What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

Annoying, but sadly true.  Here is a story from Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader.

My emphases and comments.

Oh… btw… there is a poll at that newpaper site… if you get my drift.

Be patient…

Jessamine woman to be ordained a priest
By Jim Niemi
Herald-Leader Religion Writer

 As a young girl growing up in Milwaukee, Janice Sevre-Duszynska often fantasized [That places it in the right category.] about becoming a priest while helping clean the sanctuary of the church her family attended.

“I’d sit in the priest’s chair, go to the pulpit, make believe I was preaching and giving communion,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why couldn’t I be up here?’”  [Make believe is still fun!]

Now, 50 years later, she will get her wish, but it could come with a price — excommunication from the Roman Catholic church. [NB the small "c".] On Aug. 9, in defiance of the church’s 2,000-year ban on women in the priesthood, she will be ordained [No she won’t be.] by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an activist group that has protested the ban since 2002.  [Okay… what language is being used here?  So far, its a "ban".  Can’t only things that are actually possible be banned?  Right there is a ban on importing Cuban cigars in the USA.  But it is still possible to smoke them here.]

Sevre-Duszynska, 58, a Jessamine County resident and grandmother of three, has protested the church’s stance [now its a "stance".] for the last decade.

In 1998, she disrupted the ordination of a Lexington priest  [classy!] at the Cathedral of Christ the King by pleading with then-Bishop J. Kendrick Williams to ordain her as well. In 2000, she impersonated a reporter [a liar too!] to attend an annual meeting of Catholic bishops in Washington, D.C., where she grabbed the microphone and again called for the ordination of women. And in 2002, she was arrested as part of a group protesting ordination of deacons by the Catholic Diocese of Atlanta.  [and stingy! "If I can’t be ordained, no one can!"]

“To refer to God only in masculine terms empowers men but diminishes women,” said Sevre-Duszynska (pronounced sev-ruh duh-SHIN-ska). “It affects how women are treated, how their children are treated. We come from God also.”  [This one is a real dinosaur.]

The church’s position [Now it’s a "position".]

But the church remains steadfast in its tradition, arguing that it follows Christ’s example of selecting men as apostles.

“The church understands that in acting this way, Christ was showing his will,” said T.F. Shaughnessy, spokesman for the Diocese of Lexington. “The church does not have the authority to contravene the authority of Jesus.”

But women do fill key positions in the church, Shaughnessy said. In the Lexington diocese, those positions include director of the Tribunal, the local church court; a diocesan secretary, who reports directly to the bishop; and principals in Catholic schools.

“Basically, women can do everything in the church except perform the sacraments,” [And exercise juridiction, I think.] Shaughnessy said. “Men and women both have dignity, but we each have roles. ... The most revered saint in Catholic canon is the Blessed Mother (Mary), so it’s kind of ludicrous to say that the church disrespects women.”

The Vatican reaffirmed its position against women priests in May when it decreed that anyone who participates in the ordination of a woman is immediately excommunicated, meaning that they have chosen to cut themselves off from receiving the sacraments.

But Sevre-Duszynska, who will be ordained at the Unitarian Universalist Church [Yah…. that’s about right.] of Lexington, does not fear excommunication. She expects it. “I’m really waiting for that parchment from Rome,” she said. [That ineffable gibbet of ignorance and arogance.]

She became eligible for excommunication [Good grief!  This is this paper’s religion writer?!?] in 2006 when she was [not] ordained a deacon by Roman Catholic Womenpriests. According to Catholic church doctrine, that office must also be reserved for men. Deacons perform many duties of priests, such as baptisms, marriages and funerals, but they cannot say Mass, consecrate the Eucharist [Yah… ‘cause those are really different] or hear confessions. [Or anoint.]

Sevre-Duszynska believes that Catholicism is too exclusive. “Roman Catholic Womenpriests believe in inclusivity — men, women, married, divorced, disabled,” [aardvarks, potatoes, big scary puppets] she said.

A priest on the streets

While she won’t be allowed to lead a parish, [I wonder if she should be allowed out of the house!  Sheesh!] Sevre-Duszynska plans to continue her work as a community activist, a role for which she is known nationwide.

In 2001, she served a 90-day sentence after being charged with trespassing at Fort Benning, Ga., while protesting that the former School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, was training terrorists. As she completed her sentence, she was fired from her job as a teacher of English as a second language  by the Fayette County school district for not fulfilling the terms of her teaching contract. [perhaps she was leaving out masculine pronouns?] Her dismissal was ultimately overturned in a series of court decisions. She retired from the district in 2005.

In 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, she was arrested again, for trespassing at a Nevada weapons testing site.  [Why violate her rights?  Let her go anywhere she wants there!]

“My heroes as priests are on the fringes ... they need to challenge the government and the Vatican,” Sevre-Duszynska said.

Sevre-Duszynska began her preparation for the priesthood 10 years ago with night classes at Lexington Theological Seminary. She is working to complete her doctor of ministry [Oooo … the coveted D.Min!] with Global Ministries University, based in California.

She is also considering offers to minister. “I’ve been asked to [pretend] say Mass in September at the Catholic Workers House in Washington, D.C. I will consider that,” she said. “I also plan to continue my peace and justice work.”

She sees herself as an itinerant priest, not a parish priest.  [... okay… I guess I can’t say that…]

“I’m happiest as a priest on the streets,” she said. “I will [not] celebrate the Mass, I will celebrate [simulate] the sacraments. But I intend to be out there on the streets being a voice for the voiceless.”  

Sooooo… another posterwymyn for wannabes everywhere!

Okay… say you find yourself at someone’s home for supper and one of these kooks is there too.

What do you say?

What arguments do you use

a) to counteract the kookiness for those who are listening and
b) try to penetrate through to reason and snap the loon out of the delusion?

Take a shot!

How about, instead of just pouring more contempt on this whole thing (I did enough of that for you already), briefly stating your case?

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

Once upon a time, papal documents were composed in Latin.   The Pope would either write them himself or provide points which his Latin secretaries would then draft and polish.   For example, when Leo XIII (+1903) wrote his milestone Rerum novarum (1891) the composition was entirely in Latin.  The notebooks from its composition reveal great care to create a clear and elegant text.  Nearly everything, with notable exceptions like Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge (1937), was composed in Latin until the time of Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council when tremendous pressure was placed on the Holy See to produce translations in various languages.  It was necessary to correct the slapdash versions issued by journalists and others who were at times engaging in misinformation.  The speed at which the texts were expected forced a shift from composition in Latin to the vernacular.  It is easier to write in one’s native tongue, obviously, and so documents got longer – and not always clearer.  Under the pressure to get the texts out, the quality of texts and translations diminished.  The exponentially increasing speed of the media creates problems. 

In this light, Pope Benedict in this year’s Message for World Day for Social Communication said, “Daily we are reminded that immediacy of communication does not necessarily translate into the building of cooperation and communion in society”.  
Accurate translations are difficult to produce.  They are extremely hard to produce with both accuracy and speed.  Translation was a factor in the delayed release of the Pope Benedict’s first encyclical Deus caritas est (DCE).  While it was downplayed in the 25 January press conference for the release of the encyclical, Pope Benedict himself had stated during a general audience with a wistful “finally” that, in part, translation difficulties delayed its publication.  Holy Father wrote in German, working probably with the collaboration of others at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence, from September onward.  While the first part is vintage Ratzinger, some think the second part was based on an unfinished work of the late Pope John Paul II.  The Latin translators in the Secretariat of State would have preferred to work directly from the German original (which sure makes sense) but they were instead constrained use an Italian translation.  However, the Italian text was in some ways not up to par and so a redrafting was necessary.  In addition, there were those in the halls of power who made observations about content.  Thus, the encyclical itself went through a revision and there were delays.  

Here is another thorny problem with translations.  The final, official version of any document of the Holy See must be in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the authoritative instrument of promulgation.  When a document is initially released in its various language versions, Latin in the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and usually also English, German, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, it is then subject to reaction and feedback from the world.  When the official version, the second Latin version appears in the Acta the Latin is usually different from the first version.  However, nobody ever retranslates the previously released vernacular versions!   So, usually when people are quoting a text, they are quoting something issued long before the real text is issued in the Acta after changes were made.  The Latin version of Deus caritas est (DCE) is available on the Vatican’s website and L’Osservatore published it on its front page even though on the night before, on the L’Osservatore website, the preview of the front page showed it in Italian.  Someone must have made some phones calls!  As far as I know, the Latin won’t be published in booklet form, that is, until the Acta.

What about the English translation of DCE?  One odd phrase got my attention.  In DCE 3: “… doesn’t the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn’t she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?”  Ehem… “Blow the whistle?”  At first we might think this is sports imagery.  The Italian says “innalza forse cartelli di divieto… raise perhaps forbidden signs…” which to the incautious might sound like a reference to a soccer referee holding up a penalty card.   But the referee’s card is a “cartellino”, not a “cartello” of a certain color, not a “cartello di divieto”.  Is it traffic imagery?  In German, which is what Benedict wrote in, we read, “Stellt sie nicht gerade da Verbotstafeln auf… Doesn’t she put up forbidden signs precisely there…”.  A “Verbotstafel” could be a traffic sign, a non-smoking sign or other indication.   It’s generic.  In Latin we have the same thing, “Nonne fortasse nuntios prohibitionis attollit Ecclesia ibi omnino…”  You might have expected here a neuter plural nuntia prohibitionis, since a nuntius is usually the bearer of the news.  However, nuntius, i can also mean, “command, order, injunction”.  So, “blow the whistle”?   I wonder where those ICEL translators wound up after all.
 
SUPER OBLATA (2002MR)
Domine Deus noster
qui has potius creaturas
ad fragilitatis nostrae subsidium condidisti,
tribue, quaesumus,
ut etiam aeternitatis nobis fiant sacramentum.

This prayer was in the 1962MR during Passiontide and in the Veronese Sacramentary in the month of September in amongst prayers suggesting fasting (admonitio ieiunii).  One wonders if the people who put together the 1970MR sensed the need to salvage something of the ancient tradition of preparatory Sundays before Lent (e.g. Septuagesima).  There is a touch of military imagery in this prayer through words like subsidium and sacramentum (originally meaning an oath taken by soldiers).

We need to look at vocabulary in order to understand what the prayer really says.  Our worthy The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary shows potius is from the rarely declined potis, “able, capable; possible.”  We often see the comparative form potior, which is “preferred, better, preferable” and in the superlative potissimus (declinable) and thus the comparative adverbial form potius signifying “rather, preferably, more.”  Potissime and potissimum are superlatives for “chiefly, principally, especially, in preference to all others, above all, most of all.”  Potius is imbedded in has…creaturas which helps us to determine that it means “above all” or perhaps “above or in preference to all others.”  The verb subsideo gives us the substantive subsidium originally meaning, “the troops stationed in reserve in the third line of battle (behind the principes), the line of reserve, reserve-ranks, triarii.”  By extension it also means “support, assistance, aid, help, protection.”  Condo, cóndere, condidi, cónditum gives us “to bring, lay or put together” in the sense of “establish, build, construct, compose, describe” and, strangely, “hide”.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O Lord our God,
who made these creatures above all others
unto a support of our frailty,
grant, we beseech Thee,
that they may become for us the sacrament also of eternity.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord our God,
may the bread and wine
you give us for our nourishment on earth
become the sacrament of our eternal life.

ICEL decided to break down hae creaturae… “these creatures” into bread and wine.   I can understand why they did that, but I think it usurps both our intellect and imagination.  Furthermore, there is rich material for preaching and teaching in the word and concept “creature”, which is used in the Latin liturgical tradition for something about to be sanctified.  For example, in the pre-Conciliar Rituale Romanum, the source for various sacramental rites and blessings, there is the rite for blessing holy water.  As in the rite for baptism, water was to be infused with salt.  Both the salt and water had to be exorcised first.  So, the priest would solemnly speak directly to the salt as if it were a living thing, making signs of the Cross, “Thou creature of salt, I purge thee of all evil by the living + God, by the true + God, by the holy + God…  Be thou a purified salt for the health of believers, giving soundness of body and soul to all who use thee.  In whatever place thou art sprinkled, may phantoms and wickedness, and Satan’s cunning be banished.  And let every unclean spirit be repulsed by Him Who shall come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire.”   To exorcize the water the priest prayed, “Thou creature of water, I purge thee of evil….  Mayest thou be empowered to drive forth (the envious foe) and exile him together with his fallen angels….”  In the newer, post-Conciliar Missale Romanum, in an Appendix containing the rite for blessing water sprinkled during the penitential rite of Holy Mass, the priest still calls water creatura, but he no longer exorcizes it or speaks to it directly.  

This image of the thing to be blessed as a living creature was once common. For example, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist there was a special blessing for wine: “…Bless, + O Lord, this creature draught that it might be a helpful medicine to all who drink it.”   On Epiphany the priest could bless gold, incense and myrrh, first exorcizing them and calling them all “creatures.”   The creature oil was always exorcized and blessed.  Just as a living person had to be exorcised before being baptized, so too anything intended for God and His special sanctification.  The more important and precious a thing was, the greater the need for it to be pure at its offering.  God then sanctifies and takes it apart from ordinary things unto His own.  Consequently, the bread and wine being prepared at the offertory of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are of great importance.   They will be taken by God to be transformed into Jesus Christ Himself.   One can understand why in the reforms of the liturgy greater emphasis was placed on the offertory procession, restoring ancient practice of bring things from our daily life to the altar for their sanctification.

Water, salt, oil, bread and wine… these are simple things from daily life.  They are simple but of profound, even critical, importance.  We cannot live without them.  In the holy rites of the Catholic Church we would speak directly to the things to be consecrated as if they were living things, so intimately were they bound together with how God supports our very lives.   Our Blessed Lord during His earthly life instituted the seven sacraments we enjoy today.  Knowing that we are human creatures and not angelic creatures, he gave us outward signs with these sacraments so that we could understand when the invisible and interior reality was being conferred.  He thus took simple, but vastly important created things from our ordinary lives and raised them to a new sacramental reality.  Even the need to tell our troubles to a friend, so common but so important for our well-being, he raised to a sacrament.  The longing of a man and woman to be together, instituted as a holy union from the beginning of our race, was elevated making of the very bodies of the spouse something new and holy.  The struggle at the end of life or when we are in mortal peril was taken by Christ and given back to us as a sacrament and the daily and common yet life-supporting substance oil was his vehicle for giving us grace.

A word like creatura, given a decent and beautiful translation and some sensible and timely liturgical catechesis, can create a sense of wonder about what is happening during the Eucharistic Prayer.  It reminds us that we too are creatures, made in the image and likeness of God.  Today’s Super oblata through the word creatura indicates that we are being drawn in to a hallowed nexus of the creaturely with the Creator.  The solemn language of the moment drapes, as it were, the altar and its appointments, the priest/mediator, and particularly (potius) the creatures of the bread and wine to be consecrated, with a mysterious cloak, reminiscent of the cloud that would descend upon the mountain and the tent when YAWEH God would speak face to face with Moses.

In our liturgical prayers we need to have a sacral style, removed from daily language.  They must be beautiful, evocative, striking and solemn.  Is that what the translators and the bishops are going to provide for us?

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

Some indirect and somewhat dated feedback:  In December there was an interesting conference in Rome sponsored by The Becket Fund.   The events director, MD, told me that her grandfather is quite the fan of WDTPRS.  So, to him I send kind greetings and thanks for his indirect kudos.   

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR)
Altaribus tuis, Domine, munera nostrae servitutis inferimus,
quae, placatus assumens,
sacramentum nostrae redemptionis efficias.

Right away you will be struck by the alliterative ‘s’ sounds.  Today’s so-called “Prayer over the gifts” is also in the ancient Veronese Sacramentary.

The densely printed pages of your very own copy of that paragon of Latin lemmas, the The Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary, divulge that servitus is (despite its us ending) a feminine noun.  It means, “the condition of a servus; slavery, serfdom, service, servitude.”   Infero is “to carry, bring, put, or throw into or to a place”.  This verb also can mean “to conclude, infer, draw an inference.”   

Latin, like all of us, has moods but not good moods or bad moods.  Getting Latin moods into English can be a chore.  Latin has the subjunctive mood, the bane of many a Latin student.  In Latin, the subjunctive mood represents the predicate as an idea, as something conceived in the mind, abstracted from reality.  Often people translate subjunctives into English with the auxiliary verbs “may, can, must, might, could, should, would” and indeed the subjunctive can be used to express views and wishes.  However, the subjunctive is also applied to things that are in fact very concrete but in the sentence are somewhat logically remote from the subject and verb of the main sentence and are therefore considered to be abstract.  This is the case in many relative sentences.  In relative sentences the thing being treated can be very concrete and real but, because it is in a relative sentence, the subjunctive is used.  It is very tempting for Latin students always to use those abovementioned auxiliary verbs automatically upon spotting any subjunctive.  However, very often it is more accurate to make Latin subjunctives sound indicative when putting them into English.  We must do that with our prayer today.   Efficias is a subjunctive and some will be tempted to say something like “which you may make into the sacrament of our redemption.”   It is actually more accurate to give efficias an indicative sound.   So, let’s give this our best shot.

LITERAL TRANSLATION:
We are bringing in to place upon your altars, O Lord, the gifts of our service,
which, having been appeased as you take them up,
you make into the sacrament of our redemption.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Lord,
be pleased with the gifts we bring to your altar,
and make them the sacrament of our salvation.

What did the ICEL translator really do to the Latin prayer?  Obvious he (she?  they?) changed plural altaribus to a singular.  Does this mean anything?  Is there anything sinister here?  Theologically spooky?   Probably not, but we can use this as an opportunity to discuss Catholic things.  

I try to give the ICEL versions the benefit of the doubt, but they obviously veer, sharply, nay rather careen away from the Latin original.  Why?  Anyone with a little Latin can see this.  We are justifiably suspicious of anything offered by ICEL, even the present, ongoing project.  In the past the translators had reasons for their choices to distort the originals.  It is not possible to believe that the bishops purposely employed translators so fantastically incompetent that they botched the prayers out lack of skill.   In those days bishops would have still had a little background in Latin.  They must have picked people with at least a minimum competency in Latin.  Let’s leave aside their agenda of composing prayers not in the Missale Romanum.  The translators therefore must have seen that, in today’s prayer, the Latin had a plural.  Therefore, they wanted to change the Latin into something else.  As Sherlock Holmes observed, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Now, all in all today’s ICEL version isn’t completely off base.  But why would the translators change Latin “altars” into “altar”?  Was there a theological reason for making the change?  

We need a lens to view the question more closely.  Consider a first point:  Catholics (which word in its roots means “universal”) have never historically been interested in making things or people “smaller”, in the sense of placing unreasonable or unrealistic restrictions on them.  Our Church, despite what the media say or some sour-grapes fringe progressives claim, is not into placing unreasonable limits.   For example, there is a famous principle of interpretation of the Church’s law whereby the advantages people have as expressed in law are to be amplified while the things that place restrictions on them must be interpreted as strictly or narrowly as possible so as to favor the rights of the individual (odiosa restringenda sunt, favorabilia amplianda).  Consider also a second point: as members of the Church we belong to something not only spread throughout the whole world but also transcending even the grave.   No, Catholics are not into making people or things “small”.

Turn now to the ICEL prayer.   The translator, by using a singular “altar” rather than the accurate “altars” repressed the fact that Catholics all over the world are this Sunday presenting their gifts on myriads of altars (altaribus), grand or small, simple or ornate, fixed to a wall or free-standing, marble with gilt reredos or on the hood of a sand-pocked armored humvee.   People of many cultures focus on their hugely varying altars every day.  Every day the one and same Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered for both the living and the dead of every age and in every place.  

Please understand: it is a good thing to help a congregation to recognize its particular identity as it is gathered at its particular altar in its particular parish.   It is not a good thing to do this at the expense of the Church’s universality, its catholicity.  Moreover, altars are a sign of the presence of Jesus Christ, who is not to be limited to one place and time alone.  Christ is not to be made “small”, nor is the unity of the Catholic People of God through time, space and even the passage of the grave.

We can shift gears and come at this from another direction.  Does the change to singular “altar” have anything to do with the attempt on the part of some to constrain all celebrations of Mass to be “facing the people”?   This is a big jump.  Consider the following points.  In the ancient Church, churches had usually one altar.  As the Church grew and her understanding of the Blessed Sacrament and efficacy of Mass and role of priests evolved, churches were built with more than one altar especially under the influence of Western monasticism.  There was clearly a main altar, a principal altar, which was the architectural, the visible, logical focus of the whole building.  That special place within the sanctuary, itself set apart from the rest of the sacred building – like the ancient Jewish Holy of Holies within the Temple – was where the sacred mysteries were celebrated.  Other altars in the church might be used at different times, particularly when many priests were in residence near the church who all needed to say Mass each day.  This was certainly the case at a monastery, seminary or, once upon a time, parish.   This was also during the time before “concelebration” was revived in the West.

For a long time there has been a movement to emphasize, in an exaggerated way, the importance of one unique altar in the sacred space of the church.  This principle of the unicity of the altar is a theological concern not to be trifled with.  Much serious ink has been spilled over this issue. However, an otherwise good principle can be applied with so heavy a hand that damage is done.  This was certainly the case with the use of the vernacular versus Latin.  For decades a maniacal effort to tear “extra” altars out of churches, even historic churches, has resulted in destruction that might have shocked the Visigoths.  At the very best some main altars at the wall were converted into shelves for plants.  But once the one altar principle was coupled with the goofy idea that the priest must face the people for the Eucharistic Prayer, the door was opened to jack-hammer and crowbar toting reformers.  As it happens, the historical foundation for Mass facing the people has been debunked with real scholarship, but the damage has been done far and wide in older churches. The “experts” have had their way in most places.  The “high altars” of our churches have been torn out in favor of a table, sometimes not even placed in the center of the eye’s focus.  In some places altar are absurdly juxtaposed to and counterbalancing the ambo where the Scriptures are read.   My comments here are more than a mere laus temporis acti… a praise of times gone by.   The orientation of an altar is truly significant.  People glean something very important from the layout of a church and the way the altar is placed and treated. By turning altars around we have, in my opinion, lost as a Church far more than we imagine we have gained.   By forcing priest and people to face each other, in closed circle, we have made ourselves “small”.

Here in Rome and elsewhere you find churches with the main altar intact.  However, in nearly every case a table altar has been set up in front of it.  When I see a huge and magnificent high altar with a silly little ironing board set up also, I shake my head in incredulous disbelief.  Many people have been duped into thinking that saying Mass versus populum is of such overriding value that they justify what looks like a picnic table compared to what stands behind it.  Many of the same people will then harp on liturgical “diversity” to the point where virtually any liturgical abuse is tolerated, while clamping down in draconian ferocity on anyone who suggests that it is okay to have Mass also… get this… also oriented so that priest and congregation together face the liturgical “East”, whence the Church traditionally believed the Lord would return.   

The discussion above is not irrelevant to the issue of liturgical translations, which is what WDTPRS is about.  For example, the document of the USCCB called Built of Living Stones: Art, Architecture, and Worship (BLS), when treating the position of altars, in footnote 73 (once note 75) in its online version mistranslates the Latin of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) par. 299.  The English mistranslation in BLS of the Latin description of the placement of the altar is skewed so as to impose versus populum celebrations of Mass, which the Latin does not say.  The mistranslation was published in November 2000 and remains online now despite the fact that the Latin of that very paragraph 299 in the GIRM had been specifically explained and clarified by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS – Prot. No. 2036/00/L – 25 September 2000) before the American bishops promulgated BLS.  Those who wrote BLS and submitted it to the bishops for approval had to have known about that clarification by the CDWDS and so they must have submitted the mistranslation on purpose.  Again, exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  It is not naïve to suppose that presuppositions drive translation choices.  They sure do in these columns!   

Dear reader, include our bishops in your prayers.  Ask their angel guardians to guide them in their duty to develop an accurate new English translation according to the norms.  

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006

On Sunday 8 January we celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord, a day traditionally associated with three events in the Lord’s earthly life: the coming of the Magi, His baptism by John in the Jordan, and the changing of water to wine at Cana during the wedding feast.  We observed the Baptism of the Lord on Monday the 9th since Epiphany supplanted it from the Sunday.

We have moved into what is called “Ordinary Time”, the Sundays of the Church’s liturgical year that do not have a specific penitential or festal meaning as in the case of Advent/Christmastide and Lent/Eastertide.  Our white and gold vestments will be stored again until Easter.  Until Ash Wednesday we see green in our churches.  

Before the conciliar reform of the Roman calendar, this period before Ash Wednesday was called the Season of Epiphany and the Sundays were called the Sundays after Epiphany.  It was a time of transition including those beautiful Sundays called Septuagesima (“70th”), Sexagesima (“60th”) and Quinquagesima (“50th”), all before the beginning of Quadragesima (“40th”) otherwise known as Lent.  Liturgical books once called the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost the tempus per annum… the time through the year.  This terminology has remained even though both these non-festal seasons form two parts of “Ordinary Time”.  So, we enter into that period of the Church’s calendar stretching from the adoration of kings and shepherds at the feet of the infant King to the end of the year and the solemn feast of Christ the King, the King of fearful majesty who will come as judge and who will separate the goats from the sheep before ushering in the unending reign of peace.

Today’s Super oblata or what ICEL calls the “Prayer over the gifts” comes to you by way of the 1962MR where it made its cameo appearance as the Secret for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost.  However, it was also in the ancient sacramentaries: in the Veronese during the month of April and in the Gelasian for the 2nd Sunday of Lent.  

SUPER OBLATA (2002MR)
Concede nobis, quaesumus, Domine,
haec digne frequentare mysteria,
quia, quoties huius hostiae commemoratio celebratur,
opus nostrae redemptionis exercetur.

There is a good deal of assonance in this prayer, on the vowel “e” and quite a bit of alliteration on “s” and sibilants in the last part.   Were the soft “c” of liturgical Latin hardened back into its more ancient “k”, the whole prayer would be even spiffier.  I like the parallels in the “tur” endings, helping us to make the conceptual link between the two clauses.

The Lewis & Short Dictionary, that astounding tome of turgid Latinity, affirms for us that the verb frequento means “to visit or resort to frequently, to frequent; to do or make use of frequently, to repeat.”  It also means, “to celebrate or keep in great numbers” as in the observance of public festivals.  That same meaning is reflected in the interesting dictionary of liturgical Latin which we call Blaise.  Exerceo is “to drive on, keep busy, keep at work; to oversee, superintend” and also, by extension, “to follow up, follow out, prosecute, carry into effect….”   Do not forget that the relationship between mysteria and sacramenta is close enough to make them almost interchangeable.

ICEL (1973 translation of the 1970MR):
Father,
may we celebrate the eucharist
with reverence and love,
for when we proclaim the death of the Lord
you continue the work of his redemption.

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Grant to us, we beg, O Lord,
to make frequent use of these sacramental mysteries worthily,
for, as often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is celebrated,
the work of our redemption is carried on.

Compare the Latin and the ICEL version.  In the Latin we pray “as often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is celebrated” while in the lame-duck ICEL version we have “when we proclaim the death of the Lord.”  It is quite true that during Mass we proclaim the death of the Lord, but there is a huge difference between these two statements!   Part of the difference can be found in looking at different understandings of the Latin word commemoratio and its English cognate.  

We Catholic Christians believe that Holy Mass is a sacrificial memorial of Christ and of His Body and Blood (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1356 ff.).  The celebration of Mass is a “memorial”, a “commemoration” (Greek anamnesis) of His Sacrifice.  During Mass, by means of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we praise the Father and we remember what Christ did for our salvation.  

This is far more than a mere remembrance or simple commemoration of a long past event which hade lasting effects, as if we were at a war memorial listening to a reenactment of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  In the sacred action of the liturgy the mysteries of our salvation (mysteria) are truly present to us.   Christ’s Sacrifice is made present again in a way that is different from, and yet no less real than, what we see physically around us.  Holy Mass and the Divine Liturgy of Eastern Churches is therefore simultaneously both a remembrance of the Sacrifice Christ effected for our salvation and also that same saving Sacrifice made present to us who participate actively in the sacred liturgical action.  In fact, the memorial action of Mass is the Sacrifice of Christ re-presented to us, the Church.  Historically, Christ’s Sacrifice was carried out in a bloody way, at a one specific time and in one specific place.  Sacramentally, however, that same historic Sacrifice is being continued, re-presented, re-effected in an unbloody way in many places and at many times.  “The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice, in the liturgy of the Church which is his Body” (CCC 1362).   The sacramental way of effecting the Sacrifice is no less real than the actual event of Christ’s self-oblation outside the walls of Jerusalem two millennia ago.   This should not cause us wonder.  Christ said that this would be the case.  

I therefore quibble with ICEL’s version: “when we proclaim the death of the Lord
you continue the work of his redemption.”   First, this is not what the Latin really says.  Also, our “proclamation of the death of the Lord” is not what effects the saving work of our redemption.   The consecration and consumption of the Eucharist by the priest constitutes the Sacrifice which is at the heart of each celebration of Holy Mass, which, sacramentally, is a commemoration making the past truly present and extending it toward the future.

For a long time the sacrificial language describing the Mass was being diluted or abandoned altogether.  I think this came from a tendency either to emphasize the horizontal (human, immanent) dimension over the vertical (divine, transcendent) or else to reduce what happens at Mass to something much more like a Protestant understanding of the Eucharist.  Thus, sometimes instead of “Mass” many use merely “liturgy”.   Both are fine, but both are needed.  Let us speak more about “Holy Mass” and not just “liturgy”, which might mean a baptism, the singing of Vespers, or sacramental confession.  Today some folks still refer to an “ordained minister” rather than a “priest”, or how during “liturgy” he says the words of “institution”, rather than the words of “consecration” (the root of which is sacer, “sacred”).   

During my seminary days the more radical of the faculty forbade us from using the “‘p’-word” (“priest”).  They insisted we were being formed to be “ordained ministers”.   This had the purpose of deemphasizing the distinction between the priest… er um… “ordained minister” and all people… er um…  “non-ordained ministers”, all of whom exercise “ministry” in some vague way.   In essence, “ministry” was pretty much anything people might do.  I have no problem with all people being virtuous and holy, integrating prayer and contemplation together with their daily tasks, raising all their words and deeds to the Father in self-oblation, but not everything is “ministry” and not everyone is a “minister”, in the sense the Church understands the term. Priest and minister are radically different ideas.  Ministers do good things within a community but priests offer sacrifice and are themselves set apart.  Ministers are characterized mostly by their tasks and the priests is distinguished by what the sacrament of Holy Orders has made him ontologically, at the level of his being.   In those days of seminary, they were trying to strip the Mass and the priest of their sacral character.  The same applies to architecture.  Churches had sanctuaries but very often we hear now about “worship spaces”.  The architecture reflects the differences of views.   The general effect of this squishy 60’s-80’s language about Mass and the priest is something like this: “People are gathered together to celebration of Christ’s memory during which one of their number, who happens to be designated by that community, retells the story of the night before He died, when He established the custom about to be reenacted.”  We are therefore grateful that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has begun to instill anew a greater sense of the sacred when speaking about all things touching upon the Church’s celebration of the sacred mysteries.

The gloriously risen Christ, who transcends time and space, is always the principal actor in the Church’s liturgies.  Thus, what we Catholics say about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being truly the Christ’s Sacrifice of Calvary and the Last Supper institution of the Eucharist in no way contradicts what many Protestants and Evangelicals emphasize, namely, that there is one, once-for-all, unrepeatable Sacrifice for our salvation.  Yes, there was!  And by Christ’s own command and His own personal action in the Church, continuing to the end of time, that once-for-all-time Sacrifice is continued, extended, re-presented really and truly whenever Holy Mass is celebrated.  By our baptism we sons and daughters of our heavenly Father are enabled to participate actively in that saving action in a way that by far surpasses the sort of relationship claimed by those who have “been saved” by “accepting Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.”   Holy Mass is all about what Christ does for us, not what we do for Him.   If someone asks you if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you can say truly and with perfect confidence something they cannot: “Yes, I accept Jesus a