New Missal text lost in translation

by Letters Editor · Published February 20, 2014 · Updated June 1, 2014

From Fr Liam MacDermott OFM, Vanderbijlpark

Now that we have lived with the new translation of the Missal for more than two years, and longer in Southern Africa, what is the verdict on it?

“�If it was supposed to give the liturgy a more elevated and prayerful tone, it has succeeded only in making it a more awkward and less prayerful experience for priests and people alike.” – editor of the Redemptorist periodical “Reality”.

This is the opinion of one priest in Ireland: �I listen to the priest struggle with the opening prayers and the prefaces and I know that whoever was behind this new translation was not motivated by the desire to make the Eucharist more meaningful for the people.�

And the editor of the Redemptorist periodical Reality, in the middle

of a long editorial on the new translation, had the following to say.

�If it was supposed to give people a new appreciation of the beauty of the liturgy, it has failed spectacularly.

�If it was supposed to give the liturgy a more elevated and prayerful tone, it has succeeded only in making it a more awkward and less prayerful experience for priests and people alike.

�If it was supposed to put a stop to �experimentation� in the liturgy, preventing priests from ad-libbing or substituting their own words for those prescribed in the text, it has led only to more experimentation, with priests feeling obliged to edit or truncate the more unintelligible and unwieldy prayers so as to make them more comprehensible.�

And this is what I am inclined to do myself if I don�t go back to the previous translation for something simpler and more understandable.

So what is the South African verdict? Not being in parish work any longer I don�t have that kind of feedback. The Reality editor ended his editorial with this:

�The quicker this unwanted and unhelpful translation is revisited and replaced, the better for the Church in the English-speaking world. The German bishops have ditched their version of the new translation. Our bishops must have the courage to do the same.�

But what bishops� conference would have the audacity/courage to tell the Congregation for Divine Worship: �Dust off the ICEL 1998 translation � approved by all the English-speaking conferences in the world which you rejected and put on the shelf � and give it back to us!�