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Today's
Question
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Why the new translation of the Mass?
(Part 11 - Conclusion)
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Sunday
January 8,
2012 |
Why change the translation of the Mass?
Part 11 - Conclusion
(Letter to Verne A. Kiular, continued)
Answer
Part 11 - Conclusion |
So
there you have it, Verne, a blow by blow attempt at explaining the
meanings behind the changes of the congregational responses in the
Mass. There is not time to go through all the changes, but the change
in the parts the priest says are everywhere. It feels like I am saying
a different Mass than I have said since I was ordained getting nigh
unto forty years ago. It is maddening. I am an old dog expected to
learn new tricks. I have to keep my eyes glued to the Missal.
The
words aren’t even the hardest part of the whole exercise. It is
the grammatical structure that makes one crazy. It is a Latin structure
not an American-English structure. Latin uses periodic sentences
which have a dependent clause after a dependent clause that make no
sense until you get to the final clause or phrase.
An example:
“When the barbarians stormed the gates, the gates being tightly locked,
the king, who being at table, which was set for a feast, told them to
make an appointment with his secretary.” Dis ain’t duh way we
talk on duh sout’ side of Chicahhhgo. I am very partial to the Chicago
version of American English, especially the evocative and poetic way it
is spoken on the south side.
The Latinized periodic sentences of
the new translation seem foreign and removed from everyday life. At
times, they even seem like the bad translations handed to me over
twenty five years of giving Latin exams, and still worse, they remind
me of the horrible translation I handed into to my professors in a past
century.
"So then Rev. Know-It-All, you are opposed to the change?"
On the contrary! I think the whole thing is long overdue, but Heaven has its timing.
First
of all, the language used in the newest Missal is the common language,
not the local language. According to Wikipedia, there are 375 million
people in the world who speak English as their native language. There
are almost two billion who speak English, to some degree as a second
language, making English the most widely spoken language in the world.
The vast majority of these people are clueless when they hear Americans
speaking English.
I will never forget meeting some American
cousins in the kitchen of the ancestral tavern in lower, upper-Hessia.
(There actually is such a place.) We were coincidentally visiting the
old country at the same time and were feasting on Germanic microwave
pizza. Yum. We lapsed into American, and the German cousins, who had
learned Oxford English, were completely dumbfounded when I asked a
fellow American to hit me with a piece of pizza. The Germans present
had no idea why I would want to be struck with a wedge of hot, gooey
cheese and tomato sauce. Of course I was requesting a piece of pizza,
using the colorful, Las Vegas idiom, “to hit” as in to give me another
card at the blackjack table -- not that the Rev. Know-It-All is an
aficionado of games of chance.
We, Americans seem to think that
we are at the cutting edge of everything. During the halcyon days of
the Second Vatican Council, we believed that America was the land
created by God to enlighten all those backward countries in Europe. We
had stormed in to save them in the Second World War, as every good
American boy knows, never mind the sacrifices of the English (almost
400,000 military deaths) the Poles (250,000) and even the Russians (7-8
million), so we would storm in to save them theologically, and
liturgically in the Council.
Guess what? Things have changed.
There
are about 70 million Catholics in the Untied States. Perhaps 30 or 40
million of them speak Spanish. That means the English only speaking
Catholics of the United states are a tiny group of perhaps 30 or 40
million, who tend to participate in Mass and the life of the Church
when they feel like it. About half of them, 15 to 20 million, attend
Mass regularly.
In Africa there are 140,000,000 (One hundred and
forty million) Catholic. There are between 4 and 15 million Catholic in
China. The Catholics of Africa talk to one another in English, not in
American. The same is true in large measure of the Philippines. In the
Philippines, there about 170 different languages spoken. Tagalog is
spoken by only 22 million as a native language. English is the
language preferred for professions and for many textbooks.
My
point is this: Spanish, French, Portuguese and English are the
languages of the vast majority of Catholics and the English used is not
necessarily American English. We Americans have no idea how odd our
English is. Sometimes, it is so informal as to be
incomprehensible.
English-speaking America which prided itself
on being the Catholic vanguard, is fast becoming a backwater of
graying, irritated progressives who think the high point of Catholic
culture was the age of Aquarius back in the glorious sixties. The “new
translation” is a reminder to the young liberals now that they are
seventy and eighty years old, that the there is no such thing as an
American Church. There is a Catholic Church in America. The English
speaking Catholic clergy of this country must decide; will they be part
of a Universal Church or will they continue to pretend that they are
the arbiters of all things truly Catholic?
The Mass has never
been said in the local language. It has always been said in a sacred
language, a common language, not a local language. Aramaic, the first
language of the Mass was the common speech of people from the Jordan
Valley to India and beyond. Koine Greek was not the classical Greek of
the schools of Athens, nor the patois of Alexandria of up-country
Turkey. Koine Greek was the common Greek of the Mediterranean
world.
The Latin of the Mass was not the Latin of Iberia
that was evolving into Spanish, nor the Latin of Tuscany that was
evolving into Italian. It was the Latin of the empire that was spoken
in law courts, not kitchens.
So it is with the English of the Mass it is a common English, not the English that we butcher in our everyday lives. It is a lingua sacra, a lashon kodesh as
different from our daily speech as the Hebrew of the synagogue is
different from the Israeli shouted on the streets of Tel Aviv. It is
understandable, though that may take a little effort, but it isn’t
quite the way we talk.
There is one more interesting aspect of the change. It is a matter of justice. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
(Matt 7:2) The law of measuring is an incontrovertible principle
of the Kingdom of God. It would be easier to break the laws of physics
than the principles of the Kingdom.
What goes around comes around.
I
will probably never be able to say Mass without working at it a little
bit, with having a book in front of me, without having to think about
it. I will never be able to “wing it” again and to think about what I
am going to do after Mass or what I need to get done today. As a
celebrant, I will have to pay close attention to what I am saying and
doing. Offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will never again be as
comfortable as an old pair of shoes. It will always be a bit foreign to
me and to the all of us older priests.
What goes around comes around.
I
think back on my old pastor, Monsignor O’Brien. When he was up in
years, everything changed. He obeyed, I suspect grudgingly, but he
obeyed. The liturgy that he had learned in his childhood, for which he
served as an altar boy which he had studied in Rome during the First
World War by the light of an oil lamp, the liturgy that he had
celebrated for almost fifty years of priesthood was gone over night. It
was strictly forbidden to continue to say the Mass of a thousand years
without specific permission. It is a matter of great wonder and even
humor to me that apparently there are some aging liberals who are
planning to ask the Holy Father for an indult, permission that is, to
continue to say the Mass as it was until a month ago. These same
progressives who fought the indult to say the Tridentine Mass now want
an indult for themselves. The mind boggles!
Remember, what goes
around comes around, whether you call yourself a liberal or a
conservative. Both are bound by the principles of the kingdom of
God. If this whole thing proves anything, it proves that the word
of the Lord endures forever. “For in the same way you judge
others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be
measured to you.”
Rev. Know-It-All
The
Question Was
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Why the new translation of the Mass?
(Part 11 - Conclusion) |
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