I have often said that people who don’t like the new, corrected translation of the Roman Missal should protest by refusing to use it and using instead only Latin.
Someone else thinks that it might be good to go to a mosque.
From His Hermeneuticalness comes this.
The mosque – not the best alternative to the new ICEL
Fr Michael Brown at Forest Murmurs has written an amusing riposte to a letter in Northern Cross, the newspaper for the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. In the letter, Mr Loughran said regarding the new ICEL translation:
I promise that I will approach it with all goodwill but I have to say this: if the word CONSUBSTANTIAL is there, I’m off to the mosque.
[…]
Okay… this bloke may have actually gone that one extra stop beyond Redbridge, if you get my drift.
Even if that was a joke, just how nuts is that?
In the Catholic Herald, the UK’s best Catholic weekly, last week and again in this week’s number, I have columns in my series And With Your Spirit which discuss the choice of “consubstantial” in the Profession of Faith. Maybe that will help.
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One word…”Byeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
\\I promise that I will approach it with all goodwill but I have to say this: if the word CONSUBSTANTIAL is there, I’m off to the mosque.\\
We will have to account for EVERY IDLE WORD we utter before God’s Judgement Seat.
I sincerely pray he takes this matter to confession. It’s either here or there, and there will be too late.
“one extra stop beyond Redbridge”. That’d be Gants Hill (or Wanstead), not Barking :)
Same side of town, but a different tube line, entirely.
Point taken, however. Sheer lunacy.
Because looking into why that word was chosen and the history behind it is just too much for modern people, heresy and apostasy are so much better. (NOT!). I mean, it is not like there are web sites to find out this information…..
If many are going to stay away because of “consubstantial,” then might as well make it all Latin and forget any of the translations. Disband the ICEL and problem solved.
What if we just said, ‘try ‘?
Perhaps he is an Islamaphile and is thus confused. Maybe he thinks that consubstantial is actually a reference to Constantinople, which he prefers to call, Istanbul?
Should this get a Sour Grapes award Father?
anyone who does not believe that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father probably should go to a mosque, or a kingdom hall.
These complaints are tedious. I remember being at the home of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Priest after Vespers of Orthodoxy Sunday or thereabouts and his six year old son was chanting “circumscribed according to the flesh, uncircumscribed according to the spirit”. I asked the child what ‘circumscribed according to the flesh’ meant and he gave a reasonable approximation.
Perhaps the man is unaware that if her were “off to the mosque” his translation issue there would easily solved, as everything would be in Arabic! It is my understanding that the belief is that Arabic is the ONLY acceptable language for Muslim holy books and prayers. Translations of ANY KIND are generally unacceptable.
And now that I think about it, they may be on to something there. Too bad we Roman Catholics couldn’t do the same with, oh, say, LATIN!
Carolina: Translations of ANY KIND are generally unacceptable.
Amen!
So Fr. Brown will go from being an Arian to a Muslim?
I find that people are very interested in knowing why they do what they do at Mass Sunday after Sunday. Many don’t know. I think this new translation will be an opportune moment for catechizing people on the meaning of certain Mass parts, gestures, and prayers. They will already be expecting some explanation for the changes. Why not use that as a springboard to teach them about some things which are staying the same, but which they may not fully appreciate?
You can also use it to get rid of some bad habits that have crept in through no fault of their own. One example being: Mimicking gestures of the priest with “The Lord be with you” [hands outstretched in priestly blessing], “And also with YOU”[hands outstretched to return the favor]. People are on the receiving end of this blessing, not the giving end.
Color me cynical, but how is the new translation really going to elevate the typical Mass-goer’s experience when most priests out there ignore the current translation? At the parish that I go to for daily Mass, the priests seem to make up half the words on their own and then add their own extraneous chattiness. For priests that already Say the Black and Do the Red, this will be great, but for those that see Mass as their opportunity to play the daytime talk show host, I’m not sure it will make much of a difference. I wonder in what category this particular cleric falls…
Maybe this soldier of Christ, knowing he will be armed with a more excellent weapon to proclaim and explain the True Faith, is planning to convert those he finds at the mosque.
Any Canadian parish I’ve attended the NO in, the common profession of Faith is the Apostle’s Creed, with the Nicene Creed being used only on certain special Sundays. Is this not the case in other English-Speaking countries? If so, this really shouldn’t be an issue, as only the Nicene Creed uses Consubstantial.
Denying Christ because you don’t like a word used in a Mass translation?? This fellow sounds like a real crackit gaberlunzie.
Oh, Elly, your charity knows no bounds! :-)
Now he knows how many Catholics would have felt when the old ICEL translation was introduced.
It’s interesting that most world religions possess an ancient ‘sacral’ language of their own: Islam has classical Arabic, Judaism has Hebrew, Buddhism has Pali and Sanskrit etc. Amongst Christians, Anglicans have Elizabethean English, the Greeks have Koine Greek and the Slavs have Church Slavonic.
Latin’s a johnny-come-lately language. The early worship of the church took place in Greek and Aramaic.
Father Joseph O’Leary of the Irish Association of Catholic Priests (which, despite its resonant title, represents less than 10% of Irish clergy) is proposing a boycott:
http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/crisis-in-the-liturgy-2-translations/
My fear is that many liberal minded priests will take liberties with the new translations, substituting the old ICEL for the more unpalatable elements of the new. Even today many (most?) priests still refuse to say ‘for us -men- and for our salvation’ in the creed.
Father Brown would rather have rules which cover women up completely except for their faces and hands than use a word like “consubstantial?” He must really love chapel veils, then.
Will D. said: The early worship of the church took place in Greek and Aramaic.
However, the liturgical texts of the Latin Rite are written in Latin, not Greek or Aramaic. It is irrelevant in this context what languages were used in liturgy during earliest times. We’re talking about the translation of the “Roman” Missal, not the “Constantinopolitan” or “Antiochene” Missal.
What IS it with these people?
Perhaps they think “splitting of the uncleft” would be preferable to “nuclear fission”.
Just to clarify things for a few of the commenters here, it’s not Fr. Michael Brown who
promises to flee the word ‘consubstantial’. Fr. Brown reports on his blog that a local
layman, a Mr. Gerry Loughran, has written a letter to the diocesan newspaper in which
Mr. Loughran has stated his willingness, at the sound of that hated word, to leave Rome
for the nearest mosque.
I did like the part of Fr. Brown’s response where he offered Mr. Loughran the use of
several Arabic language textbooks, so that in future he could enjoy ‘full and active
participation’ at his new digs.
If I hear one more priest utter the words “the people aren’t going to understand”, as if we, the laity, are all uneducated morons and the clergy are the only people capable of comprehending “big” words, I’m going to let him have it (verbally, that is).
What possesses some clergy, I wonder, to imagine that they are so much better educated than non-clergy? Priests who say such things, however, not only imply that they are better educated, but that the rest of us are actually uneducable dimwits to whom new vocabulary words should not even be introduced, since only clergy are capable of understanding them.
Of course, if big words vex a clergyman enough that he feels the need to convert to Islam, perhaps he should. An intellect incapable of vaulting “consubstantial” is in no position to teach his fellow Christians (not that the Muslims will benefit, either).
I received my own dictionary when I was five years old. Thereafter, for my elementary school years, whenever I went to mum for the definition of a word, she would first ask me if I had looked it up before offering an explanation. If I hadn’t made the effort to look up a word, she would direct me to do so. If, after looking it up I still had questions concerning the word, then she would entertain any follow up request for clarification. I soon learned self motivation and have ever since enjoyed the fruit of mum’s lesson.
We kids were taught that possessing a robust vocabulary gives one the power to communicate in an intelligent manner. By contrast, folk like the man in question are making themselves stupid and appear content to remain stupid. That so many so-called intelligent people (some with college degrees, no less!) are content with being lazy and closed-minded by refusing to use their God-given brains is beyond me. They would have us all join them in their willful ignorance. Stupidity, like misery, loves company. Mr Loughran, and those of his ilk, will only be happy when the world around him is more stupid than he so that he, and they, can feel superior. Let’s not allow ourselves to be conned by pseudo-intellectuals who demand that we conform to their low view of learners and education.
I actually understand “consubstantial” better than “one in being.” Latin is noted for the precision of its terminology. The first time I head the latter, I said to myself “what does THAT mean?”
Any Canadian parish I’ve attended the NO in, the common profession of Faith is the Apostle’s Creed, with the Nicene Creed being used only on certain special Sundays.
In attending Mass at many, many Catholic parishes in the southern U.S., I’ve never heard the genuine Nicene Creed altered, substituted for (e.g. by the Apostle’s Creed), or omitted when called for. I’ve heard of these Canadian credal hijinks before, but are they common anywhere else?
According to Fr. Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, “one in being” is fraught with heresy, once you delve into the true meaning of the phrase. I had, by the grace of God, the opportunity to break bread w/Fr. Jeremy at Sant’ Anselmo during Holy Week. He is involved in the whole process, and he said someone brought up the whole consubstantial issue. He said that someone asked “who knows what consubstantial means?” He retorted with “who knows what one in being means?” and went into how it’s really heretical to say the latter.
Charles said: So Fr. Brown will go from being an Arian to a Muslim?
I see a number of comments here that seem to think those offensive words belong to Fr. Brown. Please click the link in Father Z’s post and read Fr. Brown’s full post. he is quoting someone else.
I checked out the new Exsultet – it has 2 ‘exsult’ in the first line and it is the first word. Not very poetic. And not as musical as Rejoice!
If clergy think we won’t understand what consubstantial means, I’d like to point out that I used the word while explaining the trinity to my 17 year-old evangical prostestant friend, and even she understood the use of it.