’s first liturgical reform of the Mass appeared in a 1523 pamphlet which was again followed up in 1525 by a more radical proposal. He produced two corresponding baptismal rites in the same years, the second, as he said, removing all the additions which have no foundation in the word of God. In the Mass rites, the vernacular was used, the canon was condensed to the biblical narrative of institution, and communion was given from the cup. Zwingli, wary of any symbols, settled for the preaching service as the regular Sunday worship with communion offered quarterly, while Luther tried to maintain weekly Eucharist and communion though this was not ultimately successful. We should remember that, while the Medieval Church celebrated Mass very frequently, annual communion was the norm.
Pope Paul III who reigned for the rest of the 1530s and the 1540s was in many ways another typical Renaissance pope – he was a cardinal at twenty-five, fathering four children, given to worldly pleasures, indulging in scandalous nepotism, and a patron of letters and the arts. Yet at last we see a pope who supported the inner reform of the Church – establishing reform commissions, approving new orders such as the Jesuits (1540) and fighting for the General Council which opened in Trent in 1545. However his political interventions in Europe, complicated by his family ambitions, were unable to check the spread of Protestantism and the work of the Council of Trent, although combining dogma and reform, was reactive rather than proactive.
During these years the liturgical reforms in Protestant areas continued unabated. In England, under the auspices of Thomas Cranmer, editions of the Book of Common Prayer appeared in 1549 and 1552, the second a more radical revision of the Sarum Rite than the former, due in part to the advice of Martin Bucer who spent the last few years of his life in England. Bucer had become the leader of the Reformed churches in Switzerland and southern Germany after Zwingli’s death. After more than a decade of liturgical revision in Strasbourg, Bucer produced his Psalter mit aller Kirchenübung in 1539, a complete service book of church practice with a moderate and simple, if quite didactic, eucharistic rite.
John Calvin was greatly influenced by this rite in his three years with the French-speaking community in Strasbourg. When he was recalled to Geneva, it became the basis of his 1542 Form of Church Prayers which was his attempt to capture the liturgy in its primitive simplicity and to replace the ‘childish and theatrical follies’ of the medieval liturgy. Calvin, like Luther, maintained weekly Eucharist and communion, with Word and Sacrament the regular Sunday pattern of worship. However, while Luther and Cranmer’s principle of reform was to change only those things which were contrary to the word of God as they read it, Calvin required the liturgy to demonstrate only those things which the word explicitly set forth. Calvin’s was thus the more radical reform (for example, Luther retained the elevation of the host, an element of ‘popular religion’, because it helped people pray and did no harm). Authoritarian and disciplined, austere and ascetic, scholarly and precise, Calvin established in Geneva a culture in extreme contrast to the luxury of the Renaissance papacy. His reputation and influence was widespread and his writing has continued to shape Christian theology for five hundred years.
One-sentence summaries hardly do justice to the protagonists in the turbulent and tragic half-century of Calvin’s lifetime. It was a time of energetic ideas and action but it was also the time when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. After five hundred years we’ve not managed to put poor Humpty together again. Today we need more than ever to respect the good faith of other Christians, listen to one another and work together, and this not just between Christian churches but indeed within the Catholic Church as well. In the words of one of our Eucharistic Prayers, we urgently need to pray:
Keep your Church alert in faith to the signs of the times and eager to accept the challenge of the gospel...
Tom Elich, editor
The Word and the Voice
Vol. 39 No.3 - September 2009
Words printed on a page are inert. Between the pages of a book, human language is pressed to death like the dried flowers beloved of scrapbook artists of the Victorian Age. Words fall silent in print. They might remain shut in a book on a library shelf for centuries until they are liberated by the human eye and produce meaning once again.
The Scriptures too are written down and bound into books but, as Paul writes to Timothy, you cannot imprison the Word of the Lord (2 Tim 2:9). God’s word is a saving event. God said, let there be light, and there was light… So we call Christ the Word of God, the decisive intervention of God’s love in the world. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and lived among us (Jn 1:1, 14).
The reader in the liturgy gives voice to the scriptural text, liberating it from the printed page. In the proclamation, God addresses us in a human language event; God intervenes in the unique present, speaking to us in the here and now in words we hear and understand. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the risen Christ is present between the voice and the ear. We encounter God in a meeting of human hearts, in the faith-full presence to one another of reader and hearers. The Voice and the Ear: we lend our bodies to the saving work of God.
We would do well to reflect on the voice in the liturgy. How do we handle the voice in the liturgical space?
When we renovated the Cathedral of St Stephen in Brisbane twenty years ago, this reflection consumed a considerable amount of energy. The whole project was intended to create a worship space that was austere and dignified in the manner of the great Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals of Europe. The pursuit of ‘warmth’ or a ‘communal’ feeling through carpet, drapes or upholstery would not be allowed compromise the dimension of the transcendent which is an essential component of any worship space. The commitment to a certain austerity however was to have one significant drawback – the acoustic.
The scientific acoustic testing which had been done on the cathedral turned out to be of limited value because, once the new cathedral was ready with its hard surfaces of stone and timber, the reverberation time lengthened considerably. This is fine for music but difficult for the intelligibility of speech. Sound absorption panels were installed under the seating. However it took several years before an adequate microphone / amplification system was achieved. Part of the issue concerned different understandings of voice in the liturgy.
We were trying to recognise that the human voice is the primary instrument of the word and that God’s word is proclaimed in the liturgy by a person of faith for a community of faith. It is a real human event in which God speaks to his people. The mechanisation of the word, or its electrification through microphones, amplifiers and speakers, should support the human act but not overwhelm it. Such a liturgical philosophy is diametrically opposed to prevailing culture of the pop concert or television studio.
St Stephen’s Cathedral was built, as cathedrals were for centuries, before the advent of sound systems and yet they were places for preaching and the proclamation of the word. But this requires a certain approach to the voice. The speaker needs to be able to project the voice across the space, pacing the speech to listen for the echo bouncing off the back wall before continuing. We found that hardly any of our readers or presiders were able to do this. They were too used to speaking in a careful and nuanced way to the microphone and letting the sound system do the rest.
I still maintain the ‘old-fashioned’ approach can work well. A year after the cathedral was reopened, the early medieval Play of Daniel was performed in the cathedral. The spoken word and even the mouth harp were perfectly clear and audible throughout the cathedral without amplification. I have reluctantly come to accept that such an approach is too doctrinaire for the twenty-first century.
Nevertheless, a recognition of the primacy of the human voice does lead to a certain circumspection with regard to the technical equipment of amplifiers and microphones. They must be of good quality so that they reproduce the human voice naturally and without distortion. We should keep microphones turned down. Readers should learn how to project the voice and regularly practise in the church without a microphone. Throwing the voice out to the people in the middle and back of the church will change the pacing and intonation of the proclamation. It becomes a public act with the whole assembly, not just a quasi-private event at the lectern upon which the assembly is allowed to eavesdrop. It will require a good lungful of air and physical effort on the part of the reader.
For this reason, I also argue that lapel radio microphones are generally unsuitable for liturgy. They are excellent in the television studio and encourage a conversational intimacy with the hearer. But unless they are carefully used, they do not facilitate speaking in a public communal event which the liturgy is. If we put too much emphasis on the technology of sound, before we know it we will end up like Pavarotti at the opening of the Olympic Games: to get the ‘best’ sound, we will play a digital recording and lip-sync.
Tom Elich, editor
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