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In today’s PODCAzT, we hear from St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) who contributes to the second reading in today’s Office of Readings. The selection is from Bk 10 of the Confessions.
I use that as a spring board into a look at the issue of the fruits of Christ’s Sacrifice. Were they "for all" or "for many"? When the new translation for Holy Mass is released we will no longer hear "for all" but "for many", which is more accurate. Still, we need to understand what is at the heart of the debate. Joseph Ratzinger will help us figure this out along with a paragraph from the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent.
This PODCAzT was a bit of an experiment. I changed a couple of my recording techniques and also just "winged it" with many notes for my comments, just to see if I could speed up the production time.
- 038 07-07-25 Ratzinger on “active participation”; The Sabine Farm; Merry del Val’s music
037 07-07-18 The position of the altar and the priest’s “back to the people”
036 07-06-24 St. Augustine on John the Baptist; Ut queant laxis
035 07-06-17 Cyprian on the Our Father; MP Rules of Engagement
034 07-06-09 St. Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist; Mass in heaven? No!
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Fr Z,
Whats the avg time it takes to put one of these together?
As always, Cardinal Ratzinger’s argument is so well presented that it is hard to beat. The heart of the matter does lie in the independence of liturgical texts as part of the great Catholic Tradition and their conjunction with Scripture as bearers of Catholic/catholic truths. Probably the least convincing of the exempla is the hint that we are translating from the Latin and do not need to have recourse to sources in other languages. This is of course true; but as we all know translations can suffer from the “whisper down the lane” syndrome. (Indeed, the very discussion of “many” vs. “all” is based on the assumption that bad translations occur.) It is good scholarship and never useless to look at ultimate sources. In this case, however, and contrary to the misplaced assumptions of certain Biblical scholars, the “ultimate” source is not the Bible, but the liturgical texts themselves. This would speak for a close look into all of the earliest texts of the consecration: I am familiar only with the Latin, Greek and Slavic, all three of which use their respective versions of “many”. It would be enlightening if more erudite readers could let us know what the Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, et al. traditions use here.
Fr. “Zed”uhlsdorf, Is Field Censor No.62 canonically approved?
Sound quality isnt as good, but still quite good.
Pope Benedict establishing the argument that the liturgy is a source in its own rite :) is brilliant, it reiterates the fact that the liturgy is something received not fabricated.
I’m afraid that because of the emotional feelings stirred up by the change from all to many, there will be a need for a great amount of catechesis of the faithful. If presented logically as in this podcast, it may have a chance. However, I think that many prests will not be able to present such a catechesis because their own hearts are not into it. I think this change may be a bigger deal than the derestriction of the 62 Missal.
To follow along with this podcazt, I picked up my copy of Confessions, and, Behold!, the page beginning Book 10, Ch 43 is dog-eared and has a holy card of ole’ St. Augustine himself stuck right there! Spooky. Reading the passage again, I remember that I used part of paragraph 70 as an act of contrition in Reconciliation.
“Beloved St. Augustine, you were at first wholly human-centered and attached to false teachings. Finally converted through God’s grace, you became God centered, God loving, and God preaching. We pray that Our Lord will renew in us the Spirit which inspired you. Filled by this Spirit, may we thirst after the Lord as the true source of wisdom. Amen.”
It really disturbs me that the Church would ever involve Protestant scholars or accept their teachings in anything regarding doctrine, especially the language of the liturgy, when they don’t believe what the Catholic Church holds to be true. In short, this isn’t something that should ever have had to be revised!
I’ve been to a wide variety of parishes and have noticed dissent from liturgical texts as almost a kind of norm among the libbies. The most common examples:
“For usssss and for our salvation” (instead of “us men”)
“And became flesh” (instead of “became man”)
“And for all God’s church” (instead of “for all His church”)
blah, blah, etc., etc..
I’m sure these people will just continue to say “and for all” anyway. Ok, there are no doubt people who don’t ad lib as a rule who find the new translation distasteful, but I doubt they are the majority. Whatever.