Liturgy Lines

Real Story of the Revised Translation Part I

I have been asked to elaborate on my statement in last week’s column that the process used in producing the new English-language Missal was “less than just and edifying”. I have made brief mention of some aspects of the process before; this week and next I will give some more details.
The translation currently being implemented in the English-speaking world is in fact the second revision of the original English translation of the Missal we have been using for nearly 40 years.
The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), the body set up by 11 bishops conferences to do the work of translation, laboured from 1981 to 1993 on the complicated task of preparing the first revised translation of the Missal. Every one of the bishops conferences approve this version, usually by unanimous or near-unanimous vote, and then in 1998 submitted it for confirmation (recognitio) to the Congregation for Divine Worship. After many years of waiting, the bishops conferences were informed on 16th March 2002 that the proposed Missal had been rejected, this despite the fact that the Congregation had been sent progress reports in 1988, 1990 and 1992 and made no comment.
It was bad enough that 17 years of painstaking work by dozens of committed, highly-qualified people was dismissed in this way, but the rejection was accompanied by severe criticism of those involved in the project and directives that ICEL’s statutes be revised immediately and that “those individuals heretofore involved in similar projects” be excluded from the revamped ICEL.
The second Vatican Council gave authority in the matter of vernacular translations to national conferences of bishops and ICEL had been established by the English-speaking conferences of bishops and not by the Holy See. These non-negotiable directives made it clear that the Congregation for Divine Worship had taken over primary responsibility for vernacular translations from national conferences.
The new rules for ICEL included a ban on original texts and on contact “with bodies pertaining to non-Catholic ecclesial communities”. From the beginning ICEL had provided some original texts, i.e., prayers not translated from the Latin Missal but composed especially for the English Missal. For example, the rejected version offered alternative opening prayers that related directly to the readings for the day and collects for contemporary circumstances such as victims of abuse and the homeless, situations not covered by prayers from early Latin sacramentaries.
ICEL’s contact with other Churches and ecclesial communities had resulted in a number of agreed common texts for prayers used across different traditions, a sign of - and an important contribution towards – Christian unity. This was to be no more!
What really stuck in the craw of those who had given their heart and soul to this project was the fact that the Congregation was acting as if the principles of a strict literal translation enshrined in Liturgiam Authenticam, a document issued in 2001, had always been in place. ICEL had operated for thirty years according to Comme le prévoit, the 1969 norms worked out collaboratively between the Vatican’s Consilium and the various language groups. The Sacramentary was being judged on norms produced after its revision was complete and after the approved texts were submitted to the Holy See.