Day: January 11, 2011

The ABC’s of getting it right

Some nice explanation here from various experts about what’s been wrong with the RC liturgy and how it will change come next December, the first Sunday of Advent, 2011:

The original translation of the Roman Missal into English was carried out under 1969 Vatican rules that stressed simplicity, modernity and other factors that would make the language of the liturgy more comprehensible and participatory.

I believe it.

[T]here was concern “that the language has been too laid back” and failed to convey the rich liturgical heritage of the Roman rite.

Yep.

The new translation [in December] shows an effort “to heighten the language a bit” and capture “the transcendence as well as the imminence of God,” he says.

Yes, give us a taste of something special here, alert us to the mystery.

“. . .  To radically simplify the language is often to dilute the concept.”

Not to make light of the problem that led to simplifying things, but you do lose something.  I like the challenge the translators are recognizing.  Let’s hope they meet it.

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Catch me later about this

Challoner's 1749 revision of the Rheims New Te...
Douay-Rheims was revised 1749 by Challoner

Man in the U.K. Catholic Herald, William Oddie, contrasts the going version of Scripture read at mass in the U.K. (Jerusalem Bible) and it’s “ghastly, tone-deaf, flat-footed mediocrity” with the 400-year-old King James and yet older, later revised, Douay-Rheims versions.

As in last Sunday’s “This is my beloved son” passage, where Jesus asks John the Baptist to baptize him, John hesitates, and Jesus says go ahead, do it:

[T]he sentence rendered by King James [Douai-Rheims] as But John forbad [stayed] him, saying: I ought to be baptised by thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering, said to him: Suffer it to be so now, appears in the Jerusalem Bible as John tried to dissuade him. It is I who need baptism from you, he said, and yet you come to me! But Jesus replied, Leave it like this for the time being.

I am not making this up: Leave it like this for the time being is how this wretched travesty renders what ought to be memorable words, as though our Lord were a car salesman with a special offer, or a politician suggesting some murky compromise.

He’d like to see leeway granted by bishops over there as to what version one may use, and I’d like to see it over here, where our New American Bible put the sentence thus: Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” which also limps.