There is some whining out there (mostly among liberals and aging-hippies) about the new translation we will start using by Advent 2011… whether the whiners like it or not.
Is the new translation perfect? No.
Would I have done some things differently? Yes.
Those who are truly vexed about the new English translation should simply stop using English and start using Latin. They can prepare worship aids for their flocks or people can bring whatever translations they prefer.
Let’s look for a bit at Sunday’s Collect.
COLLECT – LATIN TEXT (2002MR):
Familiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine,
continua pietate custodi,
ut, quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innititur,
tua semper protectione muniatur.
This Collect was in the pre-Conciliar 1962MR, the so-called “Tridentine” Missal, for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany.
Custodio means “to watch, protect, keep, defend, guard.” It is common in military language. Innitor, a deponent verb, means “to lean or rest upon, to support one’s self by any thing.” Innitor also has military overtones. The thorough and replete Lewis & Short Dictionary provides examples from Caesar and Livy describing soldiers leaning on their spears and shields (e.g., scutis innixi … “leaning upon their shields” cf. Caesar, De bello Gallico 2.27). Munio is a similarly military term for walling up something up, putting in a state of defense, fortifying so as to guard. Are you sensing a theme? We need a closer look.
We must make a distinction about pietas when applied to us and when applied to God. When pietas is attributed to God, it means “mercy”. But let’s drill at pietas a little more. Pietas gives us the English word “piety”, we have seen before in the last few years but it bears review. L&S says pietas is “dutiful conduct toward the gods, one’s parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc., sense of duty.” It furthermore describes pietas in Jerome’s Vulgate in both Old and New Testament as “conscientiousness, scrupulousness regarding love and duty toward God.” The heart of pietas is “duty.” Pietas is also one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. CCC 733-36; Isaiah 11:2), by which we are duly affectionate and grateful toward our parents, relatives and country, as well as to all men living insofar as they belong to God or are godly, and especially to the saints. In loose or common parlance, “piety” indicates fulfilling the duties of religion. Sometimes “pious” is used in a negative way, as when people take aim at external displays of religious dutifulness as opposed to what they is “genuine” practice (cf. Luke 18:9-14).
ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father,
watch over your family
and keep us safe in your care,
for all our hope is in you.
They went to the zoo in the second part of this Collect, didn’t they?
WDTPRS SLAVISH OFFERING:
Guard your family, we beseech you, O Lord,
with continual mercy,
so that that (family) which is propping itself up upon the sole hope of heavenly grace
may always be defended by your protection.
NEW, CORRECTED ICEL VERSION:
Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care,
that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace,
they may be defended always by your protection.
Better than the lame-duck version?
If you had a say, how would you improve this?
There is rich imagery of contrasting images. On the one hand we see a family and on the other a group of dutiful soldiers leaning on their shields or spears, these being for us “the sole hope of heavenly grace”! In fact, we Catholics are both a family, children of a common Father, and a Church Militant, the Body of Christ which is a corps (French for “body” from Latin corpus) marching in this vale of tears towards our heavenly fatherland.
Many of us were confirmed by bishops as “soldiers of Christ” and given a blow on the cheek as a reminder of what suffering we might face as Christians: not the first time we have suffered at the hands of bishops, perhaps, and maybe not the last.
By our baptism we are integrated in Christ’s Mystical Body, indeed His Person, the Church. We are given the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. Through the sacramental graces that flow from baptism and confirmation, nourished by the Eucharist and healed and strengthened with the other sacraments, we are capable of facing the challenges of daily life and face down the attacks of hell. We ought rather desire to die like soldiers rather than sin in the manner of those who have no gratitude toward God or sense of duty toward Him.
In today’s prayer we beg the protection and provisions Christ our King and commander can give us soldiers while on the march. We need a proper attitude of obedience toward God, our ultimate superior, dutifulness our earthly parents, our heavenly home and our earthly country, our heavenly brothers and sisters the saints and our earthly siblings and relatives, our heavenly patrons and worldly benefactors, and so forth. 
This is also what it means to belong to a family: there is both a profound interconnection between the members but also an inequality – children are no less members of the family than parents, but they are dependent they are not the equals of their parents.
The Latin prayers often reflect the Church’s profound awareness of our lack of equality with God. The prayers are radically hierarchical, just as God’s design reveals hierarchy and order. Compare this with prevailing societal norms. Nowadays individual soldiers might be praised but the military is still being looked at by the intelligentsia with suspicion. Rights of individual people are validated, but the family as a unit is under severe attack.
In both the military and in a family (and the Church) there must be order. Yet, children today can take their parents to court for disciplining them. In some places parents are forbidden their rights to protect children who can obtain contraception or even abortions through schools without parental notification. Is there a parallel here with dissident priests and Holy Church?
Discipline is dissolving. And yet that very discipline is precisely the protection needed by troops on the march, children in growing up, the flocks of the Church from their pastors, from their commanders so they can attain their goal.
Parents, officers and shepherds must fulfill their own roles with pietas also, religious and sacred duty.
Holy Mother Church has maintained this Collect for centuries now in this exact period of the year (5th Sunday after Pentecost and 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time). She holds these petitions up to God because the concern constituent elements of who we are. The Church is not afraid to combine images of family and soldiering, the symbiotic exchange of duty, obedience and protection.
Please keep something in mind: the prayer suggests to me a meaning which is founded on the possible military nuances of the vocabulary. It is also possible to emphasize the familial dimension and say, “Watch over your family, …with continual mercy/religious dutifulness,…” invoking more something like the image of a father or mother checking into the bedrooms of their children while they sleep, listening in the night for sounds of distress or need. Perhaps putting the military element in relief helps us to claim both sets of images.
These choices are not easy friends. Every time you make a choice in translating, you are going to lose something.
Something is always lost in translation.
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Some whining…
I’ve been hearing *lots* of whining from *some* quarters for months. I do think it’s best to not spotlight them, but to acknowledge (as Fr. Z has done) the sad self-fulfilling prophecy of such disobedience.
There is a certain blog that has fixated so negatively on this I can’t stand to read it anymore. It’s truly unhealthy. [Well... we've spoken with some people about that. I shouldn't be overly concerned.]
Most sadly, the negative attitudes of priests and shrieking liturgists will affect the faithful. Some will see through the pettiness. Others will get swept up in it and nurse and imaginary grudge toward the Church.
It’s sad, really. We’re now observing a power shift and miserable souls caught up in their failed attempt at renewal. They just can’t admit their way didn’t work. Honestly, I feel quite badly for those who have been divorced by the spirit of a former age.
It’s possible to pray hard for them, to love them despite the damage they have done and are trying to do, and at the same time work tirelessly to bring about authentic renewal that leads to strong Catholic identity.
May the efforts of the disobedient spur the obedient into greater action and love for souls!!
I’d add we beseech you to the forthcoming translation. I think this language needs to return. I like the translation otherwise
“We ask you Lord, guard your family with constant devotion, so that your family is always fortified with your protection, your family which stands on its only hope of heavenly grace.”
The Roman state relied on its soldiers’ pietas. “Stands” can also pick up the security theme.
Thanks to Rev. Moderator for his discussion of pietas.
Salutationes omnibus.
The new translation is, unsurprisingly, a vast improvement on the old ICE, almost to comparing chalk and cheese. [Is that a US idiom as well?] I’m not sure where quaesumus has gone – I understand in the new text it is now usually translated “we pray”, but I feel “we beseech you” is better!
If you had a say, how would you improve this?.
I fear I would first look to see what Thomas Cranmer made of it:
O LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy Church and household continually in thy true religion; that they who do lean only upon the hope of thy heavenly grace may evermore be defended by thy mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord…
My question would be, How far was Cranmer justified in amplifying Latin words in an attempt to convey the fulness of the meaning of the Latin?
So, in this Collect,
Familiam tuam becomes “thy Church and household”: elsewhere Cranmer uses the phrase “Thy household the Church” -this seems to me to give something of the fulness of the meaning of God’s familia, as Fr.Z indicates above,;
tua … protectione becomes “thy mighty power” – I feel Cranmer has perhaps wandered somewhat from the Latin. God’s attributes, be they power or protection or whatever, will always be mighty, so I’ve no quarrel with that, but prefer protection to power.
What I feel is sometimes overlooked by those reluctant to turn for inspiration to 16th.century translations into English is that Cranmer and his contemporaries, both Catholic and Protestant, were totally fluent in speaking, reading and writing in Latin. The English they produced was [allowing for the occasional instances when Cranmer favoured a more "protestant" translation if two possibilities presented themselves] normally an accurate translation into the educated English of the day. Thus, in the first example above, Familiam tuam may well have become a Christian technical term “Thy household the Church” .
Add to that Cranmer’s gift for rhythmic memorable English.
Yes, I know that Cranmer was a heretic. But the translation of the Roman Canon which appeared in Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”, sometimes atributed to Miles Coverdale, was considered sufficiently accurate by the CDW to be approved for use in the Book of Divine Worship.
Kind regards
John U.K.
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I have had some run-ins with American Catholic liberals upset –like their Irish confreres– about the new translation. At first I was puzzled: why are they investing so much energy –so much heat– in this? I could understand reservations about stiff or unfamiliar wording, but some of the critics I know have become genuinely unhinged. Then I got it: opposition to this is the last gasp of the ’68-ers. So many of their post-Vatican II projects –in which they had invested so much progressivist hope– have come to naught. Liturgical innovation having once been the most visible showcase of their agenda, how it must stick in their craws that none of it –not the dancing, not the folk-hymnody– ever really worked. And now this. The new translation has for them all the inevitability of death.
There’s no question the new translation is an improvement over the old text, which I wouldn’t dignify with the name “translation.” However, I don’t like their use of “that” for the result clause. The “so that” in the WDTPRS translation sounds better and is clearer.
Father Zuhlsdorf, I have a question: how will the new translation of the Mass effect the celebration of the Liturgy of Hours?
Our parish has OF Vespers after EF Mass on Sunday afternoon. The prayer is the OF collect of the day, and because priests are usually present, before giving the blessing at the end, Father says, “the Lord be with you,” to which the congregants reply, “and also with you.”
Are those who use OF of the LOTH stuck with the lame duck ICEL translations until the authorities turn their attention to reforming the translation currently in use? Can those publicly celebrating the LOTH use the reformed translations of the collects and the response to the greeting?
[Eventually it will have to, right? Liturgiam authenticam said that translations of all liturgical books must be updated. I use Latin. No problem for me.]
The LOTH is going to see re-translation as well…….in about 10 years or so. This is what I have read from those who know bishops in the Committee for Divine Worship at the NCCB.
Those who are truly vexed about the new English translation should simply stop using English and start using Latin. They can prepare worship aids for their flocks or people can bring whatever translations they prefer.
This should be a new mantra……there may be some way to reword it into a new WDTPRS mug, I think.
Utor Editio Typica Tertia
RichR: Remember that utor is one of those special verbs. And editio is nominative. There are other “use” verbs, such as adhibeo.
Any other ideas for a slogan?
Latin. Just use it.
I’d buy one in a jiffy, Fr. Z.
As a musician now working in an EF parish (FSSP) Latin has made my life more simple and more rich at the same time. And, to my way of thinking, while I use a range of things that can be sung well by amateurs, nothing surpasses the Gregorian propers in form and illumination of text. Loving it!
Today is St. Dorothy’s Day.
Do we celebrate a saint liturgically when his/her day falls on Sunday?
Thanks!
Latin is ineffable! ;o)
Grabaski, no, unless it’s the patron of the Parish