In his sermon for the Solemnity of Christ the King, Fr. Robert Barron previews some of the prayers in the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which goes into effect this coming Sunday. He ties it all together by noting that the language is more courtly – one would never use street language in a royal court. It is also, he says, more theologically dense and poetic.
After hearing the translation that we’ve been using for all of my adult life, and then hearing the new translation, both supposedly from the same Latin source, it is hard for me not to feel as though somebody cheated me out of my liturgical heritage!
2 comments:
HOW WONDERFUL FOR YOU THAT YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE LITURGICAL HERITAGE YOU NEVER KNEW YOU MISSED. May God Bless you and all of us praying the new translation.
For my part, I feel like the new translation is robbing me of a big part of our liturgical heritage. I'm afraid we'll lose the ability to feel and experience God in our midst because the language, and more importantly, the grammar is of a foreign tongue that was only used widely in the Roman church since about 800.
What about the even earlier liturgical heritage when the prayers bridged heaven earth because they were clearly expressed (not necessarily simply, mundanely)?
The missal is is a means of celebrating the Eucharist, it's not an end itself. And unfortunately the emphasis on literal translation obscures what it should be leading us too.
All the goals and reasons for this new translation are laudable -- it's just sad, the the Vatican believes they can only be realized by a literal translation of a Latin Mass from the past.
I would like to share this an excerpt in an interview for Il Giornale, May 31, 2004 by Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyo, Prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, which said: "When you hear talk about so-called ‘traditionalists', some think that they are a group with a stubborn and nostalgic attachment to the past. That is not true. In fact, here we find ourselves before a dynamic Christian view of the life of faith and devotion, shared by so many families and their children who are attached to those ancient liturgical and devotional forms which have accompanied the Church through centuries of her history and have formed legions of saints."
Follow me at: www.nnalcot.blogspot.com
Post a Comment