Free Republic

Vol. 3 No. 4: May/June 1999 Ideology and Patterns in Translation Error by William J. Sullivan 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 DEFINING TRANSLATION Translation1 involves the production of a text in one language that was inspired by an existing text in another language, such that the two texts are in some sense 'the same.' Exactly how this is accomplished is open to question. In Sullivan 1984, I show the relationship between proper translation and paraphrase. It involves decoding the message from an existing text and re-encoding the message in a new text. This results in two texts different in form with...

Washinton (CNS) - The Vatican has approved new statutes for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), giving the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments at the Vatican veto power over ICEL's staff and translators. Marking the end of several years of conflict over how the commission should be structured and operate, the Vatican rejected the views of some English=speaking bishops who wanted less centralized control of the commission and a broader role for it. Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican's divine worship congregation, urged ICEL to "proceed with urgency" on translating the latest Latin edition...

EDITORIAL: One Catholic argues that liturgical dance is precisely what Pope John Paul II likes to see during Mass. Another Catholic criticizes priests for liturgical experimentation.Sound like a spirited after-Mass conversation at your parish last Sunday? Actually, the combatants in this case are two Vatican officials.Forty years after the Second Vatican Council called for liturgical renewal, the debate continues over what's acceptable change and what isn't. Consider the positions recently articulated by the two officials.Many Catholics consider liturgical dance to lie beyond the avant-garde, but it was defended by Pope John Paul II's chief liturgist, Archbishop Piero Marini. Some of...

Online Edition - Vol. IX, No. 6: September 2003 Cardinal Arinze Convenes Meeting with Bishops Translation, "inculturation", authority issues form agenda for October 21 meeting with presidents and liturgy officials of English-speaking bishops' conferences by Helen Hull Hitchcock How to expedite the English translation of the new Roman Missal is but one of a list items on the agenda for a meeting at the Vatican of bishops who head English-speaking bishops' conferences with the Holy See's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW). The meeting, convened by Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the CDW, is to...

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...

Fearful ideologues ambush liturgical reform The ambush that some of the most reactionary elements in Catholic church leadership have carried out against liturgical reform is unconscionable. Ambush aptly describes what has happened in recent years to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy -- called ICEL. This papacy has permitted a wholesale reversal of the intent of the Second Vatican Council, the work of 30 years of some of the best liturgists and biblical scholars throughout the world and the oversight by bishops of a translation approach that had the written approval of Pope Paul VI. The ambush happened...

The outgoing chairman of the commission responsible for translating liturgical texts from Latin into English has spoken out “as a duty of conscience” against what he describes as a “pillorying” of the commission’s bishops and staff over many years. Bishop Maurice Taylor of Galloway in Scotland, who has stood down as chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) after five years, together with its American executive secretary, Dr John Page, says the impression given by ICEL’s critics is “mistaken and untrue” and that “ICEL staff do not deserve to be pilloried as they have been”. In...