16-year-old Latin whiz finds new liturgy language lacking

[Matilda]

An obviously brilliant 16 year old boy from Illinois has summed up perfectly what is wrong with the new Mass translation - not just in the translation itself, but in the approach to it.

"Erik Baker is a 16-year-old high school student who has been studying Latin since 6th grade. Now as a senior at Evanston Township High School near Chicago, he has completed all the Latin classes available at his school, including the Advanced Placement courses. He is pursuing his ongoing interest through Latin classes at nearby Northwestern University.

Erik has been raised as a Catholic and attends Mass with his family at the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern. Recently, when materials were distributed explaining the new liturgical changes based on the original Latin text, he studied them with special interest.

"When I looked at the new version, I had a sort of knee-jerk reaction," Erik said. "What I saw didn't sit well with me. Yeah, the changes are more literal and faithful to the Latin, but is that desirable? Much of the phrasing and the changes seemed kind of ridiculous."

So he did an analysis and wrote a brief essay, not for class, but just to get his reaction down on paper and out of his system. He said he hadn't read any reviews of the translation before he produced his version. A friend of the family suggested NCR readers might be interested in Erik's critique."

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/16-year-old-latin-whiz-finds-new-liturgy-language-lacking


His opinions are in line with those of our priests; as I mentioned in another thread, we no longer say the Confiteor, because nobody wants to go back to the breast-beating and the grovelling implicit both in the Latin and in the new/old translation. Neither do we say the Nicene Creed, because of the word "consubstantial", which our priests consider outdated.

It's worth noting that the man who headed the International Commission on English in the Liturgy is none other than Sydney's Cardinal George Pell, a man who was trained in Rome and worked alongside Cardinal Ratzinger in the office of the Inquisition (I use that term because while the name might have changed, the mindset hasn't). He is a deeply conservative man, who is a climate change denier and who supported the Iraq war, and who will always follow the letter of church law. He is not a classicist, and has demonstrated that he holds no brief for the instructions of Vatican II that the Mass be made more accessible to parishioners. You wouldn't expect him to display any sensitivity or imagination in regard to language or how it is received. I wouldn't doubt that he was apppointed to head the Commission because he would do exactly what Rome wanted.

[rug]

1. That's a fascinating article.

[Matilda]

2. Last Sunday, the parish priest was saying the Mass at 10.30,

and when he came to the Collect, he stopped. He told us that prior to the "new" translation, there was an alternate Collect provided, which priests could choose to say. That has now been eliminated, and Fr. Tony said that it was a shame, because it was very beautiful.

"So today" he said, "we're going back to the old one".

The "new" translation doesn't officially begin until Advent, so he's not breaking any rules. I wonder whether he'll continue to use it in a few weeks' time? I do think, though, that he's picking up on the general discontent with the changes. It may be that there was somebody up the back, scribbling a note to the Cardinal, but most of the congregation would support him.