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.
That is an interesting concept, and one I have not heard previously. Do you think classical forms of English (or any other language for that matter) would sufficiently satisfy the desire for the vernacular? Or would this also be condemned?
As for your question about the Real Presence, that was debated and at length a while back. It is rather important how they ask the question, and when asked poorly, one gets poor answers. Out of curiosity, how well do you think pollsters can gauge belief in the Real Presence, when they can't even figure out who people will vote for? A binary choice between two candidates should be easier to gauge than a belief from a religious system that few reporters and pollsters understand to begin with.
patent
You may want to call it a lawyerly trick, but pointing out that the facts don’t support you is hardly something one learns in law school. I’m sure you think it very unfair and tricky to require you to actually conform your claims to what actually happened, but I think I’ll stick with the real world, and the real facts, rather than your created version. As I said:
LOL. They were excommunicated for assisting at SSPX Masses? How? There was no SSPX chapel there. At best they hired SSPX priests to freelance for them from time to time, hardly the same thing. Regardless, your claim that this is why they were excommunicated directly contradicts every piece of real evidence we have. It contradicts the Bishop’s letter, and it contradicts the direct testimony of the canon lawyer who represented the Hawaii six. Somehow you know better, apparently, than the people who actually participated in the case.
Sorry, this is not your courtroom.This shows how little you understand the law. I don’t have a court room, I’m a lawyer not a judge.
Well, you did a bit of rather ugly mudslinging, trying to claim we supported his “disgusting activities”, whatever you meant by that. I have no idea what he has done, nor do I care. His errors don’t change the fact that the Bishop’s faults weren’t the issue, whether one can attend the SSPX Masses was the issue. Or do you contend that the answer to that question, whether one may morally attend an SSPX Mass, depends on whether the Bishop is a perv or not? Of course it doesn’t, that is a non sequitur issued by someone losing a debate.I don’t approve of this Bishop, of what he did with the excommunications, or of his personal “disgusting activities” as you say.So what the hell are you going on about, anyway?
So why do you continue to lie about the status of the SSPX?Neither of your quotes speaks of the status of the SSPX. One refers to the laity, one to priests being validly ordained, something that has nothing to do with whether they are schismatic or not.
patent
Can the vernacular, which is by its nature local, fluid, and ever-changing, properly capture something as permanent and unchanging as the Mass for more than an instant?For quite some time Latin was the vernacular. It was not then the dead language it is now. There are certain parts of the Mass that are unchanging, necessary to the Sacrament, but there are others that are not nearly so permanent. Any language is a frail object for the Sacrifice, when you consider that language is a human construct, but the Sacrifice is divine.
Dominus Vobiscum
patent +AMDG
The Church crisis has finally died down enough to begin again to fight for the culture of life. The hour is late, I'm going to be using this jpg as a reminder for myself and others:
And this article by Kreeft: How to Win the Culture War: The war we really face, and how to win
BTW,
DrSteveJ is one of our most gracious and honest and sincerely nice heretics we have on this forum. And I mean that ;-)
If you robbed a bank rather than just the hard-earned reputation of Pope St. Pius X, but no one had yet discovered your involvement, you would, nonetheless, be a bank robber in objective terms.
It is the SSPX types who are the very first to imagine that the pope should be ever on the hunt, shotgun at the ready, for every pipsqueak with a cause. AND SSPXers then simultaneously ignore the obvious implication of that desire as it would be applied to them. Careful what you ask for, you just may get it.
I hope you don't imagine that this much bandspace has been wasted on you all for any reason other than the scandal that you give to the gullible and to the otherwise vulnerable.
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