From the June Issue of Adoremus Bulletin [
adoremus.org]
Bishop Peter J. Elliot, new auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia, was appointed April 30 and consecrated on June 15. He has most recently served the diocese as episcopal vicar for religious education, and as director of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. He is a consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and was appointed an auditor at the World Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist in 2005.
Bishop Elliot, who entered the Catholic Church in the 1960s, served for ten years as an official of the Pontifical Council on the Family (1987-97) and during this time lectured widely and wrote on marriage and family issues. He was a Vatican delegate at the United Nations conferences at Cairo and Beijing (1994, 1995).
Bishop Elliot�s work is perhaps best known to Adoremus readers through his several popular books on the Liturgy published by Ignatius Press: Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite, a manual on the proper celebration of the Mass; Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year, on liturgical celebrations for the Feasts and Seasons throughout the year; and Liturgical Question Box, which addresses liturgical questions submitted to him as a columnist.
The address below was delivered at the international conference, Sacrificium laudis: The Medina Years (1996-2002), sponsored by the Research Institute for Catholic Liturgy in October 2005. It was first published in Antiphon in 2006 (vol. 10 no. 3), and appears here with the kind permission of Bishop Elliot, and Antiphon. � Editor
Truth and the �Sense� of Catholic Worship
ICEL�s moments of vulgarity, distraction, and triteness lead into a more subtle dimension of this issue of truth and translation. The language of the liturgy is part of the whole shape and sense of what is happening. The sacred whole of the actio liturgica focuses not simply on liturgy, but on its essence: Christian worship of the triune God. The relevant Roman congregation is not named the �Congregation for Sacred Liturgy� but the �Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments�.
This truth of the whole ought to be expressed in particular words and phrases, in a style and ritual pace that convey a sense of the whole action. This is not simply the truth of the liturgy, which may be understood in various ways. It is the truth of Catholic worship.
I would argue that the lack of a Catholic �sense� in worship in English-speaking countries today has been caused largely by the current ICEL texts. This is the result not merely of flattened-out language or jejune style, smooth though it usually is. It is the general impression of dullness, reinforced over thirty-six years of use, so that now our worship often seems to have a non-Catholic tone about it. In no way do I wish to identify that tone with Anglicanism or classical Protestantism. For in some of these circles there is an awareness of this issue, and they can be quite scathing about the direction ICEL took, a direction some of their experts have taken even further, with bizarre effects, especially once the ideology of gender takes over.
The original ICEL project, however, preserved elements of something else that was very destructive and quite alien to a sense of Catholic worship. The translations we use have effectively perpetuated elements of a dead and discredited school of theology. I refer to the secularized theology of the 1960s. Some of my generation and those among us who are a little older can recall the �secular city� of Harvey Cox, the �God is dead� theology of Bishop John Robinson and the London �left bank�, when views such as �religionless Christianity� circulated, derived in part from an interpretation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
This radical theology bubbled up just before secularized liturgy and radical pastoral councils appeared in the Netherlands immediately after the council. By and large, the Thomistic philosophical base protected Catholic theology from the full impact of this liberal-Protestant-secularized theology. But through the current ICEL language, something of this destructive virus has been preserved, as it were, in an ecclesiastical Jurassic Park. The secular mood and tone of the English we use in worship carry that era into our times. Perhaps it sustains those who are still locked into its ideals, categories, and agenda. Some of these people are the loudest in decrying the work of Vox Clara and the new ICEL, perhaps because they sense that the existing language of ICEL is an echo of the mood of their era.
When liturgical language no longer speaks with dignity, reverence, and graciousness, we risk losing an essentially Catholic way of how we relate to God, how we understand God and ourselves as persons. The fathers at the Synod on the Eucharist in 2005 were concerned about this desacralized mood which undermines the praxis of liturgy today. In the Anglophone world, for nearly forty years, the banal ICEL language has gradually insinuated a kind of neutrality into the minds of millions of Catholics, dulling their Catholic sense of public worship and prayer, failing to nourish holiness or to promote sound spirituality. Partly through inadequate language, a desacralized atmosphere has been created in many of our churches, and it is less than Catholic. The loss of sacral language may be seen as a betrayal of the Second Vatican Council�s radiant vision of the liturgy. It can only serve the interests of what Pope Benedict XVI has identified as the false hermeneutic of the council.14
That false hermeneutic is not restricted to theological faculties, rectories, or religious houses. Recently I discussed this dimension of truthfulness and the imminent translations with a wise friend who pointed out that some middle-aged and elderly laity will probably resent the new Vox Clara and ICEL texts, not because they are new, but because they will seem to be �a reversion to the past�. That will remind them that they are not living up to the doctrinal and moral norms of the Church, norms they want to consider locked in a past they never wish to see again. So we may also expect to hear the cry �archaisms!� or something similar from some lay people. Others accustomed to fast food may not wish to savor what is more substantial, subtle, and refined. Even if we find it hard to articulate exactly what happened, something went wrong in the language of Catholic worship, and that has caused harm among Christ�s faithful.
Ethical Considerations
Lying is a sin. Then, we may well ask, has our worship in the English language involved telling lies for nearly forty years? I regret to say that to a certain extent it has. This is evident, first, in many demonstrable instances at the obvious level of mistranslation through omission, distortion, or the blurring of language that bears doctrinal truth. Secondly, it may be discerned in more subtle ways � as the undermining of the truth of the mystery and above all as the creation of a dull mood that drains away the truth of Christian worship. This is why it is important to redefine the debate between the two contrasting ICEL translations in ethical terms.
Those running a rearguard action to salvage as much of the old ICEL as possible should face some ethical challenges. It is all very well now to take up the rhetoric about being �pastorally sensitive� to the people. There was not a word of that over thirty years ago when a hastily mistranslated liturgy robbed the people of much of their Catholic cultural and spiritual heritage. Here the ethic of strategic mistranslation enters a domain closely related to lying: stealing. Much is rightly made of robbing people of their ethnic, indigenous, or spiritual cultures, but something like this has been going on quietly among English-speaking Catholics for years, through the banal, but calculated, ICEL translations.
The ethical questions surrounding mendacious banality raise yet another issue. Some will want to ask: who was responsible for this enterprise? But there is no place for apportioning blame for what happened so many years ago. That is not a Christian way to set right past wrongs, which were largely the result of sincere persons using a flawed principle of dynamic equivalence, even as they were inspired by the religious ideologies of the era. At the same time, as with the more serious ethical tragedies of the past century, it is important to say firmly and clearly, �Never again!�
Now is the time to look forward and �wait in joyful hope�, if I may use one of the old ICEL�s more felicitous phrases. Something better is emerging in this area of English liturgical language, a significant development that may also make it possible to face the wider challenges of an inevitable reform of the reform. Through the new translations, we hope to see something of the glory of the liturgy shine once more. May we recover the divine splendor of the truth, on the lips, in the minds, and in the hearts of a people worshipping the triune God �in spirit and in truth�.
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