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http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/06/vernacular_and_.html

Vernacular and sacred language

Michael P. Foley, professor of patristics at Baylor University, makes a good (and, I think, rarely stated) point in a piece in the OpinionJournal about the new English translation of the Latin Order of the Mass:

The current controversy is also interesting because it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding over the nature of liturgical language. The Rev. Lawrence J. Madden, director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy, dislikes the new and more accurate translation because "It isn't the English we speak. It's becoming more sacred English, rather than vernacular English."

Yet that is precisely the point. When Vatican II permitted translations of the Mass in 1963, it spoke of translating into the "mother tongue," not into everyday speech. Contrary to widespread belief, there has never been a tradition of the vernacular in Christian liturgy, if by "vernacular" you mean the language we speak on the street. Many of the earliest Masses were offered in a language the congregation could understand, but not in the language that could be heard in the marketplace. Before a native language was used in divine worship, it was first "sacralized"--its syntax and diction were gingerly modified, archaisms were deliberately re-introduced and even new rhythmic meters and cadences were invented. All of this was done in order to produce a distinctive mode of communication, one that was separate from garden-variety vernacular speech and capable of relaying the unique mysteries of the Gospel.

Thus, if English is to convey sacred mysteries, there should be a "sacred English." The very word we use for everyday speech, "profane," comes from pro-fano, "outside the temple." If Catholics wish to make the world Christ's temple, as Pope Benedict recently put it, they must first be careful not to make Christ's temple the world.

Posted by Carl Olson on Saturday, June 24, 2006 at 11:12 AM | Permalink