WELCOMING THE NEW TEXTS OF THE MASS

Why the New Translation?

Surely many people will be asking, “Why change at all?” “What’s wrong with the words we’ve been using?” Clearly, nothing’s “wrong” with the words we’ve been using. Change doesn’t always fix something that’s broken; it’s also meant to make things better. Over the 45 years since the end of the Vatican Council and its liturgical reforms, a whole process of updating has been going on.

To understand that process, we need to remember that the Church prays in unity all over the world. The move from Latin to the “vernacular” (languages of each nation) made it much easier for all of us to enter into the prayers of the Mass. But the “official” text of the church’s liturgy at Mass is a Latin text. We are “Roman” Catholics; we belong to the Roman or Latin “rite” of the church, and the official language of that rite is Latin. When the new “Roman Missal” appeared in 1970, there was a rush all over the world to translate that text into English, Arabic, Japanese…etc. As you might expect, doing things quickly doesn’t always produce the best results. If you’ve ever translated from one language to another, you realize that a word or phrase in one language can often be stated in several ways in the other language. But the Latin text has some very precise terms. So the goals of revising the prayers of the Mass were to:

1) Provide a more faithful rendering of what the Latin text intends to say by using language which is easily understandable, yet at the same time preserves the text’s dignity, beauty and theological depth.

Latin has been the language of the church’s theological study for most of our 2,000 year history. There are terms in Latin which have a very precise and specific meaning in expressing the faith of the church. There’s a very old Latin saying , “lex orandi, lex credendi,” which means “What we say when we pray is what we believe.” As was mentioned last week, the Mass is not just our expression. It’s a time of entering into the mystery of the dialog between God and the human race which takes place in the person of Jesus, the Word. When we say “The Word became flesh,” for example, that does not have the same meaning as the English term “was born.” Expressing in our prayer at Mass as precisely as we can the truths of our faith is certainly worth doing as accurately as we can.

2) Make more clear the connections between the prayer texts and passages of Sacred Scripture. Those connections sometimes weren’t clear in the translation in 1973. To use a musical example: “I have seen God’s glory coming” is pretty clear. But: If I say “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” my attention gets called immediately to the Battle Hymn of the Republic—and all its words and meaning.

3) Give the words and prayers of the Mass a high level of dignity. The Mass is the most significant prayer we have. We use special language on all sorts of occasions because of the dignity of what’s taking place. Using special language that does not sound like day-to-day, newspaper language is not only helpful—it’s important! The Mass is extraordinary. It’s a moment when we encounter the Mystery that is God. The language we use to do this really matters.

When the first translation was done in the 1970’s, it was seen as a temporary translation. Since the Council extensive liturgical study has taken place in the Church; four major liturgical documents have come out during this period. The new Missal incorporates the fruits of that study, and is a more careful and true translation of the normative Latin text.

Not only was the first translation rushed, but many of the changes in the liturgy just “happened.” Parishes and diocese often did not do a very thorough job of explaining the what and the why of the changes. Over these coming weeks we hope to do a better job of addressing the changes that are happening this Advent. As a matter of fact, we will begin to work with some of the changes in the texts we sing (like the Glory to God) within the next few weeks.

There are good reasons for the coming changes. We’re not “going back” as some have worried. We’re not “undoing” the liturgical reforms of the Vatican Council. We’re “going forward”—slowly and carefully. Our prayer together at Mass is so important that it’s worth the effort to do it as well as we can. In the weeks to come we’ll look in detail at specific changes in language. It’s a great opportunity for us to develop a deeper grasp of this great prayer of our Church.

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KEY POINTS:

1-- Faithfully and carefully rendering the official Latin text of the Mass prayers

is the guideline for the new texts.

2 – How we pray reflects not just how we think and talk, but how the Church thinks—what is our faith?

(This is the second in a series of ten articles prepared by Fr. Ritter and Joanne Denyer. You may wish to save them all.)

All ten articles will be on our parish website: www.stjoesylvania.org