The experts that are translating this seem to disagree. Let me ask something. Is there a second person imperative in the Latin? In other words, is there another Latin phrase that would be, “The Lord be with you”, if we translated it back into Latin?
What facts? You mean your PERSONAL OPINION?
I like the new translation and find it long over-due. The current version was done too fast and was known to be flawed when it came out. Here is an article by Cardinal DiNardo.The fact that is it what he thinks
Yes. The puzzling in the original text is intentional, and thus it has to be kept. It is puzzling, that we incompetent, week creatures could receive the one through him all things were made. The puzzling reminds us that this is not a natural thing, this is above our understanding
What about the French version of the passage?
The French version is pretty much identical to the English
Alas, your familiarity with the word “fact” is mostly fictitious. You are stating an opinion—and an opinion that I am happy to say has been weighed, measured, and declined.
There’s something dreadfully wrong with that approach, and it’s one reason (albeit not the only one) why the lame duck version was a mistake from the get-go. The council authorized limited use of the vernacular. It did not envision liturgical disintegration by “rewriting.” The consilium had arrogance enough to share, and it seems to have poisoned the presumably well-meaning ICEL “translators” who so badly botched their task by paraphrasing if not outright (as you concede) rewriting the missal. “These weren’t bloopers; they were the result of people who had different ideas about what the Mass should say”—what incredible arrogance on their part!
I didn’t mean that the approach I had described (“rewrite for the local language”) was a good idea – hardly; I think it would have been an awful idea – only that it is a theoretically valid approach that could have been chosen. That is to say, it is not inherently wrong; only wrong for a raftload of extrinsic reasons (many of which are described in Liturgiam Authenticam).
Well, the Latin is potus spiritualis, so “spiritual drink” is an accurate translation, and in fact will continue to be the translation under the new edition. I couldn’t tell from the above passage whether you knew that, sorry.I’m sure this doesn’t apply to Mark, [Not at all! – I am waiting for next Advent with bated breath!] but I do find the criticism of the new translation by the people who enthusiastically supported what was done 1965-1969 to be more than a little rich. Did they say “the translation is horrible—that’s just a fact!”? Did they pause to consider that “our spiritual drink” makes no sense in any context, still less when the wine will not become anything so amorphous as a “spiritual drink” but rather the blood of our savior? And when will the partisan critics of the new translation admit the obvious: that this is simply a corrected translation which makes no substantial changes to even the flawed parts of the missal itself?
Mass is a solemn experience. We should not be using everyday language.
My remark wasn’t clear, particularly given the context; I was mixing a criticism of the translation with a criticism of the novus ordo itself, which probably wasn’t a good idea. I recognize that it’s the consilium’s rewrite of the offertory that is defective—all-but heretical, to be quite frank, given that its context at least soft-peddles if not subtly denies the real presence—not the translation, which faithfully renders Bugnini’s nonsense into English. It doesn’t become our potus spiritualis. It becomes for us sanguis Christi!
Potus spiritualis is probably not the language I’d have chosen, but I wonder if you aren’t being a touch too hard here (“all-but heretical”). The Precious Blood is a drink (“my blood is drink indeed”), and I don’t think it’s completely out of line to remark that it is a drink we take not to sustain the body, but to nourish the spirit (“It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing.”). It’s entirely in line with the point that Jesus made distinguishing the manna that our fathers ate and still died from the “living bread” of the Eucharist.
It’s the context that creates the problem. I agree that it’s a drink, and that it’s in some sense spiritual. If someone talked about a spiritual drink in an academic context, that would be one thing. The context of the offertory, however, is specific: wine is about to become something, but not something so amorphous as a “spiritual drink.” To deny the real presence is heresy, and the novus ordo offertory comes a hair’s breadth from doing so, hiding it behind a bizarre circumlocution in the same category as “damning with faint praise.” Suppose a priest said at that moment: “it will become for us, red.” That would be true, in a sense: after the consecration, the wine will be red (assuming it started that way!), and it will be a spiritual drink, too. But we would sense that something is amiss: that a point is being made through changed emphasis.
I guess I look at Jesus as explaining two ways to phrase the type of change that takes place at the Consecration. One one hand, Bread → Body, and on the other, Bread → Bread of Life. One expression emphasizes the change the bread undergoes in substance; the other, the change it undergoes in spiritual significance and effect. In the OF, the Institution Narrative focuses on the former change, so it is not entirely out of line that the Offertory should focus on the latter.
So Latin, Greek or Aramaic where never everyday languages?
The liturgical Latin used in the Mass is not “everyday Latin”, it’s not “street Latin”.
If it never was, then why was the first translation into Latin called the Vulgate.
that is the Scriptures, not the Mass
Yes it is; the Sacred Scriptures. Thus we have an example of the Sacred being in the common language.