Posted on 11/29/2002 5:00:21 PM PST by Loyalist
An Open Letter to the Church Renouncing my Service on I.C.E.L.
Father Stephen Somerville, STL.
Dear Fellow Catholics in the Roman Rite,
1 – I am a priest who for over ten years collaborated in a work that became a notable harm to the Catholic Faith. I wish now to apologize before God and the Church and to renounce decisively my personal sharing in that damaging project. I am speaking of the official work of translating the new post-Vatican II Latin liturgy into the English language, when I was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Commission on English Liturgy (I.C.E.L.).
2 – I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, ordained in 1956. Fascinated by the Liturgy from early youth, I was singled out in 1964 to represent Canada on the newly constituted I.C.E.L. as a member of the Advisory Board. At 33 its youngest member, and awkwardly aware of my shortcomings in liturgiology and related disciplines, I soon felt perplexity before the bold mistranslations confidently proposed and pressed by the everstrengthening radical/progressive element in our group. I felt but could not articulate the wrongness of so many of our committee’s renderings.
3 – Let me illustrate briefly with a few examples. To the frequent greeting by the priest, The Lord be with you, the people traditionally answered, and with your (Thy) spirit: in Latin, Et cum spiritu tuo. But I.C.E.L. rewrote the answer: And also with you. This, besides having an overall trite sound, has added a redundant word, also. Worse, it has suppressed the word spirit which reminds us that we human beings have a spiritual soul. Furthermore, it has stopped the echo of four (inspired) uses of with your spirit in St. Paul’s letters.
4 – In the I confess of the penitential rite, I.C.E.L. eliminated the threefold through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, and substituted one feeble through my own fault. This is another nail in the coffin of the sense of sin.
5 – Before Communion, we pray Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldst (you should) enter under my roof. I.C.E.L. changed this to ... not worthy to receive you. We loose the roof metaphor, clear echo of the Gospel (Matth. 8:8), and a vivid, concrete image for a child.
6 – I.C.E.L.’s changes amounted to true devastation especially in the oration prayers of the Mass. The Collect or Opening Prayer for Ordinary Sunday 21 will exemplify the damage. The Latin prayer, strictly translated, runs thus: O God, who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will, grant to your peoples (grace) to love that which you command and to desire that which you promise, so that, amidst worldly variety, our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are found.
7 – Here is the I.C.E.L. version, in use since 1973: Father, help us to seek the values that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world. In our desire for what you promise, make us one in mind and heart.
8 – Now a few comments: To call God Father is not customary in the Liturgy, except Our Father in the Lord’s prayer. Help us to seek implies that we could do this alone (Pelagian heresy) but would like some aid from God. Jesus teaches, without Me you can do nothing. The Latin prays grant (to us), not just help us. I.C.E.L.’s values suggests that secular buzzword, “values” that are currently popular, or politically correct, or changing from person to person, place to place. Lasting joy in this changing world, is impossible. In our desire presumes we already have the desire, but the Latin humbly prays for this. What you promise omits “what you (God) command”, thus weakening our sense of duty. Make us one in mind (and heart) is a new sentence, and appears as the main petition, yet not in coherence with what went before. The Latin rather teaches that uniting our minds is a constant work of God, to be achieved by our pondering his commandments and promises. Clearly, I.C.E.L. has written a new prayer. Does all this criticism matter? Profoundly! The Liturgy is our law of praying (lex orandi), and it forms our law of believing (lex credendi). If I.C.E.L. has changed our liturgy, it will change our faith. We see signs of this change and loss of faith all around us.
9 – The foregoing instances of weakening the Latin Catholic Liturgy prayers must suffice. There are certainly THOUSANDS OF MISTRANSLATIONS in the accumulated work of I.C.E.L. As the work progressed I became a more and more articulate critic. My term of office on the Advisory Board ended voluntarily about 1973, and I was named Member Emeritus and Consultant. As of this writing I renounce any lingering reality of this status.
10 – The I.C.E.L. labours were far from being all negative. I remember with appreciation the rich brotherly sharing, the growing fund of church knowledge, the Catholic presence in Rome and London and elswhere, the assisting at a day-session of Vatican II Council, the encounters with distinguished Christian personalities, and more besides. I gratefully acknowledge two fellow members of I.C.E.L. who saw then, so much more clearly than I, the right translating way to follow: the late Professor Herbert Finberg, and Fr. James Quinn S.J. of Edinburgh. Not for these positive features and persons do I renounce my I.C.E.L. past, but for the corrosion of Catholic Faith and of reverence to which I.C.E.L.’s work has contributed. And for this corrosion, however slight my personal part in it, I humbly and sincerely apologize to God and to Holy Church.
11 – Having just mentioned in passing the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), I now come to identify my other reason for renouncing my translating work on I.C.E.L. It is an even more serious and delicate matter. In the past year (from mid 2001), I have come to know with respect and admiration many traditional Catholics. These, being persons who have decided to return to pre-Vatican II Catholic Mass and Liturgy, and being distinct from “conservative” Catholics (those trying to retouch and improve the Novus Ordo Mass and Sacraments of post-Vatican II), these Traditionals, I say, have taught me a grave lesson. They brought to me a large number of published books and essays. These demonstrated cumulatively, in both scholarly and popular fashion, that the Second Vatican Council was early commandeered and manipulated and infected by modernist, liberalist, and protestantizing persons and ideas. These writings show further that the new liturgy produced by the Vatican “Concilium” group, under the late Archbishop A. Bugnini, was similarly infected. Especially the New Mass is problematic. It waters down the doctrine that the Eucharist is a true Sacrifice, not just a memorial. It weakens the truth of the Real Presence of Christ’s victim Body and Blood by demoting the Tabernacle to a corner, by reduced signs of reverence around the Consecration, by giving Communion in the hand, often of women, by cheapering the sacred vessels, by having used six Protestant experts (who disbelieve the Real Presence) in the preparation of the new rite, by encouraging the use of sacro-pop music with guitars, instead of Gregorian chant, and by still further novelties.
12 – Such a litany of defects suggests that many modern Masses are sacrilegious, and some could well be invalid. They certainly are less Catholic, and less apt to sustain Catholic Faith.
13 – Who are the authors of these published critiques of the Conciliar Church? Of the many names, let a few be noted as articulate, sober evaluators of the Council: Atila Sinka Guimaeres (In the Murky Waters of Vatican II), Romano Amerio (Iota Unum: A Study of the Changes in the Catholic Church in the 20th Century), Michael Davies (various books and booklets, TAN Books), and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, one the Council Fathers, who worked on the preparatory schemas for discussions, and has written many readable essays on Council and Mass (cf Angelus Press).
14 – Among traditional Catholics, the late Archbishop Lefebvre stands out because he founded the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), a strong society of priests (including six seminaries to date) for the celebration of the traditional Catholic liturgy. Many Catholics who are aware of this may share the opinion that he was excommunicated and that his followers are in schism. There are however solid authorities (including Cardinal Ratzinger, the top theologian in the Vatican) who hold that this is not so. SSPX declares itself fully Roman Catholic, recognizing Pope John Paul II while respectfully maintaining certain serious reservations.
15 – I thank the kindly reader for persevering with me thus far. Let it be clear that it is FOR THE FAITH that I am renouncing my association with I.C.E.L. and the changes in the Liturgy. It is FOR THE FAITH that one must recover Catholic liturgical tradition. It is not a matter of mere nostalgia or recoiling before bad taste.
16 – Dear non-traditional Catholic Reader, do not lightly put aside this letter. It is addressed to you, who must know that only the true Faith can save you, that eternal salvation depends on holy and grace-filled sacraments as preserved under Christ by His faithful Church. Pursue these grave questions with prayer and by serious reading, especially in the publications of the Society of St Pius X.
17 – Peace be with you. May Jesus and Mary grant to us all a Blessed Return and a Faithful Perseverance in our true Catholic home.
Rev Father Stephen F. Somerville, STL.
I find nothing to disagree with in your latest post. I just think that JPII is part of that army.
The Tridentine Mass should never have been suppressed at all. The Novus Ordo Mass should never have been invented, much less standardized, much less allowed to be invented by Bugnini and his Masonic p[als, etc. You really would be surprised at hoiw very much I agree with many of you on the matters of the vast preferability of the Old Rite. I must say, however, that I lived through having the Old Mass ripped away and suppressed and I know a fair number of Catholics who are just absolutely convinced that the Tridentine is alien territory because it is in Latin. On behalf of my long dead Irish immigrant grandmother, I half jokingly respond that, if they were saying their rosaries as they ought to be doing, they would not notice. They actually like the Novus Ordo in spite of its linguistic and choreographic horrors and they attend with a full understanding of what the priest ought to have meant to say when he said something warped by ICEL instead. Many of them were born after the suppression by Paul VI and regard Tridentine Catholics as a little eccentric and bizarre except, of course, for their personal acquaintances who are merely inexplicable. I want the Novus Ordo to die a very long death of attrition and I want its adherents to come willingly to the Mass of their ancestors. I don't want done to them what was done to us. I also want us to have enough sense to adopt a style of persuasion more akin to respectful reasoning than to gun-to-the-head duress.
Ah, yes, felt banners. Saw my first felt-banner festooned excuse for a Catholic Church some years ago (late 1980s) when trapped on vacation on Block Island (part of the Commonwealth of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) on a Sunday with no alternative and no ay of getting to an alternative on time. Despite nausea, I suffered through one of the worst excuses for a Mass I ever hope to witness (a genuine Novus Agony, a liturgical nuclear toothache). Missionaries need to be sent to be sent to Block Island to convert the natives but first, they must burn the felt banners, sort of analogous to St. Boniface cutting down the worshipped trees of the ancient Germans.
By attending Novus Ordo Masses of far greater reverence in my town of residence which I often do, I am noticing marked improvement in the first two years under a brilliant young monsignor (and may God grant, future bishop of ours or some other lucky diocese) who is systematically stomping out the Kumbaya corruptions of his predecessor and getting people to dress and behave properly at Mass, say regular rosaries, confess their sins, regain a sense of the real Presence in the Eucharist, ultra orthodox sermons, and he got in trouble with the worst of the parishioners at a previous country club Kumbaya parish for insistently restoring the kneelers. Of course, our sainted Bishop Doran appreciates his each and every effort and promotes him accordingly.
In calling JP II a "modernist" you are calling the Holy Father a heretic who is attached to the synthesis of all heresies: modernism, as explained by Pope St. Pius X, whose good name has also been filched by your group. You call JP II a heretic and yet you expect to be taken seriously? Truly remarkable!
Your linking ultima with Luther strikes me as bizarre. The criticism of papal abuses is parallel (Luther was far more blunt than anything I have seen from ultima), but the theology bears no resemblance. Ultima ardently defends the theology of Trent and is upset that the modern Vatican II mass has redirected the emphasis from its historic tradition.
Ultima and I could not disagree more on theology but I can appreciate his concern that core beliefs not be abandoned. I can relate to this because this process is analogous to the inroad of theological liberalism into Protestant Churches in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The same ecumenical spirit accompanied the compromise in each case.
Sorry ultima for supporting you. I am sure you will be tarred and feathered because an "errant brother"/"heretic" (depending on whether you follow Vatican II/Trent) can see your point.
AND STOP THIEF! The Communion of Saints is made up, not of Albigensians, not of Nestorians, not of Donatists, not of sedevacantists, not of Pelagians, not of pedophiles,not of lavender queens, not of self-appointed popes, not of SSPXers, but of two thousand years or a bit less of Roman Catholics in communion with the Holy See!
Neither SSPX nor Tom Woods nor Chris Ferrara nor Tom Drolesky nor the Remnant nor any other self-appointed religious authority will prevail against the Church any more than the other gates of hell.
Before you cast these people into the outer darkness, I notice that this week's issue of The Remnant has a large ad on the back page for Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Academy in Rockford IL. It has a picture of a nice-looking group of young Catholic students who are purportedly studying "The Baltimore Catechism, Formal Study of Latin, Traditional Mass and Devotions."
Would this be your parish in Rockford? If so, it would appear that some members of your community do not consider The Remnant to be heretical, schismatic, disobedient, etc.
Conservative Catholics (aka "neo-Catholics")
You whine about being called schismatic, and ask us to stop this, but you seem dead set on name calling your self. If you are going to do it, you have no cause to complain when we do as well.
Good point, which I don't disagree with. But let me clarify that I was not calling anyone names. I was discussing a section of Fr. Somerville's letter where HE was pointing out the futility of the "conservative" position. There was no reference on my part to any FreeRepublic poster. The fact that I used the term "neo-catholic" within quotes, within a parentheses, and preceded by the phrase "aka" all indicate that this was merely a reference to a general usage.
I hope that I have never engaged in name-calling of any kind on this forum. If I have, then I will apologize when it is pointed out.
There was a thread a few weeks ago discussing the issue of "labels." I said that I was perfectly happy to be called a "traditionalist." I don't consider that any sort of insult. "Labels" can be useful in the sense that they distinguish various positions.
I look on the term "neo-Catholic" in the same light. It describes a certain position, one which was being criticized by Fr. Somerville, but which others (like Stephen Hand) might be perfectly happy to identify themselves with. But please note that I did not identify any member of FreeRepublic by that term. Each person is free to identify themselves however they deem it most appropriate.
To make a political comparison, BlackElk takes great exception to the term "neo-conservative." If he doesn't want to be identified that way, then fine, I wouldn't want to insult him by labeling him that way. But virtually the entire staff of certain publications such as The Weekly Standard call themselves "neo-conservatives." They don't consider it perjorative. That's the way they describe themselves.
Terms like "schismatic" and "heretic" do not fall into this category, however. They are juridical terms with very specific, and very perjorative, connotations. They are used merely as accusations hurled at someone in order to delegitimize the person's arguments.
I know that you think these things through more than most but there are reasons why I don't get mixed up in the middle of arguments among the reformed. Given their limitations I may root from the outside for the success within their respective denominations of Missouri and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, Westminster Confession Presbyterians, Southern Baptists of the sort that govern that denomination for some years now, Good News Methodists, NOEL members or whatever but I am not within their folds nor will I ever be and their in house fights are not an invitation to me to participate. If any asked my religious advice, I would promptly invite them to embrace Roman Catholicism in each and every aspect of the Faith and to submit to papal authority.
That you think our faith has changed is understandable since you are not within it. That he simultaneously assumes to continue to be Catholic while rejecting the papacy and the pope, purposely and knowingly misrepresenting the facts as he well knows, making intemperate suggestions that those who disagree with his non-existent authority are supporters of pedophilia and a variety of heresies is unacceptable.
BTW, UR rejects attending a Tridentine Mass available to him courtesy of his RC diocesan officials and so the arguments about his objections to the Novus Ordo Mass are a smokescreen. He is more like Henry David Thoreau cooling his heels in the pokey rather than paying a poll tax to Massachusetts which refused to secede from the Union in the 1840s as Thoreau demanded, over the United States inckuding slave states and fighting a war with Mexico. This is tail-wagging-the-dog stuff.
I believe that you will concede, whether RCs are right or wrong (of course we are right but that is another argument which I always prefer to be handled by scholars deeper than I), that from our RC perspective, you would be regarded as in heresy (Real Presence, the Mass, confessing sins through a priest, indulgences, rosaries, rote prayers, calling SOME men father, the nature of the priesthood, the efficacy of works given the prior sacrifice of the Cross, etc.). I think it is also safe to say, but feel free to disagree if your experience with me requires it, that I am neither an ecumenical type nor a denominational indifferentist nor much of a compromiser. Note that I do not suggest compromise with UR or SSPX as separated brethren either. I have always held to the belief that the Roman Catholic Church must change no doctrines and our doors are open to you or UR at any time that either of you is genuinely converted. I do not go out of my way to pick fights with you or him and I generally counterpunch rather than punching first. Your view of Luther determines how you regard my linking of UR with Luther as bizarre. My view of Luther determines my view of UR.
I was brought up to believe that Luther was the very embodiment of the AntiChrist, a religious Benedict Arnold whose determined career of infamous sin had riven Christendom (which, as I suspect you know, is not a linguistic equivalent of Christianity but the specific system of Catholic Europe). It seems beyond doubt that Luther (particularly for those familiar with Table Talk compiled by his fellow traveler Melancthon) had a good deal of difficulty keeping a civil tongue in his head as to the popes of his time. Ultima ratio has this very problem with JP II. True, he is merely an aspiring apprentice as to the style of Luther in this respect, a Nick Johnson by comparison to Luther's Lou Gehrig in terms of accomplishment, but an aspiring apprentice nonetheless and working very hard with some success at disrespect for all things papal. I think you will concede that Catholics who are Catholics are heavily inclined to papal loyalty.
With all due respect, I fail to see a sliver of difference between UR's startling and untrue claim "We have the faith. That's enough" and "we have faith that's enough". If he thinks that what he has is a sufficient faith, he is sadly mistaken and MUCH more than faith is required. No Catholic worthy of the name would believe either statement which is why, despite all their pretensions and imitations of the Church of Rome, SSPX is not of the Church of Rome. The excommunication of their founder like the excommunication of Luther seems rather definitive on that score. We take very seriously the apostolic succession and we are right to be outraged by the illicit ordination of priests much less the illicit consecration of rebel bishops consecrated to disobedience, dissent, impudence, impertinence and internal treachery. Dissing popes is not exemplary of the Council of Trent, however much entertainment SSPXers like UR may provide for our other separated brethren.
Ultima may suffer a lot worse than tarring and feathering but not by us (we merely admonish him) unless he amends his behavior and NOT because you have risen mildly and modestly to his defense. I know you to be a person of good will. Nonetheless, this is not your fight, my separated brother in Christ.
You are right as to creeping theological liberalism and the damage it has done throughout Christianity but, as you know, Catholics are exceptionalists and we know that we are specially protected by the promises of our Savior while, separated, you will feel the call to disagree. Within Catholicism, attacks, especially the virulent form of attacks taken by SSPX against the papacy are part and parcel of theological liberalism. There is not an enemy of the Church who does not attack the papacy. Most, unlike the SSPX, do not have the unmitigated gall to attack this particular pope with all that he has accomplished.
Finally, Lefebvre, much less UR, had a long way to go to begin to reach the effectiveness of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et al. Lefebvre did not make it. The reformation (via endless permutations and combinations and thousands of denominations) seems to have had a shelf life which will not far exceed 500 years and is now hanging on by its evangelical and pentecostal manifestations as the mainline evaporates. SSPX will be gone long before the end of the present century. We RCs belong to a 2000 year old Church which has, as promised, surviuved the rise and fall of empires and will persist until the very end.
SSPX are seldom attacked because they have no weight, little substance, no influence, no staying power and pose no threat to anyone with one exception noted below. SSPX exists only by virtue of the sufferance of those it attacks and then only because it is unseemly to use a sledgehammer upon a flea, and a terminal flea, at that. Their one and only asset is the stolen sacrament of Holy Orders by which their validly but illicitly ordained rebellious priests may become validly but illicitly consecrated rebellious bishops to continue their cycle by validly but illicitly ordaining a new generation, however small, of rebellious priests who would aspire to be a new generation of rebellious bishops. Whatever this may be, it is not the stuff of Roman Catholicism but more resembles, say, the Anglican schism or heresy. The reformation was NOT a restoration and neither is SSPX. You may believe differently but that is part of the reason why we are separated from you.
When Ronald Reagan was asked if he was not ashamed to be supported by members of the John Birch Society, he said that they were supporting him and that one should not assume that he was supporting them. I think that about describes OLSHA's relationship with a publication like the Remnant. There are numerous parents who would not stand still for the adoption of the Remnant's notions. If Remnant subscribers want to contribute to the support of Western Civilization by supporting OLSHA, they are supporting OLSHA but not at all necessarily vice versa.
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