Dominus Vobiscum

“The time has come to renew that spirit which inspired the Church at the moment when the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium was promulgated. The seed was sown … the seed has sprouted…” In a word, the acceptance of the new Missal is “a moment to sink our roots deeper into the soil of tradition handed on in the Roman Rite” ~ Pope John Paul II, Vicesimus Quintus Annus, #23

I had a lot of sympathy for those who joined the 'Why don't we just say wait' movement about the upcoming change in translation philosophy affecting English-speaking  Catholics. I think that I even signed the petition, since in a time when the Church here in the U.S.A. is so fragmented, the very LAST thing that we need is something new to fight about!  One thing that is absolutely driving me batty is charges that the current mass propers are 'wrong' somehow, that they were not translated properly or that the devil hijacked the translation or some other such nonsense.  The following video does an excellent job of dispelling these rumors being spread in some circles.

A New Translation: Why and How?

In this video, Monsignor James P. Moroney explains the whys and the hows of the new missal. He is a faculty member of Saint John's Seminary and serves as Executive Secretary to the Vox Clara Commission. A consultant to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Monsignor Moroney is a Priest of the Diocese of Worcester and Rector of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

 


http://www.catholictv.com/shows/default.aspx?seriesID=114&videoID=1511

Consistency, sincerity, and honesty are very important to me.  I will find it very difficult to let the words they bid me to say flow from my lips:  so difficult, in fact, that I am seriously considering switching to a Spanish-language mass on Sundays during Advent this year.  My main problem is that the way that we modern speakers of English now use only one 'you' instead of the two forms that the Romance languages use.  Further, what we hear today when someone uses the intimate, familiar 'you' has exactly the opposite connotation of the original prayers.  The words "Thee" and "Thou" are rarely heard, and then usually only addressed to heaven.  The connotation of the archaic language is that of a great gulf between us and those we address.  That's not what the meaning is at all in the Missal.  The relationship we hear is that of a country peon on his knees prostrate as the emperor's procession passes, and that has absolutely NOTHING to do with our relationship to the Christ. Our union with Our Lord isn't one of bowing and scraping, but that of the most intimate embrace between Bride and Bridegroom; through Jesus, we share in His intimate relationship with Our Father and the Holy Spirit.

My opinion is that the long clauses, flowery phrases, and use of words never heard at all in daily discourse in the new translation will bring us FARTHER from the sense of the Roman missal, not closer.  In the long run, the change will most probably decrease mass attendance and result in even more disaffected youth than we have today.  If it is true, as many believe, that our catechesis has been deficient over the past twenty years when the Ordinary has been intelligible, when even more schooling will be required for active participation at mass, is it reasonable to expect a better outcome?

One change that I think might be fruitful would be to leave the traditional greeting "Dominus vobiscum" between the priest and the congregation untranslated in the latin rite, and to also revert to the original Greek in the Kyrie.  Requiring the Latin the Agnus Dei during Advent and Lent also would preserve the echoes from the past that are important in handing on our faith traditions and inspiring feelings of continuity with the whole communion of saints.  Only a tiny minority within our ranks have any family tradition of praying in the Latin language, however, so most of the suggestions I've heard seem very counter-productive.

Latin scholars are very rare.  Many of our worldwide vernacular translations of the Roman Missal are no longer made directly, but through an intermediate language.  In most cases, that language is English. While I recognize this need of the universal Church to have an "authoritative English translation" from which the mass propers can be faithfully translated, the Pope and his bishops ask too great a sacrifice of everyone in the English-speaking world in adopting that translation as the words we pray at mass.  Those who speak English as a native language in Nigeria, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, etc. shouldn't be treated as if they share only one cultural heritage, and enforcing only one language translation for the propers has that effect.

Essays in biblical interpretation

In my class response on the Chicago Statement, I referenced Living Tradition by James D.G. Dunn, a Methodist, in What is it that the Scripture says?: essays in biblical interpretation ...By Philip McCosker, Henry Wansbrough, 2006, T&T Clark - New York.
The whole book is pretty good, so I'm posting the Google Book copy here. To read other articles in the book, hit the "contents" button.

The volume is a tribute to Dom Henry Wansbrough, the General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. I particularly like His Excellency Murphy-O'Connor's Foreward to the volume. Father Venard's essay in the book gives us some very nice background not only on the process of completing that particular Bible translation, but of the general issues involved.

What is it that the Scripture says?
Essays in biblical interpretation

To Dream, Perchance to Speak

When I was learning the Spanish language in high school, I had a 'leg up' because both of my parents had studied Latin as a required subject in high school. Neither could read or speak Latin, except for the responses at mass. No, I wasn't aided by any knowledge they had gained but by the fact that they both still kept their old Latin textbooks on a bookshelf in our home.

When I found myself bored because I'd read all of my library books, I was in the habit of taking a volume of the encyclopedia or any random book from their shelves into the bathroom when I bathed. The bathroom was the only quiet place in a house with six younger siblings, so sometimes I liked to take a bath just to have some privacy. I never learned Latin, but from this reading I certainly did learn more about grammar than most at a very young age. I also was blessed in seventh grade with one of the meanest English teachers ever: Mrs. Gittings of the Infant Jesus of Prague School, who had the audacity to insist that children learn to diagram sentences even though that was no longer the educational fad. I just loved Mrs. Gittings...even though she made me read David Copperfield, one of the most insipid novels ever.

First studying a foreign language formally in high school, my original approach was to view it as a study in cryptology. Grammar was part of the code; vocabulary the other. I just loved secret codes, and enjoyed solving cryptograms and word-related puzzles. I just knew that someday, I'd find the master key and the whole language would be revealed to me. Nope, this allegorical philosophy and method tanked. I was getting an 'A', so it was OK in that regard, but I knew that I wasn't learning to speak the language.

The next approach was musical: keep the rhythm and conversational tonal pitches and don't worry so much about the words. When I actually started listening to the language, I could feel that I was learning much better. In public places, I knew what language people were speaking even though I spoke none of them from the song that the language made* from the groups of people talking together. The Mexicans sounded different from the Cubans, but it was obvious the song was in the same genre. I learned to say "como se dice" a lot to my teacher, who would give me the words I didn't know. By this time, I'd finally started to study the past tenses, which I think was my major stumbling block and the source of my frustration. They teach only present tense in the first year of study, and I don't know anyone who actually speaks in the present tense.

The approach that finally worked for me was to work and work and work until I developed the ability to think rationally without using any language at all. Little children think like that, it is only when they are around four years old that they have a running verbal interior dialogue. My thoughts when I was doing this correctly were exactly the same as my thoughts when I was sleeping and having a dream. So, I started trying to deliberately dream in Spanish. That worked. I didn't think in English and translate it into Spanish anymore: I started to think and speak in Spanish because I made room for it in my thoughts instead of clinging to the more comfortable ways of thinking in English.

When I hear of people now who struggle with learning languages, I suggest that they try to dream in the language. Nearly everyone I suggest that to thinks I'm crazy. The idea never occurs to anyone, but some actually try it. Many more people than I had thought can learn to do it. Those who do learn to do it have always told me that was their turning point in overcoming their difficulties and eventually they master the spoken language.

The best ESOL teachers (English as a Second Language) that I substituted or served under in Collier County, FL knew all of this intuitively. When Sister Lorraine in Immokalee taught her tutors, the approaches and techniques that she taught encouraged the natural learning of language, especially by absolutely denying the use of the written word. Speech is a verbal skill, and the written word unwittingly short-circuits in favor of the translation mode that gets in the way of actually learning the language. My friends at our Literacy Society and the immersion classes in the elementary schools foster the right attitudes in the students and their results are very impressive.

All of the books designed to teach American children to speak foreign languages seem structured to learn and memorize individual words. Maybe we should play them foreign language TV and try an immersion system instead? We have the technology!

* A funny story about language as song: Once at the Calistoga coffeehouse, I heard a group of people speaking in Italian at a table in the outdoor garden. They were obviously tourists, as there were maps and folders from the hotel all over the table. So, as a good Neapolitan anxious to keep our good reputation as a friendly place and also as a good Sicilian/Markejan, I walked over to welcome them, babbling in Italian. We all had a good laugh: they looked at me like I had two heads, since the music that I took for Italian was actually Spanish with the Argentine accent of Buenos Aires! (I was doubly embarassed, since I should have remembered that, since when my grandfather 'Joe' fled Italy by emigrating to the United States, his brother went instead to South America.)