14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”
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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.
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“…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.
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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.
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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
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Sermon – 13 March 2005
On Friday afternoon, I had the pleasure of spending several hours sitting in our Cathedral Church in Perth for the consecration of our new Bishop, the Rt Rev David Chillingworth. Sadly, I was not sitting in a seat which afforded me a view of the proceedings. Indeed, I was very much behind a pillar and…
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10 Commandments
An attempt is being made by one of the television stations to get people to write their own version of the 10 commandments. Here is mine. Well, Ten Liturgical Commandments. 1 Thou shalt not put flowers in the font – ever. 2 Thou shalt not put flowers in anything during Lent. 3 Thou shalt not…
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Bishop Watch
The Scottish bishops have released a new statement about the usual topic. Its not bad either.Take a look: Bishops' StatementI've been writing a response today, which appears on the Changing Attitude Scotland website: www.changingattitudescotland.org.uk
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Freecycle
Here is a good internet idea – the Freecycle network. It works a bit like Ebay except everything is free. The idea is to promote recycling by offering unwanted things to others for free. The network is up and running in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but not in the Stirling/Forth Valley area yet. http://www.freecycle.org
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