Two cheers for ICEL!
I was sent this by an ICEL insider:
ICEL was founded in St Peter’s Basilica fifty years ago today. The occasion will be marked by a Solemn Mass at the Altar of the Chair at 5pm, concelebrated by the Bishops of the Commission and their collaborators (Principal Celebrant and Homilist – Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
The Mass will include English Gregorian Chant from the Roman Missal and the Graduale Parvum together with some hymns. The Master of Ceremonies of the Mass will be Mgr Jean-Pierre Kwambamba Masi, one of the papal ceremonieri. The deacons will be from the Pontifical Scots College and the Pontifical Beda College. Seminarians from the Pontifical North American College will serve and the schola will be formed of seminarians of the Venerable English College and the Pontifical Beda College. The organist will be Charles Cole, Assistant Director of Music of the London Oratory. The lector will be Peter Finn, Associate Director of ICEL. The offertory gifts will be brought forward by the staff of the ICEL Secretariat from Washington DC. In addition to concelebrating bishops and priests, Cardinals Pell and Burke will assist in Choir.
The Mass will be followed by a reception at the Venerable English College, venue of the first ever meeting of ICEL. Tomorrow, Friday October 18th, Feast of St Luke, The Holy Father will receive the Bishops of the Commission and the ICEL Editorial Committee and their principal collaborators in an audience in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace.
I say two cheers because the history of ICEL isn’t entirely without its blotches and stains. I think we all remember the bad-ol’-days, decades of:
Father,
you are so lucky that we are here.
You are really big.
Help us to be big too.
These days, however, we are happier (though not ecstatic) with the new, corrected translation, which by degrees of ten conveys better the content of the Latin texts.
For over a week now I have been with a pilgrimage in Italy. We have had a mixture of the older form of Mass and the Novus Ordo in English. I don’t often celebrate Mass using the Novus Ordo, and so the new, corrected translation really is still new to me. I still have to concentrate at certain points not to slip back into the old translation. Also, I can see how, were a priest simply to dash through the orations of Mass, they could come away with a feeling that they are clunky. That said, if you slow down and read for content, they work.
Furthermore, and more importantly, to those who say that it isn’t smooth enough and that it sounds like a translation, I say: GOOD! It is, after all, a translation. We should be using LATIN, according to the spirit of Vatican II as expressed in the documents of Vatican II. Remember the documents? Spirit, by itself, is not only not enough, it is misleading. We need documents.
In the documents we find that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council explicitly mandated (SC 54) that pastors of souls make sure that people can both speak and sing the parts that pertain to them also in Latin. This has not been obeyed. SC 36 says: “. . .the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
So, two cheers for ICEL!
