The English words of the consecration at Mass have been changed from “shed for you and for all” to “poured out for you and for many”. Why?- Sheila Mentor
The Roman Rite is the conventional way in which the Church in the city of Rome celebrated the Mass and sacraments from the earliest times. Rome, the seat of the successor of St Peter, was the principal bishopric in Christendom, and so all lands of Europe and elsewhere where Latin was understood, adopted the rite with ease. This is why it is also known as the Latin or Western rite.
To this day, the approved text of the rite, known as the typical edition, is in Latin. Any translation for liturgical use in another language must agree with the precise sense of the original Latin before it can be approved in Rome. The pope, as bishop of Rome and head of the universal Church, sees it as his right and duty to keep a watchful eye on the way the Roman liturgy is practised in foreign parts.
When the International Commission for English in the Liturgy sanctioned the English translation of the new order of the Mass in 1973, there was some concern in Rome about the text which was considered inexact as a direct version of the Latin original.
Your query concerns the revised text approved in Rome in 2010 which is now in use.
The phrase “poured out for you and for many” is deemed to be closer in meaning to the original Latin liturgical words “pro vobis et pro multis effundetur” than “shed for you and for all” (see Mt 26:28).
The Latin word to pour out is effundere but, interestingly, it can also mean to shed, as in shed blood. The same word is found in Genesis 9:6 and Romans 3:15, translated in the Jerusalem Bible as “shed”. Yet in Acts 2:17-18 it is rendered as “pour out”. The Revised Standard Version puts Mt 26:28 into English as “shed”, whereas the Jerusalem Bible has “poured out”.
Liturgists in Rome seemingly wanted to retain the image of pouring out, because the word can cover both the pouring out of Christ’s blood on Calvary and the pouring out of the contents of the chalice in Holy Communion.
The preference for “many” over “all” is because in all texts, Greek, Latin and subsequent translations, “many” (not “all”) occurs in Mt 26:28 and in the official text of the Roman rite.
Idealisticly speaking = for all .
Realisticly speaking = for many .
I find it interesting to note how St Paul in Philipians 2:6-8 echoes the words of Matthew:
“Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but he /emptied himself/, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.”
In the words of the consecration (both the former and current), the cause of the pouring/shedding is not mentioned. The sentence is in the passive voice:
/It/ shall be shed/poured out for you and for all/many…
In Paul’s rendering, God is the cause of God’s own /self-emptying/ (kenosis). God’s choice of kenosis culminates in the pouring out of Jesus’ blood, His death and finally, His resurrection.
The metaphor of emptying / pouring / filling is continued in the Mass. All are called to a kenosis—to a self-emptying—to be filled at communion by the one whose blood has been poured out.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that God wills the salvation of /all/, that God intends God’s kenosis, the subsequent shedding/pouring out of Jesus’ blood and the resurrection to redound to the benefit /all/ humankind. To misinterpret the words “for many” as contradicting God’s universal salvific will would be heretical. Henceforth, catechesis will have to emphasise this fact all the more, because of the decision to allow ambiguity in the words used at Mass.