The poster was talking about the OF.Good point. Why go through all the translation wars and costs when the Offertory Prayers (and many other prayers in the EF) are said quietly (I believe Trent called them submissa voce) anyway? And if the call is to say them out loud, then it wouldn’t be the Tridentine Mass.
They should suffice for the OF, but how does that make them suffice for the EF? The rubrics of the two forms are very different.
It seems that the audible prayers in the EF (Gloria, Credo, some Prefaces, Pater Noster, Agnus Dei, etc.) are said in the OF. So the English OF should suffice for the churchgoer, no? I’m sure the priest understands the text of the Mass, and not necessarily word-for-word, either. We now have a deacon who is struggling with Gospel (and the Passion narrrator) readings in Spanish. And I mean struggle. I doubt if anyone asks him after Mass if he knows what he is saying.
On the last sentence of yours, I don’t think it would be polite to ask him, but it does make one wonder sometimes.
Who knows! Why the Church went the way it did with the Novus Ordo is something difficult to understand, as well. Why didn’t it, at that time, simply allow the EF in the vernacular. It would have been much simpler than constructing an entirely new set of rubrics and prayers.
Seems like it wasn’t so simple. They tried to do with the 65 Missal and again with the 67 Missal, but it didn’t catch on too well at all. And now that the OF (Missal of 69) is the established norm, I don’t think they want to retry the 60’s period of “experimentations” on the older form. As Cardinal Arinze said, the EF has to use the liturgical books of 1962, and there were none in English AFAIK.
I’m not sure it was that it didn’t catch on, it’s that everyone was waiting for this much-whispered-about “restored” Missal which was to come out, and eventually did, in '69. People talk about the '65 English transitional Missal as being a very high quality text, with good rubrics and a good translation, a moderate simplification. That leads me to believe that the English speaking bishops, at least at first, were not expecting what eventually came to be. They were expecting a Holy See-vetted and -created Missal, but it seems, not what eventually came out.
“Catching on” doesn’t seem to me a condition for action. But that aside, all I’m saying is that the EF in a literal translation, or several literal translations (each with an Imprimatur), doesn’t seem to me like a difficult task. We already have the translations. Pick one, or several, I don’t care, and it’s done. No change in rubrics, no change in anything but language. Any argument that this is difficult cannot be serious. Getting agreement of all the Bishops, or even two Bishops, well, that may be difficult, but that’s another thing altogether, and is a prerequisite for anything other than a decree by the Holy Father himself, which is not what I am suggesting. The task is simple. Whether it is wise or would be efficacious is different. I confess I am a simple man with limited education, It seems a good thing to me from my limited knowledge and more limited wisdom.
First time I heard the 1965 being a high-quality text since it basically just stripped off the Judica Me and the Last Gospel. There’s a reason why the old Mass advocates overwhelmingly chose the 1962 Missal over the others. Stats show that Catholics started leaving in droves around 1964, when it was rumored inter alia, that the language would be changed. The ICEL had started its work around that time. Maybe at first they grabbed on to one of the handmissal translations (which one, do you know?) but the translation wars abounded after that. Is that surprising, though, given ten translators, you’ll get ten different translations? I have about five different handmissals of that period and I find all the English translations inadequate and weird-sounding. Like the others I wouldn’t travel the distance to hear any of them in the liturgy. I need my Latin fix, and there are already too few of Latin Masses. Sorry.
If I understood Latin I might agree with you, but all I have is my translation into English in my missal. Of course, you know the Mass was originally in other than Latin, like Syriac, a dialect of Middle Aramaic, as I posted earlier. There is no magic about Latin.First time I heard the 1965 being a high-quality text since it basically just stripped off the Judica Me and the Last Gospel. There’s a reason why the old Mass advocates overwhelmingly chose the 1962 Missal over the others. Stats show that Catholics started leaving in droves around 1964, when it was rumored inter alia, that the language would be changed. The ICEL had started its work around that time. Maybe at first they grabbed on to one of the handmissal translations (which one, do you know?) but the translation wars abounded after that. Is that surprising, though, given ten translators, you’ll get ten different translations? I have about five different handmissals of that period and I find all the English translations inadequate and weird-sounding. Like the others I wouldn’t travel the distance to hear any of them in the liturgy. I need my Latin fix, and there are already too few of Latin Masses. Sorry.
Well, if you won’t if you never get exposed to it.
Yes, the Maronite Mass has the consecration in Syriac. Everyone there seems to understand what’s happening at that point, though I doubt if anyone knows it word for word.
This just is not true for everyone. I personally have concerns with the theology of the OF. I do not think that it expresses Catholic teaching as clearly as the EF does. This matters to me far more than Latin, ad orientem, or any questions of style. While my first choice is to attend the traditional EF, I would prefer a translated EF to the OF. (I am prepared to go to any valid, licit Mass when necessary.)
It may not be difficult for one person but history has shown that translations, even “literal” ones, into modern languages are at best, unstable. We have over 200 versions of the English Bible and more are certain to come, each one probably being an “easy” task for a publisher. But where is the guarantee against the corruption of meaning? I understand an Imprimatur doesn’t make any translation infallible.
I think the AB used this argument. You do realize that it can be construed as very offensive to the OF cause, don’t you?
No I don’t use a missal in at the EF. Of the 300 people there the last time I attended mass at an FSSP parish, probably less to 15 people were using a missal. I don’t speak Latin, but I know enough that between it and the gestures of the priest to know precisely where we are. I also know what the prayers are so I doubt that I or anyone else not using a missal would consider ourselves in the dark.
I do not see how my position is offensive to anyone. I spoke of my preferences.
Bingo. This was the first thing I thought, too.
One who espouses the Latin OF and all the theology behind it MIGHT find it offensive. Jussssst sayin’.