At the blog Musings of a Pertinacious Papist, there is a post you must see and remember. I’ll post the whole thing here, simply because I want many people to see it and because I also want to archive it here for my future reference. However, be sure to go over there to watch his combox, which is open.
Liturgist of the renewal: translation changes the form, which changes the rite
Fr. Joseph Gelineua, S.J. was described by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the chief architect of the New Mass, as “one of the great masters of the international liturgical world” in his The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), p. 221. It is interesting, and telling, to go back and read what was being written back in those days. Here is an excerpt from a book by Joseph Gelineau, S.J., The Liturgy: Today and Tomorrow, tr. by Dinah Livingstone (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 11 …:
Let’s make no mistake: translating does not mean saying the same thing in equivalent words. It changes the form. And liturgy is not information or teaching, whose only importance is its content. It is also symbolic action by means of significant ‘forms’. If the forms change, the rite changes. If one element changes the total meaning changes. Think back, if you remember it, to the Latin sung High mass with Gregorian chant. Compare it with the modern post-Vatican II mass. It is not only the words, but also the tunes and even certain actions that are different. In fact it is a different liturgy of the mass. We must say it plainly: the Roman rite as we knew it exists no more. It has gone. Some walls of the structure have fallen, others have been altered; we can look at it as a ruin or as the partial foundation of a new building.
We must not weep over ruins or dream of an historical reconstruction. The liturgical renewal is a sign of the church’s will to live — just as the missionary and biblical renewals are. When the poor are dying of hunger because no one breaks the bread of the Word for them, something must be done. When we know what treasures of hope are contained in the liturgy but find that the ‘key of knowledge’ has been taken away and ‘those who were entering hindered’ (Lk. 11:52), we must open new ways to the sources of life, or we shall be condemned as Jesus condemned the Pharisees. But it would not be right to identify this liturgical renewal with the reform of rites decided on by Vatican II. This reform goes back much further and forward beyond the conciliar prescriptions. The liturgy is a permanent workshop.
One thing is abundantly clear: some of the liberals in the liturgical movement understood the radical revisionist implications of the movement far more clearly than many of the conservatives.
Kudos for finding and posting this.
This also explains why some people think that liturgical translations should be constantly changing, to fit the way people talk in any given moment.
But… change the words, and you change the meaning. To translate is, to some extent, to “betray” the original. To change the movement and gestures of Mass, is to change the rite.
When you change our Rites you change our identity.
We need Summorum Pontificum now, more than ever.
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“To translate is, to some extent, to betray the original”. Agreed. However, we should be careful that we do not back ourselves into a liturgical/philosophical corner by misidentifying the extent to which that thought applies. The key words are “to some extent”. Consider the movement of the Liturgy from Aramaic to Greek to Latin. Fr. Z, might we end up denying a good part of our Latin identity if we apply the argument in an indiscriminate manner?
Benedict wisely gave us two forms of “one” rite for the purpose of the law. Yet, he also knew the reality of the destruction of the true Roman Rite, as Gamber makes clear in “Reform of the Roman Liturgy.” The same book which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the preface to the French edition.
You could say that in Summorum Pontificum, Benedict opened a door for the Holy Spirt to bring about the reform He desired/ desires, which was blocked by a committee of those who thought their plan was better than the will of the Council Fathers as expressed in Sacrsanctum Concillium.
From the Latin Mass, we had a proven example of liturgy performed (usually) in a manner that was reverent and dignified and splendid. A mass that was both beautiful and contemplative. From the Novus Ordo, or at least the theory of it, was have an example of a liturgy that is accessible and (forgive the term) participative. I refuse to believe we cannot have both. There is a place in Catholic worship for Latin. But there must also be a place – a substantial place – for the vernacular. There is a place for Gregorian chant. But there must also be a place for the great hymns of our faith, old and new alike. [They aren’t liturgical.] There is a place for the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Priest’s confietor and for a tabernacle built into a great high altar. But there is also justification for versus populum. There is a good argument for reception by kneeling. But also for Communion under both species (just because it is not required does not mean it is not desirable).
The trick is figuring out a way to yet again revise the liturgy to better unify the two forms (and incorporate the likes of the Anglican Ordinate) without establishing too much chaos in the process or having things run amok. Something of a liturgical laboratory – but I shudder to think what direction such an occurrence would head under this Pope. Hopefully his successor will be of a greater liturgical focus.
The UK edition (I see from Amazon) has 128 pages: if this is page 11, one wonders what the author gets up to, where – on a certain level it might be interesting to find out, as this seems so strangely muddled; but perhaps it and he are muddled in the same way, throughout, and one would not be much the wiser after ploughing through another 117 pages of it. What could “one of the great masters of the international liturgical world” be intended to mean, if he writes like this? ‘Master’ as in, the opposite of ‘slave’? In terms of “the international liturgical world”, contrast this with the autobiographical account linked to the Wikipedia Pius Parsch article, both in terms of what is obviously admirable there and what is more than a little ‘ominous’.
There seems a comical hubris (as all hubris is deeply comical) in “the Roman rite as we knew it exists no more” which makes me think of the hopeful dysvangelists of ‘God is dead’, and which, by 1978, a decade of properly ‘bullheaded’ practice by more of less ‘renegade’ celebrants must have made clear to anyone willing to see – which is not to say such hubris was unaccompanied by much bitter suffering in practice – the putative ‘Masters’ who ‘those who were entering hindered’ as determinedly as they could with their rapine and ‘wreckovation’ did all in their power to assure that!
One wonders what the Bugnini councilors and Paul VI were thinking of. As a consequence of their Protestantization of the Mass we have had to travel many thousands of miles over the years just to attend a reverent Latin Mass. It is well worth it, but these heartless revolutionary reformers should one day hopefully pay in Purgatory for the damage they have inflicted on the Catholic Church. Thank you Pope emeritus Benedict XVI for Summorum Pontificum.
Father,
This is a very important insight into the thinking of the relativist reformers, those who deny Truth, who believe it must change as the World changes.
We have all heard the expression lex orandi lex credendi, how we pray expresses what we believe, until we are a bit fed up with it. Which is a pity because it is the essence of the comprehension of the Catholic Faith, and the reformers understood this fully. Their objective was to change what Catholics believed. Their way was to change how we expressed what we believed, so that it reflected their ideas of what we should believe. Sorry if I am repeating much of what you have said!
Their prime targets were the Real Presence, the Mass as a Sacrifice and the Ordained Priesthood. And how successful they have been!
What is more, they are still at it. Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried (and any other mortal sinners) is another blow against the the Real Presence.
The answer, for all you priests out there, is to go back to the Mass of Ages, not that it hasn’t changed , but it has done so in Continuity.
It’s my opinion that liturgical experimentation was going to happen no matter what (it had started before the council), so God allowed the traditional rite to be suppressed, which effectively put it safely up on a shelf protected, so that it could be brought back out untouched in the future at a more sane time. I wonder if future eras will see it as an act of divine providence.
“Think back, if you remember it, to the Latin sung High mass with Gregorian chant.”
“If you remember it”? Father Gelineau’s book was published in 1978, which means he wrote those words in that year or earlier—not even a decade after the imposition of the Novus Ordo of 1969/70. What Catholic reader couldn’t have remembered the old Latin high Mass?
… Unless, of course, Gelineau had in mind future generations of readers… like us! Little did he know that not a few of us more than recall it.
Actually, Fr. Kocik, by 1978 many of us had not witnessed a traditional Latin Mass since 1963 or so, and after 15 years of incessant liturgical chaos–for instance, with a new experimental Eucharistic prayer heard seemingly every week (at least, until the introduction of the Novus Ordo stabilized the situation a bit)–“the Latin sung High mass with Gregorian chant” seemed considerably harder then to remember than it does now, after weekly TLM’s (for many) since Summorum Pontificum.
Because, in 1978 where I was, the Roman rite as we had known it truly existed no more. It had indeed gone. Forever, so far as we knew then and there. The hope of ever worshiping again in the ancient rite that once had been the focus of out spiritual lives seemed in 1978 an utterly impossible dream, at least until around 1980 (as I recall) when word of clandestine (e.g., SSPX) TLM’s began to circulate. The traditional Latin liturgy actually was for us then a dead and virtually forgotten rite, whereas now it is–thanks be to God and Pope Benedict–vibrant and living, an impossible dream come true.
“Permanent workshop,” indeed? One prays that Fr. Gelineau was not a permanent Pelagian. The workshop was the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary, in which we are mystically and undeservedly invited to participate every time the priest in persona Christi offers Holy Mass.
The work was done two millenia ago, as symbolized by the crucifix, a symbol that the more ardent champions of “liturgical renewal” would banish from the altar of sacrifice — if not from the sanctuary entirely, along with the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament. We sinners, on whose behalf Our Lord gave His Body and shed His Precious Blood, can add nothing to the work; we are given, and should accept with humble gratitude, the opportunity to offer our adoration, our thanks, our contrition and our supplication, and in Holy Communion to receive Our Blessed Lord and to be received into Him.
Liturgical “workshops” and similar misdirected activities, so frequently enacted ad hoc in the Novus Ordo as to fill this pewsitter with dread of ever again having to attend one, should be heaved into the trash bin once and for all time.
Warren says:
“To translate is, to some extent, to betray the original”. Agreed. However, we should be careful that we do not back ourselves into a liturgical/philosophical corner by misidentifying the extent to which that thought applies. The key words are “to some extent”. Consider the movement of the Liturgy from Aramaic to Greek to Latin. Fr. Z, might we end up denying a good part of our Latin identity if we apply the argument in an indiscriminate manner?
When was the Western liturgy in Aramaic? Those who posit such an origin are usually the same people who still accept the Palestinian Jew/Hellenistic Jew/Greek paradigm of historical development that was little else than a figment of Adolph von Harnack’s Hegelian imagination.
And the translation from Greek to Latin was not any significant philosophical or theological change, especially compared to the change from Latin to contemporary English or German, both of have been heavily influenced by anti-Christian culture.
I find this quite interesting.
When one picks up and examines the various promotional themes proffered in justification of the NO Mass as currently typically encountered in North America and Europe and much of the other continents as well today and clearly in deviation from both the letter and spirit of Second Vatican Council, one is often left with this sort of lack of coherency and even a deep hypocrisy. In this case one wonders what sort of artisan worth his salt would be proud of such as result coming from his workshop, indeed.
I often wonder myself at the often promoted “meal” analogy. What sort of a meal indeed is this? The current representation of the NO does not seem, to me, consistent with the sort of pouring out of self in an all consuming love that the Lord gave to us. One wonders what sort of special meals people have today acclimated themselves to feel happy and satisfied with what is currently served up purportedly, in service and care for them.
There are so many aspects of this one could go on all day…I will just for the sake of concision raise but one that strikes me frequently. A simple comparison of the propers and readings and prayers in the Extraordinary Form or ancient rite with the new can itself stand as a good starting point for inquiry. The many layers and references one encounters in the old rite really lavish love upon the one praying the Mass. It is as if Holy Mother Church knows exactly what we are needing at that moment and brings it to us with such care and interested in our solace. Again this is merely a starting point, most who will have experienced the difference between the two Masses today will readily I am sure recognize this experience and the beautiful way that one is attended to in their spiritual needs throughout the liturgical year. With such gentle attentive care…Whereas in the newer form one feels the prayers and readings were, in a sense, bludgeoned and disemboweled from their roots and authentic organic soil. It is more of an experience of fast food, filling up and exploding with something in the short term but not really as nutritious or satisfying over the long journey. And one doesn’t ultimately feel, loved by it…
The liturgy should be viewed as a permanent workshop in one sense at least: It should be a place where we are permanently being worked on by the liturgy, where our relationship with God is being shaped and strengthened, where we grow into ever greater devotion and truer worship.
On translation, I think in the long view translation was necessary. It is necessary as a way of sanctifying the people and culture through sanctification of the language. To say, “we can not pray properly in English” is to also say you can not think or speak or do anything good in it, if the vernacular is so diabolical it can not be lifted up to the heavens, then it is also so diabolical it must be suppressed entirely even in private thought. I prefer to think the sanctifying power of God will triumph over the corrupting influence of the devil, though certainly we must do our part by translating well and wisely, and much else, too. I agree much of the first generation of liturgical translation was a disaster, and the second/third generations have improved in various ways, but I really don’t expect a finished, stable translation for another couple of generations. For good or for ill we lacked a Cramner to produce a work that could stand for centuries.
Henry,
Not to mention how much more likely it was for a typical Catholic family to attend a Low Mass on Sundays, rather than a Sung Mass (much less a Solemn Mass).
You could just as easily chant the Mass in English. Really. It’s stupid for this writer to say that the vernacular has killed the older form of the Mass – you could do ALL of it in English or any other language. That said, I am always surprised when people talk about the vernacular Mass “breaking open the Word,” etc. etc. Give me a break. It wasn’t until I started learning about the older Mass that I understood the new Mass at all. People think that because it’s in the vernacular, the pews are full of people who have some sort of clarity about what’s happening that was denied to people of old. HA. I think the vast majority of people at Mass have no idea what’s going on, no idea about the Holy Sacrifice or anything else. They sit there and listen (or not), sing (or not) go up for Communion (most of them) by rote, not thinking about what’s happening — IF THEY EVEN KNOW TO BEGIN WITH, just as the liturgical reformers like to imagine the unwashed mobs of the past did. I like the NO Mass, when done reverently, but again, it wasn’t until I saw an EF Mass that a lightbulb went off and I knew, “THAT’S what the Mass is supposed to be!”
Roman Catholicism isn’t the only church, or indeed religion, to use a hieratic, sacred language–this phenomenon appears to be universal and must speak at a very primal level to the soul.
Personally, I’d have everything in Latin, but I’m in a minority here. I think we need a healthy balance between Latin and the vernacular, which (not to idolise the council) is what Vatican II directed.
Unfortunately, the vernacular was the Trojan horse by which a raft of other liturgical changes were foisted upon us.
Dear Stephen Matthew,
I think you may overlook the facts that something not entirely unapt for solemn speaking may be less apt than another, and that even something quite unapt is not thereby diabolical. So, and forgive me to go by feelings because they are my only source here, it seems entirely possible to preach and apologize in dialect (the real vernacular), but praying in it always produces an odd feeling.
Dear mburn16,
long before anyone thought about the liturgy reform (in any way remotely similar to the way we’ve got it), hymns were quite appropriate for a pray-sing-Mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Singmesse).
In fact, the TLM is even more appropriate for them (besides, not replacing, Gregorian chant and orchestra Masses) than the Novus Ordo. In the Novus Ordo, any such “creativity” means that some parts of the Mass are not said in the way in which they liturgically should be (I’m not saying this is sinful in any case, there are allowances etc., but is it ideal?). In the TLM, though, there’s always one there to do the praying, so it does no harm if all the attendancy sings from the Sanctus are the word “Holy, Holy, Holy”, after which they add “Holy is the Lord, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy is he alone. He who never started, He who ever was, is eternal and reigneth, and will be forever” (which is the Sanctus-song from Schubert’s “German Mass”, rhymes in the original).
SMatthew says,
On translation, I think in the long view translation was necessary. It is necessary as a way of sanctifying the people and culture through sanctification of the language.
The reasons for Latin liturgy are greater now than ever before because it is transcultural–tied to no Time or Place and giving the hearer a primary sense of the transcendent.
To say, “we can not pray properly in English” is to also say you can not think or speak or do anything good in it, if the vernacular is so diabolical it can not be lifted up to the heavens, then it is also so diabolical it must be suppressed entirely even in private thought. I prefer to think the sanctifying power of God will triumph over the corrupting influence of the devil, though certainly we must do our part by translating well and wisely, and much else, too.
No one says that someone cannot pray in English, nor that it is diabolical. You have constructed a straw man, then attacked him. Such an argument is una buca nell’acqua.
I agree much of the first generation of liturgical translation was a disaster, and the second/third generations have improved in various ways, but I really don’t expect a finished, stable translation for another couple of generations. For good or for ill we lacked a Cramner to produce a work that could stand for centuries.
The language of the Book of Common Prayer was not an invention by Cranmer. Rather it was the architectonic language of that period, a formal, written language. A blacksmith of that period living in England wasn’t speaking English in the manner of the BoCP.
The point is during the time of the English Reformation written English was not very much influenced by spoken English. Thus in a real sense BoCP was not put in the vernacular but rather the architectonic language of England.
For all intents and purposes, contemporary English lacks an architectonic analog, which makes it all but impossible that the language can be “sanctified”. Besides, we can see from the Anglican Church that cultural influences overwhelmed their liturgy.
The Chairman of the Latin Mass Society in England and Wales, Joseph Shaw, has an excellent series of articles on why trying to find a “compromise” between the traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo is so difficult:
“I have in the past pointed out the practical, pastoral problem of the RotR [Reform of the Reform]: far from it being, as its proponents ceaselessly claim, easier to foist on a parish than the Traditional Mass, it is harder. The argument is simple: if a priest gets rid of the Altar girls, moves the Altar round to celebrate facing East, and introduces some Latin, in the typical parish Novus Ordo, he will create a civil war in the parish which he will almost certainly lose. If he introduces a Traditional Mass in a new time-slot, he may blot his copy-book with a hostile Dean and Bishop, but he will very probably get away with it in the short and medium term. (In the long term, of course, he may be moved.) This has been confirmed over and over again. Many of the commentators over on the NLM need to free themselves from their illusions on this. RotR is not the easy option.
But I want to introduce another idea. While I am in favour of Latin, worship ad orientem and pretty well everything the RotR promotes, it is clear to me that the difficulty of imposing them on the Novus Ordo is not just a matter of parochial habits. The problem with the texts and ceremonies, in terms of bringing them closer to the Traditional Mass, is not just a matter of how many changes you would need to make. The problem is that the Novus Ordo has its own ethos, rationale and spirituality. It encapsulates its own distinct understanding of what liturgical participation is. It is to promote this kind of participation that its various texts and ceremonies have been done as they are. If you put it in Latin, ad orientem, and especially if you start having things not currently allowed, like the silent Canon, then you undermine the kind of participation for which the Novus Ordo was designed.
This means that there is a danger, in promoting something which amounts to a compromise between the two Missals, of falling between two stools.”
http://www.lmschairman.org/search/label/Death%20of%20the%20Reform%20of%20the%20Reform
The 5 part series is a must read (read from bottom to top).
Brennan555,
Thanks for the tip – they sound interesting!
I would have to disgree, in part, with the excerpt, however – “in Latin, ad orientem,” (though lessons, variable parts of the intercessions, and sermon in the vernacular) is the kind of NO I’ve been most familiar with, in recent years, and I don’t get the impression that it “undermine[s] the kind of participation for which the Novus Ordo was designed” in the experience of those involved!
I was interested to encounter the custom of Alfric, a millennium or so ago, at the Clerk of Oxford blog: in preaching his Quinquagesima sermon, “He begins, as is his usual practice, by translating into English the Gospel reading for the day”.
Bugnini was rehired, this time by Pope Paul, “to get things done.” He certainly did that.
And then he got exiled.
robtbrown,
I think I was responding to your statement of English being influenced by anti-Christian culture (with anti-Christian and diabolical being practically interchangeable in my view). It boggles my mind to say that English, a language developed within a more or less Christian culture, has an anti-Christian influence, as a way of suggesting the superiority of Latin. Latin was, no need to remind, the language birthed by the very same pagan empire that executed Christ, nearly the definition of an anti-Christian culture and more importantly a culture Christ was against.
Look, I am actually a fan of liturgical Latin, to a point. I personally studied it off and on from high school through grad school. I attended mass today in the 1962 form. I am well familiar with all of the common arguments in its favor as a liturgical, ecclesiastical, and scholarly language and agree with many of them (most of which were once made in favor of Greek, too, though Greek would offer some advantages for Biblical scholarship). I am even sympathetic to the classicists and living-language folk that want to revive Latin outside the church. That doesn’t mean I need to be against the English language or liturgy in some sort of current languages.
I am very much willing to grant that had the prayers at mass today been according to the words on the right hand of the hand missal rather than the left hand side, it would have been every bit as a fine of a mass (and linguistically superior to the current normative English version of the Roman Missal in all but perhaps one or two stray phrases). I am also in agreement that contemporary casual English should not be the goal, I suppose we must define what we mean by “vernacular”, but for my part a sacred and solemn form of English seems both possible and desirable.
Attending high mass today I was thankful for what we have in the Roman rite (both in tradition and even thankful for some small aspect of the reform thereof), but was also a bit envious once again of the Byzantines for the fact they are able to have a liturgy with a 16 century pedigree, in an elevated vernacular, and a few small accommodations to culture. We are Catholics, we are supposed to be the masters of the religious “both…and” yet as Latins we seem to want extreme “either…or” at times. Perhaps Benedict’s organic development and mutual enrichment will win out eventually, but I am skeptical at times.
Also as a final note, fully thinking in a second language is not such a common thing, nor is private, spontaneous prayer. For almost everyone knowledge of Latin is inevitably mediated through vernacular language. Sooner or later corruption of the vernacular will corrupt the understanding of a sacral tongue (I would argue there are already plentiful examples of that available).
Before the vernacular liturgy was introduced people prayed in the vernacular, whether spontaneously or using fixed prayers which they had learnt from childhood. A Catholic in 1960 would have been able to recite the Pater Noster in Latin since he heard it at every Mass; not so the Ave Maria. A recitation of the Rosary in Latin would have been unusual, to say the least, and people would have said ‘what’s the point?’ If the Leonine prayers after Low Mass had been in Latin (as I heard them done not so long ago) this would have been regarded as odd; not quite as odd as if the Mass preceding them had been in English, but odd nonetheless.
At Benediction the Prayer for England was recited between the O Salutaris and Tantum Ergo – it was composed in English by Merry del Val and there was no need to bring out a Latin version. Likewise the Divine Praises were also in the vernacular. In my parish the prayer for the Queen after sung Mass on Sundays was said in English after the choir had sung Domine salvam fac; since the Mass was over there was no reason for it to be in Latin. Nowadays Latin is de rigueur.
In my experience congregations were equally unself-conscious about using English or Latin. However, when English began to be introduced into the Mass itself (in 1964, as I remember) there was the feeling that a line had been crossed. The Latin Mass Society was founded in the following year.
I will need to read Shaw’s articles on it, but I am more and more convinced that a “reform of the reform” is both the direction things are heading and exactly the solution we need. As Sti Lot mentioned, in the experience of those who have done it, reintroducing traditional elements into the NO Mass doesn’t seem to be such a disaster. This seems common for vigil Masses at FSSP parishes, I know a couple of Newman Centers where Latin, ad orientem NO Mass is common, etc. There’s a beautiful new parish being built north of Chicago where it looks like this kind of thing is incorporated. Wasn’t the Advent experiment in the Diocese of Lincoln generally successful? Did it lead to civil war? Nah. I’ve never heard anybody complain that they don’t know what “Kyrie eleison” means, or even about a Latin “Agnus Dei” thrown in here and there at your average NO parish.
There’s a false choice at work here. If Fr. wants to add one TLM in a new time slot, no big deal. Why not one ad orientem NO Mass? It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing change, any more than instituting a new TLM would be.
In any case, a wholesale return to the 1962 Missal would be disastrous too. There is frankly no reason today to universally proclaim Scripture in a language nobody understands, let alone facing away from the people to whom you are proclaiming. The Canon, yes. The Gospel? Why? Latin was standard because it was universal. For centuries that remained true. It’s not anymore. If Trent took place today, the Mass would be universally in English. And I say this as someone who has come to love the TLM. But I also love the NO.
And I know people love to kvetch about it, but the new lectionary is an absolute masterpiece. Let’s put Communion rails back in, yes, let’s reintroduce the world to sacred music and traditional prayers in traditional language, yes, but that doesn’t mean we need to AGAIN throw out things that are, in fact, good and working. As Stephen said just above, this is a place for our wonderful Catholic “both/and”.
Brennan555’s website reference is a must read, for sure. I had to copy and paste to a Word document, though, for better reading. There were important principles stated there.