This book records the proceedings of a conference held by the St Colman's Society for Catholic Liturgy in July 2011, a few months before a new official English translation of the Missale Romanum came into public use. Naturally, the invited prelates, two cardinals and a bishop, were concerned to recommend the new version and avert objections to it. Other contributors offer justification for its style, which is more formal than that of the previous ICEL version, in use since 1974. Only one contributor, Vincent Twomey, sounds a dissenting note, not disguising his dislike of ‘the somewhat awkward syntax of the new translation’.
The contributions on language unfortunately perpetuate the common misapprehension that the 1974 translation was guided by the principle of ‘dynamic equivalence’ devised by Eugene Nida, according to which translators should transmit the content of a text while changing its form. Nida was a fine linguistician, and would never have countenanced so facile a distinction between form and content. He in fact taught that it was the effect of a text on its original audience that should be reproduced. Nida publicly regretted the misunderstanding and misuse to which his work had been subjected. One can hardly doubt that Catholic liturgical translators were prominent among those he had in mind. The 2010 Missal translation, since it aims at a sacral style that will inspire its users, is in fact more ‘dynamically equivalent’ to the Latin original than was its predecessor. Poor Nida, though often mentioned, finds no place in the book's index. But then, nor does the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, which did most of the work. The Vox Clara Committee, largely responsible for the final version, is rewarded with several mentions.
Lauren Pristas goes behind the English to investigate the revision of the Latin orations of Paschal Time that was made for the 1970 Missal. Here, too, all was not well, since there seems to have been no controlling idea behind what was done. Dr Pristas has made this area of study her own over the last decade. Her conclusions echo Pope Benedict's own reservations about the post-conciliar liturgical reform.
This book might well have been called ‘Benedict XVI and the Roman Missals’, since it was Pope Ratzinger who initiated the co-existence of two forms of the Roman Rite with his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum. Though some have found this document shocking, it merely re-established the pre-conciliar situation when Dominicans, Carthusians and others had their own ways of celebrating Mass, preserving distinctive traditions and emphases within the Roman Rite, including its Calendar.
The Missale Romanum is a child of the age of printing. Only after Gutenberg was it possible for popes or their collaborators to maintain so tight a control over liturgical texts. Cassian Folsom traces the evolution of the Missale Romanum from the invention of printing on: all the initiatives that he records come from Bishops of Rome. Paul Gunter explores the more diverse situation of the manuscript era, during most of which there was no one book that contained everything needed for the celebration of Mass – different participants had their own books.
The separation of the Lectionary from the Sacramentary in 1970 returned to an earlier situation, but a contrary trend was also at work, as is apparent in a fascinating contribution by Sven Leo Conrad. He shows how a modern collectivist tendency influenced the revision of the opening rites of Mass. From the earliest records, such as the Ordo Romanus Primus, it is clear that more than one thing would happen at a time – the priest would pray silently while the choir would sing, for instance. However, the practice also grew of the priest repeating what the choir sang, but quietly, with the aid of his Missale Romanum. The 1970 remodelling further diminished the distinction of roles by abolishing the celebrant's mumblings, and making him do what everybody else was doing. This had a disastrous effect on the Church's musical heritage, obliging the celebrant to stand still and silent for minutes on end while the choir executed a polyphonic or baroque Mass-setting. The alternative was to abandon that heritage entirely, as happened in many places. William Mahrt's contribution to this book describes that process, offering advice and justification for reversing it. His article can serve as a useful introduction to his much fuller treatment in The Musical Shape of the Liturgy (2012).
The long process of collectivisation that this book records led also to the rise in popularity of the word ‘liturgy’, which was barely used of the Western Christian rites before the twentieth century. Previously, each participant was understood to have a distinct liturgy, like Zacharias in Luke 1:23 or Christ himself in Hebrews 8:6. Now we are all encouraged to take part in the one ‘liturgy’, and pressure arises against any distinction of roles, for instance between clergy and laity or between men and women.
Any liturgical book is only a rough guide to what actually happens in church. Vernacularisation has made it much easier for celebrants to change the text, and many of them do, not only priests but bishops and cardinals, sometimes well, often badly. Now that we have electronic text to supplement the printed page, and perhaps eventually to supplant it, the era of Wikiliturgy has begun. Already, in the final stages of preparation of the new official translation, many variant texts were circulating on the web. Electronic communication could be used to share ideas that raise the standard of liturgical performance.
Pope Ratzinger has often insisted that it is a mistake to entrust the liturgy to a few powerful hands. It needs to grow slowly and naturally. Perhaps the internet is beginning to provide a soil for it to do so.
