ARTICLES
July/August 2006 ARTICLES
Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Dew Still Exists!
New Translation Will Teach Worshippers to "Speak Bible"
BY DON GUERANGER
"Of course, if you try to carry a cup of coffee across a room too quickly, much of the contents may spill," said the Right Rev. Arthur Roche, bishop of Leeds, England. "This time, we have tried to keep the coffee in the cup."
Bishop Roche is chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, and it was in that capacity that he, on June 15, addressed the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at their general meeting at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. One might say that Bishop Roche came to Los Angeles to give a sales pitch for a new translation of the rite of the Mass that the International Commission has spent several years working on. By "coffee," the bishop referred to what he called "the richness of Eucharistic theology," which, he said, the rite of the Mass in Latin contains. The task of the translators of the new English Mass was to keep this richness without any loss.
Whether Bishop Roche's speech (in which he called on the U.S. bishops to take the lead in approving the new English translation) or other considerations prevailed, on June 15 the bishops voted 173-29 to approve the new translation, though they rejected about 60 of the proposed changes, including replacing "one in being with the Father" in the creed with "consubstantial with the Father." Still, even Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pennsylvania, chairman of the bishops' liturgy committee and a longtime opponent of the new translation (he reiterated his criticisms at this year's Los Angeles archdiocese Religious Education Congress), spoke well of it after the vote, according to CNN. The new translation, he said, "will take some adapting, but it is not earth-shattering when you think of the changes we went through 40 years ago." Though, said Trautman, "we all recognize that our priests are overburdened now and stretched thin ... we do believe ... that this is important for the worship life of the Church. These texts are presenting a new richness that we haven't seen in the past so that will have to be the driving force."
In his address to the bishops, Bishop Roche acknowledged that when he became chairman of the International Commission four years ago, the new translation, called for by the Holy See's 2001 document, Liturgiam Authenticam, seemed "a reasonably straight-forward task." But instead, he said, it became a "forum for such controversy. What a shame it would be," continued Roche, "if the most important tool we have for formation and worship was reduced to politics, as if the highest or only form of discourse we can manage in the Church (or society) is political discourse."
An English Mass translation, faithful to the original Latin and rich with Eucharistic theology, said Roche, is important precisely because English may play in various parts of the world the role Latin once played as the preserver and transmitter of the Faith. Even in countries where "English is not much spoken," said the bishop, "the English version of liturgical texts plays an important function, because it is used as a guide to translating the Latin." He mentioned not only parts of Africa and Asia but even Norway, where "the translators rely heavily on the English version."
Bishop Roche did not ignore the fact that, in some circles, there has been resistance to the new translation and, thus, to Liturgiam authenticam, which inspired it. Acknowledging that Comme le prévoit, a 1969 document of the Holy See's Consilium commission, which revised the Roman Rite, called for a different principle of translation than Liturgiam authenticam does, Roche pointed out the documents have a different "status." "The earlier document," he said, "was issued by the Consilium, the latter by" the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and thus is more authoritative. Further, "it is to be remembered," said Roche, "that Liturgiam authenticam is a child of Pope John Paul II's document Vigesimus quintus annus, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sacrosanctum concilium [the liturgy constitution of Vatican II], which called for an opportune stock-taking, not least in the area of faithfulness in translation."
Comme le prévoit and Liturgiam authenticam, said Bishop Roche, establish different translation methodologies. The former embraces "dynamic equivalence," which, said Roche, "is achieved when a translator detaches the 'content' of an utterance from the 'form' in which it is expressed." Liturgiam authenticam, however, calls for "formal equivalence," a faithful, not slavish, translation of the original Latin.
For example, the old translation of the Mass renders a solis ortu usque ad occasum oblatio munda offeratur nomini tuo in the Third Eucharist prayer as "so that from east to west a perfect offering made be made to the glory of your name." The new translation, however, renders "from east to west" as "from the rising of the sun to its setting," a faithful translation of the Latin. And a better one all around, said Bishop Roche. "The proponents of dynamic equivalence tell us," he said, "that from east to west conveys the same information as from the rising of the sun to its setting, which we now propose. And so it does, in the dry language of the cartographer. But the meaning of this phrase is richer: it has a temporal dimension as well as a spatial one." Not only that, but, it echoes Sacred Scripture, as in Malachi 1:11: "see, from the rising of the sun to its setting all the nations revere my Name and everywhere incense is offered to my Name as well as a pure offering." The new translation, said Roche, is "a richer and more evocative version, bringing to the mind of the worshipper the beauties of the sunrise and sunset and the closeness of these texts to Sacred Scripture."
Another example is where the Fourth Eucharistic prayer currently says, "he took the cup filled with wine," while the new translation uses the phrase, the "fruit of the vine." "Some argue," said Bishop Roche, "that the fruit of the vine means the same as the single word wine, and that the simpler expression should be preferred. But we hear the words the fruit of the vine on the lips of the Lord himself in all three synoptic Gospels -- which I would consider as being more than enough reason to respect their form. Moreover, though the two expressions refer to the same substance, they do so in an entirely different way. The difference between the single word and the richer phrase is the difference between reading the label on the bottle and actually enjoying a glass-full of the wine itself. Furthermore this phrase has a powerful salvific resonance because of the symbolic value accorded to the vine plant and the vineyard in scripture, as recalled by Jesus' elaboration in John 15 of the image of Himself as the true vine, His Father as the vinedresser, and ourselves as the branches." More than "wine," "fruit of the vine," said Roche, "upon each hearing, encourages us in our imaginations to see the particular Eucharistic event as part of the unfolding of God's universal plan within history to rescue us from the destruction and chaos occasioned by our sinfulness and bring us into communion with Himself and with each other in Christ."
Roche drew attention to the translators' insertion of the word "dew" in the Second Eucharistic prayer -- a matter that troubled Bishop Trautman at this year's Religious Education Congress. In the Latin, the prayer reads, haec ergo dona, quaesumus, Spiritus tui rore sanctifica..., which the new translation faithfully renders as "therefore, make holy these gifts, we pray, by the dew of the Spirit...." The current translation reads, "let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy...." In April, Bishop Trautman suggested to Congress attendees that the use of "dew" would evoke images of defecation for modern listeners. He complained that "in the proposed translation of the sacramentary, we meet words and expressions that many would consider not in the speech of the mainstream assembly" -- such as "consubstantial with the Father" in the Creed, as well as "by the Holy Spirit, He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary."
As if addressing Trautman's "dew" concern, Bishop Roche noted to the bishops, "it has been objected that this translation 'does not resonate or communicate with contemporary Christians.' But surely, dew still exists. I noticed an advert on the street yesterday for a drink called Mountain Dew! Dew has a unique set of natural and scriptural associations: it speaks of freshness, new beginning, water (and hence life), beauty, descent from above (and hence divine blessing), and manna (Exodus 16:13-14) (and hence Eucharist). It still appears on the ground in the morning as it did in the time of Moses on the journey through the desert." And while admitting "it is true that in some pronunciations, dew can be confused with the word for a Hebrew person," Roche said he was "unaware of any representations from the Anti-defamation League objecting to the frequent use of the expression 'dew point' in the weather forecast!" He then laid out numerous citations from Holy Scripture that use "dew" -- and, what's more, from the contemporary New American Bible translation.
As for another contested point -- the translation of et cum spiritu tuo as "and with your spirit" instead of the current, "and also with you" -- Bishop Roche said, "this translation cannot be understood without reference to St Paul, who will often address a person, for example Timothy, by referring to your spirit rather than simply to you." This is significant because St. Paul "is addressing someone close to God who has God's spirit. So when we reply 'and with your spirit,' we are indicating that we are part of a spiritual community, it is God's spirit that has gathered us together." Furthermore, said Roche, "scriptural catechesis is central to liturgical catechesis. It was said of St. Bernard that he knew the Sacred Scriptures so well that his language was biblical -- he began to, as our young people would say today, 'speak bible.' My point is that in using a translation that is more faithful to Sacred Scripture we are teaching ourselves and our people to speak bible! Lex orandi, lex credendi." ["The rule of praying is the rule of believing."]
According to Bishop Roche, the current translation was never meant to be permanent. Noting the "difference in richness" between the English and Spanish translations of the Mass, Roche said the bishops of the International Commission right after Vatican II recognized that the English translation the commission had come up with was "far from perfect" and "that a new revision would be needed. There was an urgent feeling in the early 1970s that the liturgy should be made available to the people as soon as possible, and the work was rushed. The revisiting of this was delayed for practical reasons, but also for ideological ones that caused many bishops grave concern, and that is sometimes forgotten. The chief preoccupation in many minds was, of course, that the liturgy be brought closer to the people. This aim could, and sometimes did, obscure the other aim, which was to preserve and transmit our inherited liturgical tradition and bring our people closer to that."
In other words, in moving too quickly, the International Commission spilt a lot of coffee.