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 committees 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. Pauls 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 Lords 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 Christs 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.
patent
A phony response. You ignore the complex argument of supplied jurisdiction--just as you ignore my challenge to show where I've been heretical. You feel free to tell others I am a heretic, but yet you cannot cite a single heretical view. What is this but an obvious slander?I have cited plenty elsewhere. I do not wish to here because I would not want to misquote you, and as a result I would have to take the time to find a quote. The one I have in mind now, as best I recall it, is your claim that you can argue that the Popes decree excommunicating Lefebvre is invalid and can be judged. That is heresy, he is the highest authority and his decrees cannot be judged, per Vatican I. You, on the other hand, call me a heretic for actions on this very thread and have refused to back it up.
patent +AMDG
By Stephen Hand
Now that I have rounded that terrible corner of 50 years, I think I have some right---maybe even an obligation--- to make a few uncomfortable observations, for perspective's sake, about the Church as I knew her from the dawning of my consciousness. This is not easy because I must say up front that I have always loved her, the Church, that is, even when I was wandering far, far away from her. I loved her from my youth because of Jesus Christ, crucified for us, because of the Gospel, Gods revelation of Himself to all humankind. I loved her because of the revealed and objective Truth she proffered for a fallen, confused and hurting world, even if I knew these things only hazily then. I loved her because of her works of mercy, her hospitals and orphanages, her work among the lepers and all whom she brought under her sheltering arms from all over the earth. I loved her because, whatever her human weaknesses, she spoke for Life, from conception to the natural grave, and for her proclamation of the received Promise that, in the end, every tear would be wiped away, every injustice righted, and that the God who gave us being would not finish us in the grave, as witness the empty tomb of Jesus, the Word made Flesh (Jn 1:14).
Today there is so much talk of abuse. Some of it, alas, is true. I was never altogether abused by the church (*) as the world counts abuse today, though I abused her often enough, even into my maturity as an adult. The picture is more complex. I always knew that I had the promise of eternal forgiveness, and that everyone, Pope, bishops, priests, and fools like myself could make a sincere Act of Contrition, find the Confessional door ever open, and we could walk out of it in a state of grace, fresh as the fallen snow, though our sins be as red as scarlet when we entered it.
I loved her for the crucifixes I saw in hospital rooms where I worked as a teenager, the theology of the cross, which reminded me of the God who not only revealed Himself, but who suffered for and with us, the God who did not remain in his high heaven, aloof in his awesome transcendence as we poor humans walked the gauntlet of life below.
I loved her for the glimpses I saw so often of my grandmother, Anna, with her rosary in front of the sacred art and Heart she had everywhere, offering to remember any sufferings we had, little or great, in the praying of those beads. I loved her also in the glimpses of selfless, loving, nuns stealing a few moments quiet before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration and vicarious atonement, through Him, with Him and in Him (Col 1:24).
How I could go on
But I must be completely objective and truthful .
I have to smile when I hear convert-integrists and other over-zealous converts who confuse Bing Crosby and The Bells of Saint Mary with the whole picture in some protracted romantic daydream. There is much truth in that movie. But not the whole truth. Not by a long shot. I knew such saintly priests and nuns. But there were also those---not a few--- whom we feared more than loved, those who made little or no effort to understand our dysfunctions, our confusions, or the process, whether psychological or spiritual, which is almost always involved in any path toward wholeness / holiness. Some of the priests I knew when I was young were more like guards in a watchtower, sour keepers of the gates, than doors and windows into heaven. One only let down ones guard in front of them at what seemed like great risk indeed. It was hard to love them. One did not feel particularly loved by them. They seemed cold, distant, sometimes even cruel, wardens of the crime and punishment regime. Even if one had to go home to a severe, alcoholic father, as not a few of my friends did, there was little sympathy, and the threat of a bash in the face or insult from a priest, nun, or brother, and then being sent precisely there for more, lingered thick in the air around such priests.
Catholic schools in our city were considered prizes for the rich, trophies for the very intelligent. I spent one year in such a Catholic High School----barely passing the terrible and frightening entrance exam----- but only one year, because I was not considered smart enough to continue. My anxiety about being among the fearsome elite probably didnt help me any.
I remember, as my integrist convert friends cannot, the rushed, mostly mumbled Masses said by too many stoic priests, all of it in an alien tongue, where there was little obvious connection to the Last Supper of the Gospels except for the Cup and Host (critical I admit, but who knew then?). The Baltimore Catechism----so dear to traditionalists today, and even somewhat to me (now that I am 50 and can read a little)---represented a cold and fearful act of memorization and recitation which only added to the intimidation many of us felt. There was little human warmth in it except at the sub-verbal level through its beautiful pictures where not a few of us learned what little theology we garnered (never underestimate the power of sacred art). And I remember how overjoyed we teenage altar boys were when the Mass changed after the Council, so we could finally understand it, and when priests began to take developmental process into consideration in our spiritual / psychological development.
If some went too far in that direction---as many most surely did, we all know---I cannot see how that is the fault of the Council with its remarkable, even superhuman balance and discernment.
Let me say I never knew anyone---anyone!----who in our very Catholic part of the country was sexually abused by priests or nuns. And God knows we wouldnt have kept it secret from our friends, at least, with our ever-wagging tongues if any of us had been. And more than once, I assure you, we were drunker than Boston flatfoots at the teen dances we attended every Friday for years, and so were vulnerable, I suppose, to such things.
Compared to the incredible, sheer numbers of us baby-boomers, I suspect only a relative handfull were in any way sexually abused, though the media would make you think we all were! But many of us, before the Council, were "abused" (*) in other ways---though I hesitate to use that word.
We were considered mere scamps too often, guilty of all the things young people are notorious for---though not much more. So we paid for it. Too many of us grew up in fear, seeing God as the ultimate Cop, a divine J. Edgar Hoover. Only the equally powerful crucifix saved us from such a false notion altogether (along with the truly Christ-like priests and nuns who, it must be repeated, helped balance the picture). How many of us ended up with rattled nerves, anxious, depressed, or even in the bottle due to the Watch Guard conspiracy which seemed to our untrained eyes to exist between home and church I can only imagine. Even today, at my age, I hear from people whose distaste for the Church has lingered very long, to this very day, because of the elitist, hard hearted ethos which too many of us knew before the Council. I have very close friends and even relatives who think Im kooky to even want to differentiate those days from the actual teachings of the Church. With them I must speak in the opposite direction and remind them that it was not ALL bad. Indeed that some of it---much of it---was beautiful, sublime
Believe me, the Second Vatican Council was indeed a breath of fresh air, even if many of us, unused to this fresh shot of Gospel love and a measure of responsible freedom, grew disoriented by such an opening of the Gospel door (in place of the gates) and, with our loins on fire, didnt hang around long enough to savor it.
For too long Catholicism had existed in a defensive, Tridentine-polemical ghetto warring with Protestants, atheists, and doubters of all sorts. That defensiveness took a toll on the institutional Church. Many knew it. Many called for responsible renewal because of it. The Church had to step back, look again at the Gospels, as it ever must, and find the fullness of His face again, repent of its human failures, give thanks for its triumphs, and go out to the weary masses of people all over the earth, heavily laden with so many troubles, with a renewed vitality and love in the Truth (Eph:4:15). And even if some people were going to get all dizzy and kooky over it, it had to be done. Time alone will help us to see what a precious gift the Second Vatican Council was and is, even as we work to tweak parts of it here and there.
(*)I am speaking here, of course, of the human element in the Church, not of the Mystical Body Herself in her supernatural reality.
Anything to bash traditionalists, eh? Even the odious Stephen Hand. Amazing.
Thank you. I've already bought the beneie flip to teach the kid, him/her to shoot my sons tools all over his yard, its gonna be FUN!!! :)
BigMack
BigMack
Furthermore, there is no higher decision making body:
"[A] decision of the Apostolic See, whose authority has no superior, may be revised by no one, nor may anyone examine. judicially, its decision" (Vatican I, Constitution on the Church, Pastor Aeternus, Ch.III ). (YOu and your ilk are HERETICS re Vatican I. Your ENTIRE arguement is that you CAN do the opposite of DOGMATIC TEACHING <>
"[T]There is neither appeal nor recourse against a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff" (Code of Canon Law, canon 333
(3))....
...1) The SSPX establishes seminaries, churches, chapels and priories throughout the world, without any eference to the local ordinaries in whose dioceses it carries out these acts.
2) It ordains priests without the dismissorial letters required by canon law.
3) It hears confessions and celebrates marriages without jurisdiction.(No Jurisdiction, no ministry; ergo, no marraige exists and no sacramental confession occured)>
4) It gives holy communion to persons who are well known sede vacantists.
5) It refused Pope Paul VI's command to close the seminary at Econe and to wind up the SSPX.
6) It carries out confirmations in other bishops' dioceses contrary to the Council of Trent.
7) It purports to accept John Paul II as Pope, and yet rejects parts of the 1983 Code of Canon Law promulgated by him in his capacity as supreme legislator.
8) Finally in 1988, the SSPX consecrated four bishops, knowing that this was against the express will of the Pope and then, in 1991, proceeded to consecrate a further bishop in a diocese (Campos in Brazil) where, as the SSPX itself recognizes, there is already a valid bishop.
The conclusion which was drawn in the article "Schism, Obedience and the Society of Pius X" is just as relevant today: [H]ere is an organization which pays no regard whatsoever to the commands and laws of legitimate authority in the Church and which refuses to do the express will of the Supreme Pontiff in matters of great importance for the visible unity of the Church. Put all of these things together, and what we have is an autonomous organization, a petite eglise, an independent church. If this does not constitute schism, what does?
...To end on a positive note, the one thing that should be emphasized in this whole sorry affair is the extent of the real evidence for the Lefebvrist schism. All in all we have the following items of evidence: (a) The decision of the Pope that there is a schism.
(b) The decision of the Catholic Church to the same effect.
(c) The teaching of Cardinal Castillo Lara former President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, again, that there is a schism.
(d) The teaching of Pope Pius XII that an episcopal consecration against the will of the Pope is an offense against divine law as well as against human law (Apostolorum Principis [1958]).
(e) As a matter of canon law the act of 30th June 1988 fits the definition of schism contained in the Code of Canon Law. It is not any of us who decide this. The Church in Ecclesia Dei Adflicta does so. Canon law can only be interpreted by the law-maker (Canon 16).
(f) Vatican I in Pastor Aeternus requires Catholics to obey decisions of the Holy See in matters of this kind.
(g) The Society of St. Pius X is unable to cite from 2000 years of Tradition any pope doctor or council to justify episcopal consecration against the express will of the Pope.
(h) The Society of St. Pius X and its apologists have to misquote a canonist in order to defend their case. In addition as we have shown in "Schism, Obedience and the Society of St. Pius X," the SSPX even has to rewrite the Catholic definitions of schism and obedience to justify its position.
What more evidence do these people want? Our own experience has shown us that even an ex cathedra definition by the Pope, or a direct revelation from Our Lord Himself, would not move some of them.
Some would no doubt say, "But, Cardinal Lara says. . . " Has it now come to such a stage that, for traditionalists, a schism is decided by the authoritative voice of a Davies, a Scott, or a Williamson?
Heaven preserve us from such a break with Tradition. Whatever qualities and merits these people have, it is obvious that not one of them knows what the primacy of Peter is all about.
<> Translation; HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!!!!!!!<>
Is that the SSPX spelling?<>
It would have been nice if we could have discussed this very important article. But the entire discussion was one side screaming "schism" and the other side (consisting of poor Ultima Ratio alone) attempting to defend itself. You have been more or less civilized and I appreciate that. At least you appear willing to listen to the other side. That is really all that is needed.
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