Words in defence

You have been critical of the new translation of the Mass (“Recover what was lost in the translation”, leader, 14 March) and I do not recall your publishing a single letter or article in its defence. That may reflect your readership rather than the Church at large. There is a great deal to be said in favour of the new translation. The language of metaphor is restored in its richness, and scriptural allusions are restored. It repays even a little study. You suggested that two years was time enough for judgement: on the contrary, it takes much longer to ground a text so that it becomes familiar.

Perhaps the difference in view about translations goes back to the rediscovery in the 1960 of the “horizontal” – the Mass as community meal, remembering the Lord, requiring ordinary language and as much informality as possible. But these are the sacred mysteries. We need a heightened language, comprehensible indeed, with an appropriate solemnity and formality of celebration. We offer together the one sacrifice completed in Communion. There might be less eagerness for the old form of the Mass had this been plain long ago.

The new translation has to be spoken carefully, and phrased carefully: but it should not be beyond us to use an English which employs subordinate clauses. Nor was this simply imposed by “Rome”. On the contrary, patient work by groups of scholars produced what we have. It was discussed by bishops’ conferences. There was some compromises between linguistic uses - “dewfall” is American – but there is advantage in the word. The text agreed was largely accepted by the Vox Clara Commission. Indeed the language is not everyday speech: but the substitution of “with your Spirit” for “also with you” is a richer phrase as well as faithful to the Latin: we speak thus by the power of the Holy Spirit, closer to our spirit than we are to ourselves.

Some people were profoundly grateful to be relieved of the translation which for some 40 years mangled the meaning of the Mass. Nor should the 1998 translation be regarded as the answer to all problems: it preserves all too much of the 1960s. A glance at the Gloria shows still an unwarranted departure from the meaning of the Latin. There are still supposed simplifications that ignore hallowed developments in the text of the Roman canon. It also provided for an array of alternatives which had no place in the Roman Missal. These changes were originally justified in the 1960s by the now discredited theory of dynamic equivalence; to coin a phrase it was too dynamic with too little equivalence. I do not think Ronald Knox would have warmed to this theory – which has apparently been abandoned by its progenitor.

Nothing is perfect. It appears that some unwarranted changes were made by one official in the Congregation for Divine Worship; it is equally unfortunate that we still have to cope with the inadequacies of the 1966 version of the Jerusalem Bible. It should have been possible to provide a revised lectionary in the latest Catholic version of the Revised Standard translation. But on balance, we are much better off.

(Fr) Leo Chamberlain OSB, York

The ugliness and horror of the new translation is nevertheless proof of the Lord’s own clear words: “This people honours me only with lip service, while their hearts are far from me.” Hopefully this injustice will be corrected soon.

(Fr) Joseph Farrell, Hornchurch, Essex