Posted on 04/07/2009 8:29:11 AM PDT by marshmallow
An English priest with an affinity for the extraordinary form of the Mass has been named the general secretary of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). The appointment highlights the transformation of an agency that was once the bane of conservative Catholics in the English-speaking world.
Father Andrew Wadsworth, a priest of the Westminster archdiocese, will begin his work with ICEL in September. An accomplished linguist, he will guide the process of completing ICEL's new translation of the Roman Missal. His appointment, announced March 30, came with the approval of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship.
ICEL is the international body, supervised by the bishops' conferences of the English-speaking nations, which provides translations for official liturgical texts that are originally issued in Latin. When approved by the individual episcopal conferences and authorized by the Vatican, these translations then become the authorized English-language texts.
For years ICEL was the brunt of heavy criticism by tradition-minded Catholics, who charged that the commission was making unwarranted changes in the original texts. Using an approach known as "dynamic equivalence," ICEL translators frequently dropped words and even phrases from the Latin texts, or substituted their own terms that failed to match the original language. The translators' critics charged that ICEL's approach consistently downplayed the "vertical dimension," or sense of wonder, in the liturgy, and accentuated a more public, politically correct approach.
The complaints about ICEL's translations became acute in the 1990s with a heated debate about the use of "inclusive" language that stripped gender-specific pronouns from the liturgy. The Vatican warned against eliminating prophetic references to Jesus and to the fatherhood of God.
In 2001, the tide began to turn with the release of the Vatican instruction Liturgiam Authenticum, which stressed that the translations of liturgical texts should adhere closely to the sense and wording of the Latin originals. Recognizing the particularly vigorous debate on liturgical translations in the English-speaking countries, the Vatican also set up a new commission of prelates, the Vox Clara commission, to review the work of ICEL translators.
Those Vatican moves triggered a series of changes in the composition of the ICEL commission and the approach taken to liturgical translations. The new ICEL translation of the Mass, which is now nearing completion, has encountered stiff opposition from the liberal Catholics who were once the primary defenders of ICEL's work.
The appointment of Father Wadsworth-- who was once an official of the Latin Mass Society, and has been prominent in helping to train English priests to use the extraordinary form-- underlines the transformation that ICEL has undergone in the past decade.
A ray of hope....
At the speed of glaciation. Another reason to stick with Spanish!
Tridentine Mass. This is the Extraordinary Form.
What this appointment means, among other positive things, is we're going to have Dominus vobiscum properly translated into English as "And with your spirit." Look for Et pro multis translated into "and for many" rather than the doctrinely questionable "and for all" and quite possibly Dominus Deus Sabaoth translated as "Lord God of Hosts."
More than a few heads are going to explode.
Please, Lord, don’t let the American Bishops intimidate him!
OK, I guess I was answering the wrong question.
No kidding ... I had occasion to peruse a Spanish language missalette some years ago, and immediately realised that we've been robbed.
1) The Spanish translation was both closer in form to the Latin, and much more elegantly phrased than the bureaucratic ICEL English.
2) The hymnal was vastly better, both musically and doctrinally, than the OCP/NPM dreck foisted off on the average English language parish in these United States.
Also at the last elevation of the host and wine before Communion:
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Response:
Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul will be healed.”
Another one that tax-chick alluded to in the Spanish.
Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea macima culpa will be added back into the English!
Not a bad correction of my English — LOL!
Just my cynical take on the sort of passive-aggressive behaviour I’ve seen from liturgical leftists over the years.
Still don’t understand why they can’t have Latin on the left and any other language in the world on the right side of the Missal. Perfect accuracy of the informal translation there isn’t critical.
I really like our Spanish hymnal, and the missal sounds great, to me, in both the Spain and the Mexico versions. (The differences between the two are mainly verb conjugations.)
bumpus ad summum
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