From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
I have been doing research however to no avail. What is the official book and english translation used for blessing after Vatican 2 prior to the release of Book of Blessing?
The book of blessings remained the Rituale Romanum, which is in Latin.
The new Book of Blessings is appalling and should not be used for anything except perhaps as a tire block on a slope or occasional fire-starter. I will never use it.
We are confident that, when the priest blesses, God blesses in the person of the priest. We are confident that, when the priest exorcises, God exorcises. We are confident that when the priest consecrates items or places or persons, God acts in the priest to constitute them as blessed or consecrated, to tear from from the grip of the Prince of this world and set them apart for the King and the advance His Kingdom.
The efficacy of the blessings depends ultimately on God, who desires what is good for us.
However, we do our best to bless and consecrate through outward signs, the gestures and words of, especially, the priest who is alter Christus.
If our blessings are not magic, neither are they nothing. Gestures and words count. Latin makes a difference, as exorcists will confirm. Moreover, the Rituale Romanum, in the edition that was in force at the time of Vatican II and after explicitly states that if Latin is not used the blessing is void. I am not making that up.
The Rituale Romanum, Title 8, Chapter 1 gives the general rules for blessings. These are also presented in an English translation of the Rituale by Weller (vol. 3, pp. 2-5).
N. 2 states:
“Benedictiones sive constitutivae sive invocativae invalidae sunt, si adhibita non fuerit formula ab Ecclesia praescripta.
Both constitutive and invocative blessings are invalid if the form prescribed by the Church is not used.”
Weller’s English translations were never approved for use, even in that interim time after the Council when more English could be used. The translations are for reference, not use. The LATIN is approved for use.
The apparent meaning of that, read as it is, is that if priests are using the Weller translation to bless things, Holy Water, etc., they aren’t blessing. At the end, you have salty water.
HIS SCRIPTIS…
- We cannot limit God.
- We don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
- People are not bound to do the impossible.
That said…
- God gives us strong guidance in how to worship Him in a way that pleases Him and we see the fruits.
- If there is a way to do things better, we should strive to perfect them.
- People can improve themselves and, for example, learn Latin.
If a priest doesn’t use Latin and instead uses the English translation is something blessed or not?
All I know is that I will always use Latin when I bless holy water. I will always use Latin to bless objects. I will always use Latin for the important bits, such as forms of sacraments and exorcisms.
I am never going to leave anyone with the slightest whisp of a doubt about what just happened. When you come to me for blessings or sacramentals or sacraments, I owe that to you. It is my duty to make sure that you have no doubt as to what happened. Latin always resolves that and the vernacular can resolve that.
Latin, for me, is now second nature. It isn’t for a lot of priests.
These are troubling times.
When the People of Israel broke covenant after covenant with God, God eventually imposed Law on them which reflected not just their state of being chosen by Him, but reflected also their wickedness. This is why, for example, God allowed for divorce, which, as Christ says, was not so before.
It seems to me that the Church is so messed up right now, and our Catholic identity is so violated and wounded and scrambled, that latitude has to be provided, because Deus providebit.
How do I mean this?
Take analogy of our sacred liturgical worship as, now, having been forced onto a continuum of Catholic identity, ranging from clueless to well-informed and dedicated.
Using Paul’s image of the newly converted being like children who can only take milk, not ready for solid food, in these our times we have to work within reality, not fantasy.
The hic et nunc has to be considered. We have priests of the Latin Church, the Roman Rite, who have no idea about how to celebrate in their Church’s Rites and don’t know Latin.
What does that mean for our identity?
This ignorance was purposeful on the part of those who both wrote and then warped what was written for the reform of the liturgy. This was systematically done by those in charge of priestly formation. They destroyed Catholic identity guttatim. Drop by drop. They undermined priesthood, brick from brick.
The result, hic et nunc, is what it is, and it is not what it isn’t. That sounds tautological, I know, but we have to sober ourselves with this smelling salt and get the cobwebs out of our heads.
So, today, if a well-meaning priest, who through no fault of his own, blesses something using the English translation in Well, does he bless or not?
Here are the factors I put into the scales of my mind.
- God loves us and wants us to have blessed things.
- The Church without doubt said that the approved text, meaning Latin, has to be used.
- God knows that 99% of priests don’t know Latin because the Church has, manifestly contrary to the law, cheated them out of that critical aspect of their formation and identity.
- God is not limited by the Church’s positive law concerning blessings.
- Priests of the Roman Catholic Church ought to pray like Roman Catholic priests.
- The Rituale Romanum itself states that it is a starting point, a reference point for the development of local rituals.
- It is extremely important to maintain the categories of constitutive and invocative blessings against modernist encroachment and the campaign against them.
- We are our rites!
- The wider world is affected by what we do regarding sacred objects, places and persons. Getting it right is more important than our comfort zone.
Putting all of that into the mental hopper and letting it macerate, when a priest blesses (constitutive) using some other form than what is in the book, I am not sure what happens. I am inclined to think that, God being merciful, something happens. If, for example, someone were to walk up to me and ask me to bless the Rosary she was holding out, and if I were to make the sign of the Cross over it while saying something like, Benedictus benedicat (which I got from my old mentor the holy and late, great Card. Mayer), I am inclined to think that the Rosary is blessed.
You will object, why shouldn’t I have just memorized the Latin prayer for the blessing of a Rosary?
We have to fight to recover these things and use them properly. In the meantime, we have to be smart and flexible.
Allow me to go back to my food analogy for liturgy. This might seem a little insulting but it is just intended to make a point about the continuum we are on.
In 99% of a man’s day and activities, it is beneath his dignity to scrunch up his face and make airplane noises while moving a spoon around with his hand. People would think he was nuts. OR… if he is sitting in front of the high-chair of his little son, who can only eat goop and must sometimes be convinced to eat it, then that man is not doing anything beneath his dignity. On the contrary, he is performing a sacrificial act of love for his child. He sacrifices his dignity – becoming more dignified yet – for the sake of his boy’s eating something that will help him to grow out of the need to eat that sort of thing in that sort of way. He helps his boy move up the food and eating continuum to more complicated foods eaten in a more human way. Infants eat in the way that infants eat, not in the way that adults eat. To force an infant to eat steak and cabernet is abuse, not love.
This is our situation with a large number of those who miraculously still self-identify as Catholic. Some can take the solid food of the Vetus Ordo, with its greater challenge and deeper apophatic approach to an encounter with mystery. Some are still pretty much bound up in the emphasis on the immanent in the Novus Ordo. Some are ready to make a move quickly and others need more time. Some are ready for steak and cabernet and others still need goop, or perhaps SpaghettiOs if they are into the Novus Ordo with some traditional elements. Eventually, they can handle a slice of bologna and maybe stab at it with a fork that they have to hold in various ways while they learn and their dexterity improves. You get the idea. Eventually, it is china, linens, crystal, sharp knives and bistecca alla fiorentina with a bottle of Tignanello.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that the toddler with Spaghetti O’s is bad because he can’t handle spaghetti all’arrabbiata. Do not make the mistake of thinking that mom and dad who give their toddler SpaghettiOs are bad. They would be bad if, once junior is grown and able to take more and better, they keep him eating pureed carrots in a special chair. They would be infantalizing him, which would be abuse of their child and beneath their own dignity as parents.
Of course if the parents had been kept in an infantile state themselves, they wouldn’t know any better.
Keeping people down liturgically is just plain wrong.
However, if priests and bishops don’t have a clue themselves… what to do? Nemo dat quod non habet. No one gives what he doesn’t have. Priests and bishops are included in this. Some priests are at the level of the boy in the high chair when it comes to liturgical identity. Remember: we are our rites! Alas, they listen to the “experts” who did the infantalization in the first place and the closed circles just grinds on and on.
To move this into the plain of the Church’s teaching on morals, while we acknowledge that some people are in sinful situations, we don’t leave them in sinful situations. Understanding that movement and improvement takes time, we don’t just excuse what they are doing because, after all, the ideals we have been presented are just too hard for some people. No. We are our rites and our rites are doctrine. With the help of authority and of grace, we must be working toward the ideal, even if it is painful.
This is true for our moral lives and also our sacred liturgical worship, by which we individually and collectively fulfill the virtue of Religion.
Our Catholic identity is a mess. There are correctives and remedies. But the therapy will have its painful moments. But they MUST be undertaken.
I’ve had injuries that required painful therapeutic exercises. Oh, how I didn’t want to do them. But I wanted recovery enough so that I was willing to deal with the discomfort. In the long run, it paid off. I never want to have that pain again, but it worked.
I am reminded of the Lord’s words in John 16, using the image of painful child-birth:
21 When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. 24 Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
We have to get through this dark time together, in solidarity, with joy, hopeful determination and elbow grease.
We must renew and restore our sacred liturgical worship to have a renewal and restoration of Holy Church and society. Hence, there will always be some who will try to destroy the traditional Roman Rite.
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This, excuse the label if it is offensive, essentially points out that many of us are spiritually retarded. Most of my confrères are very much so and it that tends to force me to keep my mouth shut because they often seem very happy and the recipients of more grace than I have. So as I struggle to advance, unhappy with the order of things, many of them are doing just fine—like children, which the Gospel tells us to become like. The struggle to advance spiritually in the Novus Ordo desert, often alone, is very real and seemingly Quixotic. Maybe God is hiding his people in plain sight as my friends flex their way out of the wind storms, waiting on a return to a true Catholic Faith. As for myself, I will keep tilting and only the Lord knows why.
Wonderfully, clearly, and charitably put. Thank you!
The formula “Benedictus benedicat, per Christum Dominum Nostrum, Amen” is used as grace before dinner by the King’s Inns in Dublin; a friend who is a barrister told me about it. My daughters have now learned it as an emergency grace for that embarrassing moment when you have started to eat without having said grace first. They have also started to add ” and God bless all the hamsters” afterward, in the belief that a Catholic embarrassed in just that way looks like a hamster with stuffed cheeks!
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The idea that a blessing can be null and void if the exact correct words are not used irks me. Does a priest have the power to bless by his ontological nature as priest, or not? Should not words which adequately signify the action, i.e. *Benedictus benedicat* be sufficient?
[Read the whole post.]
“The apparent meaning of that, read as it is, is that if priests are using the Weller translation to bless things, Holy Water, etc., they aren’t blessing. At the end, you have salty water.”
Sorry, but this is the sort of statement that makes me want to depart from Traditionalism in the Church.
[Okay. See ya’, if that’s all it takes. However, you might try, before you head for the door, reading the rest of my post.]
The book of blessings is truly like reading a horror novel. It’s actually quite interesting getting into the mind of the authors and walking through some of their envisioned scenarios. There’s a number of blessings that may be delegated to lay people. For example blessing a rosary cannot be delegated to a lay person, but blessing a newly built airport can be. It’s fascinating trying to climb into the head of these authors. They envisioned a world where there might not be a priest or bishop or even a deacon to delegate blessing an airport, so we should let a lay person do it. However at the same time we won’t relinquish the authority to bless a rosary… It must have been an absolutely wild time.
I think we should be careful about disparaging the blessing of water in the vernacular. [Yes, I think “we” should be. I think “we” should also be careful about respecting the what the Rituale Romanum says.]
There is a difference between efficaciousness and validity. [Ummm… if something is not valid, how efficacious is it? If there is doubt about its validity, how meritorious is it to use it? In the case of elements for the Eucharist, the moralists agreed that a priest sins seriously if he doubts the validity of matter of the host or wine and uses it anyway.]
Water blessed in a Trinitarian manner is blessed water. HOWEVER,
As Fr. Ripperger has pointed out, there are various classes of blessed water (water blessed during Easter Vigil, water blessed by a bishop for certain rites). [Fr. Z has explained this many times on the blog.]
Blessed v Exorcised water.
They are not all the same.
It isn’t just the lingua franca though. It’s the actual verbiage that influences efficaciousness and utility. [Ummmm….]
The exorcism of water comes from the pre Conciliar rites. Whether said in English or Latin, exorcised water is exorcised water. [Oh yeah? In the rites in force in 1962 exorcisms had to be done in Latin or they were invalid. If invalid, how efficacious?]
I run into this with Catholics,especially older Catholics who are Novus Ordo. They say, Oh I don’t understand Latin. I tell them the missal has Latin on one page and english on the other, or french or italian etc. I have learned Latin over the years from my missal, and believe me I am no scholar. I have a Son who is a Cum Laude Latin Scholar thanks to the teaching of the good Brothers and Sisters who taught him.
The Law is in Latin, Medical terms are in Latin, Horticultural terms in Latin, just to name a few.
It would be handy if all of Philip T. Weller’s translations were available online for reference, though not use – but they do not seem to be.
Going to in the Internet Archive (where Weller’s 1950 Volume II is available among “Texts to Borrow”) I met with Paul Griffiths’ The Sacristy Manual: Containing the portions of the Roman Ritual most frequently used in parish church functions (1905) with some parts (as Not observes above of so many editions of the Missal) in translation – here, variously, English, French, and German!
Well written piece, as evidenced by some of the reaction.
I know too many otherwise-solid priests who believe the traditional things while doing the modern things. The go-along-to-get-along thing really needs to change, and simply using the Roman Ritual, in Latin, is not that heavy of a lift. Print out a good translation if you are concerned about how the faithful will react and use the opportunity as a teachable moment.
You provide a particularly rich teaching, Father. Thank you.
Weller’s translations were approved for liturgical use in 1964 [1964] (National Conference of Bishops of the United States, decree, April 2, 1964). [1964] The Consilium granted confirmatio on May 1 of that same year in a decree signed by Cardinal Lercaro (Prot. N. 622/64). [1964]These decrees can be found in the 1964 edition of the Collectio Rituum (Catholic Book Publishing Co.). See also Notitiae 1 (1965), 82.
[1964. And what was the year of the books approved for use under the “indults” and under Summorum Pontificum? 1962. 1964 approval does not apply.]
That is a separate consideration. I was only responding to the statement that “Weller’s English translations were never approved for use, even in that interim time after the Council when more English could be used.”
As a Roman priest, I sometimes find it tempting to use the approved Ordinariate blessings, which tend to be translations from the old Ritual, with thee’s and thou’s. I presume that would be valid but illicit.
I don’t see why on earth you would need to understand the words of the blessing in order to make it effective. I mean, we understand that it’s a blessing.
An analogy to a trade, perhaps. People pay me to play with electricity. My clients don’t usually understand what I’m doing very well (thus the willingness to pay). And hey, sometimes I don’t really know what’s going on… sometimes I figure it out by investigating, and sometimes I do something that fixes the problem, either by accident or by consulting someone, don’t really understand the exact causal mechanism, and look like some sort of electro-wizard. But I fixed the problem. It’s all good.
As I see it, priest actually do real things, and aren’t just ‘sentiment coordinators.’ It’s about the doing, not the feeling. Perhaps I’m just a big dummy, trapped in a “medieval” piety… In which case, I’m going to stay there.
A local priest recently visited my new home and blessed it using the Book of Blessings. He sprinkled holy water throughout the house. He’s a priest, he intended to bless…. I would like to think my house is blessed.
Perhaps I could ask his roommate (a Melkite priest lives in the local rectory) to come by… but I can only imagine the Melkite Byzantine house blessing would last 12-15 hours and be sung in a combination of Greek and Arabic. ;)
There was a woman, who was classically trained as a singer, and joined an order of nuns (around the time of the 1960s, the exact year yours truly has forgotten). This novice lived through the liturgical turmoil of the Roman Church on the frontlines, as it were. Later, she left the order of nuns before final vows (because reasons), then met a man, then got married, then raised a happy Catholic family in the sunshine of the “new springtime” of the church.
She later on, when one of her sons expressed an interest in the traditions of the church, was both amazed and vexed. She was both troubled that maybe he was desending into heresy but also deeper into Catholicism. She at one and the same time decried his love of Latin for being snobbish, aloof and out of touch, and yet sang out on occasion the Regina Caeli beautifully. She wondered why her son did not know that tune off by heart, and yet did not want Latin in the house.
She regretted the loss of tradition bitterly and at the same time bitterly did not want to bring it back.
An entire generation of Catholics, those who did not just fall away from the Church, must have had that split mental gymnastics of that wonderful woman.
The food analogy is excellent. I was raised on SpaghettiOs . . . then in midlife I tried, quite by accident, a bit of filet mignon. It was nice, but I still loved my SpaghettiOs. I ate both alternately.
Soon the filet mignon was tasting better and better, and the SpaghettiOs thinner and thinner. I was eating filet 75% and SpaghettiOs 25%, and that 25% only due to convenience (SpaghettiOs were widely available, but I had to take pains to get the filet).
Then bad men came and said, “You are ONLY allowed SpaghettiOs – give up that filet!”, and I truly realized that I was getting much better nourishment in the filet. The bad men fully opened my eyes (even bad men have a part in the divine plan). Now it’s 100% filet and 0% SpaghettiOs.
Well written Father. As laity I feel betrayed and impoverished by church men who are either too lazy or uneducated that they can’t/won’t bless things properly. I carefully keep blessed salt and bottles of Holy water done by the FSSP and the SSPX. It would be funny if it weren’t so dire.
How about some priests nowadays who use “Rituale Parvum” book to bless in english? Haven’t really looked through the book but it seems like it’s a combination between rituale romanum+book of blessing
[Alas, I don’t have one of those. So I don’t know if the prayers are from the older Rituale Romanum or the newer De Benedictionibus (Book of Blessings).]