14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”
-
Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?
The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.
The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.
This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.
-
“…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”
That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.
Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.
-
Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.
-
Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”
A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?
I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.
It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.
Previous Posts
-
Lotions and Potions
Avon Skin So Soft – applied earlier in the week to prevent midge bites. It attracts them.Apaisyl – French antihistamine, probably 3 years old. Result – ineffective.Hc45 Cream – Cooling and soothing. Partial success.TCut – needed to polish out the scratch on the car caused by nudging the back gate at the Cathedral.Cetirizine Hydrochloride -…
-
Come to the country, they say
Come to the country they say.It is healthy, they say.Healthy my eye. I’ve just arrived back from a visit to the country covered in bites from angry swarming flying insects. And I found it hard to sleep because the silence was too noisy.The insect bites are particularly galling as I was covered in copious amounts…
-
How to Baptise Someone
I did my first Baptism in St Mary’s today. What a large font. Just about large enough to have baptised the candidate by full immersion.Amongst a great collection of other useful skills that we were not taught how to do during my training was how to baptise a child. Nor indeed an adult. Nor, when…
-
Sermon – 16 July 2006
Two dancers. Different stories. We are invited to consider this morning David dancing the ark of the covenant from one place to another. And Salome shimmying around Herod’s party and catching his eye with such disastrous consequences for John the Baptizer. Two dancers. Two very different stories.
Leave a Reply