An Open Letter to the Church Renouncing My Service on I.C.E.L.

An Open Letter to the Church Renouncing my Service on I.C.E.L.
Father Stephen Somerville, STL.

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.

Dear drstevej,

Not to be harsh, but that one of the resident anti-Catholic schismatics agrees with your analysis does not recommend it to me. ;-)

But seriously.

With regard to [1], the Catholics here don't see any real contradiction between Ecumenical Councils. We recognize that the Council of Trent was a reaction to the evils of the Reformation, and the emphasis of Trent was what differentiated the True Church from the false religion of Luther, et. al.

By the Second Vatican Council, the Reformation is history. In more ways than one. The old battle was fought and won. New battles awaited the Church, and the new Council prepared the Church for them. In fact, my belief is that the mess in which we find ourselves is not at all a result of the Second Vatican Council, but rather was the storm already gathering, easily discernible by the close of WWII.

I believe that this mess will be reversed as a result of the Second Vatican Council. The problem with the Second Vatican Council is not that it occurred, but rather that it occurred too late. By the opening of the Council, all our current problems were already readied by the evil one to attack our Church. By the close of the Council, the evil one had unleashed every single one of these problems on the Church.

Excellent timing on his part, in that he has persuaded some thousands of otherwise faithful Catholics to march into the desolate wilderness of schism, as they mistake the correlation of the Council with these horrors for cause and effect.

In fact, what was done at Vatican II was to have been the second half of Vatican I. Temporal affairs interrupted that Council, and delayed the work of Vatican II for another 80 years.

As to [2], I couldn't disagree more.

The work of a Council isn't measured in days, or months, or years, but in decades and centuries. It took a century or more for the good effects of Trent to be experienced by the Universal Church. Those who whine and complain that the Council hasn't magically transformed the Church already have little sense of history or Tradition.

I don't see any contradiction in the theology of Councils. I do see different emphases.

One emphasis of the Second Vatican Council was on the laity. This is certainly different from Trent, but not in contradiction to it. It was the necessary emphasis for the current era.

The only problem with the Second Vatican Council is that it was late in arriving.

And that is the problem. The Second Vatican Council effectively addresses problems which had been gathering for a long time prior. The medicine which the Council applies to the patient is good and efficacious. But it was applied very late into the illness.

sitetest

1. Vatican II has retained the Roman Catholic Theology of Trent, previous to Trent, subsequent to Trent. Trent was a specific reaction to the reformation and occurred many years after Luther launched his enterprise. The Council of Trent was the specific deployment of Catholicism focused so as to launch the Counterreformation.

2. Many traditionalists see the time before Vatican II as some sort of lost golden age but it was not.

3. The specific anti-Catholic stream of what all of us Christians would call secular humainism was what Pope St. Pius X called modernism. In 1907, he wrote extensively on the subject in a Syllabus of Errors "Lamentable Sane" which was released in July, 1907, and in an encyclical "Pascendi Domenici Gregis" issued in August, 1907. If you take the trouble to obtain them from the Daughters of St. Paul (Boston?) in the English Translation (On the Errors of the Modernists), you will gain some invaluable insight into the pure and unadulterated form of Catholicism by a master. Reading them would take less time than you have spent on this thread and purchase should be less than $5 new. No one will pester you to become Catholic and you probably won't wind up on a bunch of mailing lists.

4. Reading those two documents will demonstrate why Pope St. Pius X is the only pope canonized a saint so far in the last 300 years and why SSPX wants to appropriate his good name.

5. Pope St. Pius X prescribed in those documents a very specific course of action to root out and destroy the modernism which so afflicted the Church 95 years ago and more and which has grown since. Unfortunately St. Pius went the way of all flesh and assumed room temperature in 1914 and was repleced by a rather liberal pope, Cardinal Della Chiesa, who, as Benedict XV, scrapped the detailed program for suppressing modernism (which had held each and every bishop personally responsible for submitting reports to the pope every three years detailing precisely the efforts required by the documents to stamp out modernism. The program was NEVER restored. It is needed now more than ever. This problem, in short, did not begin in 1959 with the election of John XXIII, a prudential disaster, as pope. Nor did it begin in 1963 with the election of Paul VI, another prudential disaster other than his anti-birth control encyclical "Humanae Vitae" large portions of which were reportedly written by the man who is now John Paul II. It took a very long time to get into this mess and it will take a very long time to get out of the mess.

6. No Catholic who is Catholic fears openness. The truth is the truth. We either have it or we don't (of course, we know we do.) What would we want to hide? Either we are the Church eternal founded by Jesus Christ upon Peter against which the gates of hell will not prevail or we are not. Therefore, we are open. If you or anyone finds yourself, himself or herself in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church, they will be welcomed, even the SSPX guys.

7. Our leaders, particularly in the United States, have done a miserable job of administration in most places. As a Church, we have survived worse in the long march of history. We have had popes like John XXIII and Paul VI who have, prudentially presided over a complete mess. The results were just about equivalent to telling your six-year old that it is OK to borrow your Maserati. We have survived worse even than these.

8. Damage to the Church has been primarily the damage accepted or even encouraged by AmChurch liberal fools (the Kumbaya crowd) and their equivalents in some other places in the world. The damage has sometimes been their intention rather than a mere backfire. Other times, it has been the near inevitable result of their gross negligence as pastors or sheer bad fortune. One concludes sadly that the termites have made much progress and it is time to call the Orkin man, a structural engineer and a general contractor and his subs. Others decide, in the ultratrad zone, that they and only they constitute the Church and that the rest of us are heretics (and not very nice heretics at that) all because they say so or their dead renegade archbishop (himself a liberal in a crucial judicial position pre-Vatican II who opened the floodgates of annulment virtually on demand) said so.

9. As the disco singer sang, echoing my Savior and yours, we (the RC Church) will survive.

10. Converts come and go. We still get decent numbers and very high quality. We lose the poorly catechized or those who simply do not believe what we believe in which case they were not ours to lose in the first place. We are a religion and not a race. Catholics can read Scripture. No one prohibits it today or ever. Those who are not Catholic or at least schismatic do not have several of the sacraments by which God chooses to confer specific graces. For many, life in this fallen world can be hard enough without abandoning the sacraments and the graces attached thereto and conveyed thereby.

11. As I understand it, our long term strategy is intact and we have, under this pope in alliance with Ronaldus Maximus, struck a fatal blow to the Soviet enterprise. That, I am convinced, was the policy adopted by the second 1978 conclave prior to its election of Karol Wojtlywa as John Paul II. He had to accept the policy to accept the papacy. He has kept faith, not only with God but also with the College of Cardinals that established that policy and elected him to carry it out. Anything else has been icing on the cake, not all of it perfect by any means but very much of it excellent (his pro-life witness, his alliance with Third World governments including Muslims and their acceptance of his leadership in the worthy common effort of resisting UN population initiatives like sterilization and abortion; his magnificent encyclicals.

12. Look for the next conclave to establish the policy of a thorough internal cleansing of the Roman Catholic Church and what will look to the world like a theological blood purge. May they choose that policy for the next papacy and choose well the next pope who will carry it out. Upon this Western Civilization's continuance may well depend and with it the religious freedom of you and other non-Catholics of good faith. Nearly forty years ago, we were committed by the Council Fathers of Vatican II to defend you and those who believe what you believe and to defend your civil right to so believe. As you can see from these threads, we are a stubborn lot and we will not renege on our commitments and we will maintain every bit of our own faith in doing so.

We will prove that you can still to this day and beyond know who the Christians are vis-a-vis the world beyond. We are the ones who love one another (even enough to admonish one another) now as from the beginning and ever more. We refined that love nearly forty years ago by a conciliar commitment.

Dear ultima ratio,

You treat papal encyclicals & stuff like Protestants treat the Bible. To be read by yourself, and the true meaning to be discerned for yourself.

You have, essentially, withdrawn your trust in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. The popes from the Second Vatican Council on have certainly made changes to the Church (So did the popes from Trent on.). But you believe that they have made changes to that which cannot be changed. That, of itself, contradicts what we believe as Catholics. I believe that what was changed are inessentials, that the essentials of faith are now what they have always been. Your authority is Mr. Lefebvre, mine is the Catholic Church. Yours is Mr. Williamson and Mr. Fellay. Mine is Jesus Christ.

You have lost faith in the ordinary Magisterium. In doing so, you have failed to believe in the promise of Jesus Christ that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church.

It's hard to tell you from Mr. Luther.

You believe that the truth of Catholicism is an esoteric, gnostic secret, available only to those sufficiently intelligent and knowledgeable and wise to pick there way through countless papal documents and Councils and saintly writings.

I believe that the truth of Catholicism is available to all, and can be readily found by placing oneself firmly in the Barque of Peter. I believe that the visible sign of unity of Christ's Church is the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome. All the papal documents and Councils and saintly writings can fortify those who place themselves on the path of submission to Christ's Vicar on earth. All these things are of great benefit to the docile Catholic. And, as Jesus Christ desired it, any idiot can follow this path.

Including this idiot.

sitetest

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