No problem with that one for me, I was saying that confiteor, with its 3 beatings of the chest, every night at my mother’s knee by the time I was 5 – along with the Hail Mary, Our Father, Glory Be, the Creed, the Acts of Contrition, Love & Charity as well as reciting the 10 commandments & the 7 precepts of the Church.
Philip, maybe in time, but I got the sense that since the liturgy isn’t completely immersed in English, I doubt if it would be a major issue, even if gradually certain parts are forced to comply with the newer translation. If they forsee a problem, they could always replace those parts with non-English text, IMO. Those who are stuck only on the English will be troubled, no doubt.Hi ProVobis.
I don’t want to derail things here, but I thought I should respond. That’s amazing about the Maronite liturgy you attended. I’ve wanted to attend one lately, but at Malphono’s “warning” I’ve refrained, primarily because it pretty much sounds like I might as well attend a Roman Mass, unless like you I can find one celebrate in Syriac and Arabic.
I understand the Anglican Church has expressed forbidden its ministers not to use the Roman Missal. I guess that means the newer English translation.
It would be hard to understate Pope St. Gegory the Great’s liturgical contributions (he is the author of the Presanctified Liturgy used on Lenten weekdays to this date in the Eastern Churches), but . . .
Sorry. Archaelogists have found that Latin was used in the liturgy as early as the first century, granted before Ecclestical Latin became codified.
It’s been done.
Me too.
“Used in” is not the same as being the primary liturgical language. The transition from Greek to Latin was not immediate.
Trent didn’t mention Latin. However it said that the all-vulgar liturgies shouldn’t be allowed everywhere. Ancient languages (Latin, Greek, Syriac, etc.) aren’t considered vulgar.
AFAIK, Latin didn’t eliminate Greek from the liturgy. Do you think all-Greek liturgies would have flourished and spread Christianity in the West?
Fair enough
No; I think the switch to Latin the the first century was absolutely the right thing to do.
I’m sorry, but “dynamic equivalency” is an excuse- “spin” as it were-for an attempt to protestantize the Mass. Such a translation is not a translation but a creative change to the traditional Mass in Latin. There are whole sections that were not in the Latin Mass-such as “for thine is the kingdom, etc.” after the Our Father. The egos of those involved in this so-called translation must have been enormous…just as those who mandated the removal of statuary and communion rails from our churches and the removal of tabernacles to side chaples-non of which were called for by V IIAlthough I don’t currently belong to a Roman parish (I belong to a Melkite Greek Catholic parish), when I miss Divine Liturgy at my parish I attend a Roman Mass. Also, my family is all Roman Catholic, so any changes to the Mass still concern me greatly.
I think I understand your current frustration. I grew up serving as an altar boy at Mass on an almost daily basis. I came to love the prayers as they were worded in the previous English translation, and I felt as though that translation fed and deepend my spiritual life greatly. that being said, I do understand why the changes in translation were made to the Mass (although I’m still torn as to whether or not I like or agree with the changes).
The intention of the current translation was to make the English a “more accurate” reflection of the original Latin. By “more accurate” the translators, according to my understanding, actually mean “more literal.” When you compare the previous English translation with the original Latin you’ll notice that there are a number of things that are seemingly left out. There are other things as well that are paraphrased rather than translated, or they are translated according to the “dynamic equivalency” method of translating rather than doing a literal translation. Dynamic equivalency means that the translators looked at the original text, and instead of translating word for word, they came up with the closest possible idiom that would be understandable to modern English speakers. In many ways this form of translation makes a great deal of sense, and it goes on all the time. For example, in English, when we are feeling overheated we would say, “I am hot.” One can translate that word for word into German as “Ich bin heis,” but to do so implies a great deal of sexual connotations. So the “dynamic equivalent” translation into German from English would be “Mir ist warm.” Word for word it’s not the same thing, but the meaning is the same.
In the Mass one example is the (in)famous “for you and for all/many.” Of course, the “for you and for all” is the previous translation with “…many” being the new. In reality they mean the same thing, if you follow the original meaning as conveyed through the Scriptures, “the many” being the old equivalent of today’s “for all.” They changed it to “for you and for many” in order translate literally and to make the Scriptural connection more explicit.
In the “Lord I am not worthy…” the reason for the change, again, was to be more literal, and to make the Scriptural reference more explicit.
I hope this helps some.
Well sometimes phrases which are familiar to us are beautiful and after a few years you will find beauty in the new mass translation.I don’t post here much but I do read some. I didn’t know where else to turn and I hope someone here can help me to understand WHY the Mass has changed?
All the beautiful phrases I loved are gone: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you…” Why is “come under my roof” better?
If the translation would have been accurate to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem. The translation done earlier was way off the mark. If other languages heard our translation of the Mass, they would have been saying “huh?”. I feel like it is equivalent to translating our language from the 60’s and 70’s to today using “groovy” and “far-out” and “can you dig it”. Accurate translation is important without putting any loose translation filtered in. Read up on the reasons. There are plenty of books written on the reasoning and I think you will see the beauty in an accurate translation Mass. First pray for the ability to see the wisdom of the Church.
In fairness there were many books written on the beauty of vernacular in the liturgy back in the 60’s and 70’s. Any vernacular and any translation was superior to the Latin in many eyes. There still are defenders of the “for all” translation. Whatever the ICEL put out was the work of the Church. Who’s to say in 40 years from now another translation won’t be even “more accurate” and some won’t say “What were they thinking back in 2011?”?
