The final report of the October 2023 session of the synod referred to "the widely reported need to make liturgical language more accessible to the faithful and more embodied in the diversity of cultures."

The English-speaking church has an easy response to this request: the 1998 translation of the Roman missal done by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, known as ICEL.

Its work was rejected by the man who would become Benedict XVI, but the time has come to put it forward again.

Implementing liturgical translations has often been controversial, both recently and in the long ago past.

The first schism in Rome occurred early in the third century after Pope Callistus I translated the liturgy from Greek into vulgar Latin — the informal, popular version of the language at the time — so that the common people could better understand the celebration of the Eucharist.

Hippolytus, the first antipope and author of Eucharistic Prayer II, led a revolt to keep the Greek liturgy. The dispute became so bitter and violent that pagan soldiers arrested both men and sent them to the tin mines of Sardinia.

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Catholic Church began translating liturgical texts from Latin into contemporary languages for the same reasons Callistus put the liturgy into Latin: so that people could participate more fully and actively in the liturgy.

The translations were supposed to be made by episcopal conferences and were subject to final approval by Rome.

ICEL's 1998 translation was supposed to replace the translation that had been done quickly after the council.

The group, which comprises 11 bishops' conferences from the U.S. and the United Kingdom to India, the Philippines to New Zealand and Australia, employed experienced translators, liturgical scholars and even poets.

They also added new prayers — for example, presidential prayers after the Gloria that picked up themes from the Sunday Scripture readings.

The 1998 translation followed the 1969 Vatican instruction, "Comme Le Prévoit," which stated, "The language chosen should be that in ‘common' usage, that is, suited to the greater number of the faithful who speak it in everyday use, even children and persons of small education."

The 1998 translation was well received by English-speaking episcopal conferences, who approved it and sent it to Rome for final approval.

However, by the time the translation got to the Vatican, the rules were changing. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, preferred a word-for-word translation of the Latin rather than one that was easily understood when it was proclaimed.

At first, the English-speaking conferences fought for their translations, but the Vatican was not interested in listening.

In one instance, the American bishops asked to send a delegation to Rome to talk about the translation, but the Vatican agreed only on the condition that Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk not be part of the delegation. Pilarczyk had a doctorate in classics and could run circles around Vatican officials.

In 2001, the Vatican issued new instructions about translations of the Roman missal in "Liturgiam authenticam," which directed "the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses."

Eventually, under new leadership, ICEL followed Ratzinger's directions and produced the flawed 2010 translation that we are now using in church.

Thus, one cardinal in Rome, whose native language was German, was able to overrule years of work by the English-speaking bishops and tell them how they should pray their own language in worship.

Times have again changed. In 2017, Pope Francis revised canon law to emphasize that the main responsibility for liturgical translations lies with episcopal conferences.

According to Francis, the Dicastery for Divine Worship should no longer impose a given translation on episcopal conferences.

Nor should it be involved in a detailed word-by-word examination of translations.

Under these new procedures, the 1998 ICEL translation would have been easily approved by the Vatican.

Because Francis told the synod delegates not to talk to the press, it is hard to know from where the recommendation on liturgical translations came.

Did the push come from the bishops or the lay delegates at the synod?

Was it from Africa? Asia? Latin America?

These parts of the church have certainly wanted more respect for "the diversity of cultures."

But given that the biggest recent fight over translation involved English speakers, the call may have come from one of the ICEL countries.

It certainly did not come from the American bishops, who have no interest in revising liturgical texts. But perhaps other English-speaking bishops want to revisit the translation.

Granted this history, what would be a good way forward for the English-speaking church?

First, since it takes years to do a new translation, ICEL should begin by resurrecting the 1998 translation and reviewing it for minor improvements.

This translation, the fruit of years of work, is much better than the one currently used. There is no need to start from scratch.

Sadly, ICEL, which holds the copyright, does not allow the 1998 translation to be posted on the web (although some creative searching on Google turns it up), so it is difficult for people to see how good it is.

Second, changing the people's responses would probably be a bad idea. Going from "And also with you" to "And with your spirit" and back to "And also with you" would cause whiplash among the laity.

On the other hand, if Christian denominations agree on common English texts for the Gloria, the Nicene Creed and the Lord's Prayer, then adopting these texts would be worth the effort for ecumenical reasons.

Third, in the meantime, priests should be given permission to use the 1998 translation for the parts of the Mass that are said only by the priest: the presidential prayers, prefaces, Eucharistic prayers, etc.

Let priests have the option of using the 1998 version or the current version, and see which one promotes fuller participation in the liturgy.

It would be instructive to see which version becomes more common after five or 10 years of allowing them both.

Which translation do priests find easier to proclaim, and which version do people more easily hear and understand?

One of the problems with how the church does liturgical translations is that they are not tested in the real world before they are imposed throughout the church.

The hierarchy does not believe in market testing translations to see what works.

Allowing priests to use the 1998 ICEL translation would be a good way to test its value.

Sadly, practical problems will foster inertia in liturgical translations.

Publishers have warehouses full of the current missal that they want to sell. Pastors don't want to spend money on new missals.

Bishops do not want to risk backlash from conservative Catholics who oppose any change in the liturgy.

All of this makes it likely that we will have to endure the current translation unless liturgists, priests and people in the pews support the synod's call for change.

If the United States is going to experience a true Eucharistic revival, then it needs liturgical texts that promote the full and active participation by all people in the liturgy. The current text does not do that.

The 1998 ICEL translation is a step in the right direction.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Improved translations for the opening and post-Communion prayers are also under consideration.

The initiative was confirmed by Bishop Stephen Lowe, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference and the bishops' representative on the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

The revised inclusive lectionary, a joint venture among the bishops' conferences from Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, will incorporate the Revised New Jerusalem Bible (RNJB).

Lowe cited the RNJB's affinity with the well-established Jerusalem Bible translation, currently approved for New Zealand, and for its embracing inclusive language.

The New Zealand Bishops' Conference has endorsed the project. "We await the same from our Australian and Irish counterparts," said Lowe.

The undertaking of the new lectionary is expected to span approximately three years.

During this phase, the conferences will spearhead a programme aimed at acquainting parishes and schools with the new edition.

New priest's prayers too

Since its introduction in 2011, New Zealand's Catholics have voiced concerns about the English used in the prayers of the Mass.

In 2011, Vox Clara a Vatican committee, pushed through an English translation that was more in line with the original Latin.

Direct translations from Latin, maintaining Latin syntax, have occasionally muddled the meaning in English, and the 'muddled meanings' is a prominent point emerging from New Zealand's Synodal feedback.

Reflecting on the potential of the improved Mass prayer translations as a solution to the existing translation's critiques, Lowe hinted at a solution with the release of a revised book of prayers the priest uses at Mass.

Welcoming the intent of the move, New Zealand liturgical theologian Dr Joe Grayland said the facility has been available to all bishops since September 3, 2017, when Pope Francis published Magnum Principium (The Great Principle).

In releasing Magnum Principium, Pope Francis emphasised the need for translations to

• remain loyal to the original text
• loyal to the language it is translated into, and
• be comprehensible to congregants

The Australian, Ireland and New Zealand bishops' solution keeps the status quo for the congregation's prayers and responses.

1998 Roman Missal translation

From 1983 - 2003, New Zealand Bishop Peter Cullinane was a respected member of the Episcopal Board of the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

It was a time when the 1998 Sacramentary was developed.

In 1998, all the bishops of the English-speaking world agreed on a translation of the Roman Missal.

However, also in 1998, the prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez, blocked ICEL's work.

Medina, a Chilean, spoke no English and set up Vox Clara, a group of senior bishops from English-speaking countries.

Vox Clara held its inaugural meeting in Rome in April 2002 under the chairmanship of then-Archbishop George Pell of Sydney.

According to columnist Robert Mickens, Medina mercilessly bullied ICEL officials.

The universally acceptable and inclusive translation is not lost and is still available:

• The Sacramentary - Volume One - Part 1
• The Sacramentary - Volume One - Part 2
• The Sacramentary - Volume Two - Part 1
• The Sacramentary - Volume Two - Part 2

Sources

• NZ Catholic
• CathNews NZ
• CathNews NZ

In an interview with a television channel serving Italian-speaking Switzerland, aired Nov 14, Archbishop Arthur Roche said that "the normal form of the celebration of the Roman Rite is found in those documents that have been published since the Second Vatican Council."

Pope John Paul II's Ecclesia Dei and Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum "were established in order to encourage the Lefebvrists, above all, to return to unity with the Church," Roche continued.

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In fact, this past week we just witnessed a bit of irony that stretched right across the Atlantic Ocean, though most people seem to have missed it.

On October 4, as English Archbishop Arthur Roche had just finished giving his first major address as prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS) here in Rome, people were gathering in a cathedral some 7,400 miles away in Santiago de Chile for the funeral of his predecessor, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez.

The 71-year-old Roche only got the job last May, while Medina, who would have been 95 in December, held the post from 1996-2002.

Even though three other men (all cardinals) served as CDWDS prefect at one time or another during the two decades that separated Medina's tenure from Roche's, the lives and liturgical activities of the gentlemanly Englishman and the gruff Chilean would frequently coincide.

Collide is probably the more appropriate word.

The man who announced the new pope

Most people around the world probably don't know much about Cardinal Medina's time as the Vatican's liturgy chief.

Their clearest memory of him will be that he was the cardinal who, with great flare, stood on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on April 19, 2005 and announced that Joseph Ratzinger had just been elected pope, taking the name Benedict XVI.

But most liturgists and proponents of the liturgical renewal stemming from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) will remember the Chilean cardinal as the one who ruthlessly rode roughshod over the world's English-speaking bishops and aggressively stripped them of their rightful authority to oversee the translations of Latin liturgical texts.

When Medina was called to Rome in 1996 to take the reins of Divine Worship (he got his red hat in 1998), Roche had just been named secretary-general of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

Roche would hold that post until 2001 when he was named auxiliary bishop of Westminster. A year later he was appointed to the Diocese of Leeds, first as coadjutor and then ordinary.

The International Commission for English in the Liturgy

During his six years as CDWDS prefect, Cardinal Medina set the course that would lead more than a decade later to the current English translation of the Roman Missal, the prayers that are used to celebrate Mass.

He did this primarily by violently blocking with the work of the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), a body set up in 1963 and sponsored by 11 bishops' conferences to draft common English versions of liturgical prayers.

ICEL had prepared the first English translation of the Roman Missal (or Sacramentary) for the reformed liturgy. It came out in the early 1970s, but in 1982 the mixed-commission began working on a new and more careful translation.

It was a painstaking project that was finally finished and approved in 1998 by the bishops' conferences that were part of ICEL. Medina's office, however, refused to give it Vatican approval.

Changing the rules for translations

Instead, the CDWDS prefect — who spoke no English — moved hard on ICEL.

He informed the bishops of ICEL in 1998, through the recently created Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, that the commission had to be changed drastically according to Rome's wishes or it was finished.

Medina formalized the threat personally in a sharp letter in 1999 to the ICEL chairman, Bishop Maurice Taylor of Scotland.

The Chilean's next move was to issue a new set of principles and guidelines for liturgical translations. Issued in 2001 under the title Liturgiam authenticam, this document insisted on translations that were as close as possible to Latin.

Vox Clara

That same year Medina's congregation set up the Vox Clara Committee, a group of senior bishops from English-speaking countries. It held its inaugural meeting in Rome in April 2002 under the chairmanship of then-Archbishop George Pell of Sydney (Australia).

Vox Clara's official brief was "to advise (the CDWDS) in its responsibilities related to the translation of liturgical texts in the English language and to strengthen effective cooperation with the Conferences of Bishops".

But, in reality, it was a tool that the Vatican used to usurp the authority of the bishops' conferences and effectively gut ICEL.

Throughout his time at the worship office, Medina constantly and mercilessly bullied ICEL officials.

"From the start of his reign Cardinal Medina let it be known that relations with ICEL, if any, would be formal and cold," wrote Bishop Taylor in his 2009 book A Cold Wind from Rome.

"There were no further collaborative meetings, no advice or comments were forthcoming in the course of our work and, in general, we thought that we were under suspicion," Taylor noted.

Indeed they were.

A new ICEL and a new chairman

By the time Cardinal Medina retired as CDWDS prefect in October 2002 at age 75, he had forced a complete change in ICEL's statutes and leadership.

Bishop Taylor was actually replaced as ICEL chairman a few months earlier. His replacement was the recently-named coadjutor bishop of Leeds, Arthur Roche.

During his ten years as chairman, Bishop Roche tried to walk the tightrope that was set by Liturgiam Authenticam. And he and his staff thought they had put together a good English translation of the Roman Missal, finally completed in 2008.

It was controversial and contested by many, but the ICEL's member conferences all approved it the next year and the text was sent to Rome for final approval, which was granted.

But when the English version of the Missal was actually printed and presented to Benedict XVI in April 2010 it contained some 10,000 more changes, which ICEL had not made.

It's suspected that Vox Clara — the body that Jorge Medina set up and George Pell oversaw — was responsible for making those changes.

The presentation ceremony itself says it all. It was a gala luncheon for the pope, CDWDS officials and.... Vox Clara. No one from ICEL was invited, not even Bishop Roche.

Tempering liturgical traditionalism

But his story did not end there, of course.

Benedict XVI named him secretary of the CDCWS in 2012 and gave him the title "archbishop".

During his nine years as the No. 2 at Divine Worship, he had to temper the liturgical traditionalism of the former prefect, Cardinal Robert Sarah.

But don't expect Archbishop Roche to make any moves to repair what English-speaking Catholics — priests and people — believe is a very flawed translation of the Roman Missal.

The talk he gave on October 4 was for the opening of the academic year at the Atheneum of Sant'Anselmo, home of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute.

After Cardinal Sarah's tenure at the CDWDS, it was reassuring to hear the new prefect reaffirm the normative nature of the Vatican II liturgical reform. But his address was otherwise unremarkable.

And his comments on translations will disappoint those who still hope that the current English-language Missal can be repaired.

"Of course, when it comes to translation there are many theories and controversies," the archbishop said.

"If waylaid by that, it can be a battlefield of contrasting and opposing opinions. Even the most inexpert of protagonists have their opinions and can be highly vocal and self-opinionated," he continued.

And then he added this:

The old adage of being able to negotiate with terrorists but not with liturgists can take on an all too real an aspect, but we should be consoled by Saint Paul's Second Letter to Timothy where he writes: "Remind them of this, and charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers..."

Archbishop Roche, who will probably get a red hat at the next consistory, concluded his address by wishing the professors and students of Sant'Anselmo "a good academic year, the love of the Lord you serve, a humble perseverance, and above all a good sense of humour".

Sadly, it feels like Cardinal Medina Estévez, who was buried just hours later, got the last laugh.

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

In an interview with EWTN News, Archbishop Arthur Roche, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said that he was not pessimistic about the prospect of people returning to Mass after pandemic lockdown restrictions.

"People's longing, people's thirst, [and] absolute hunger for God has increased in this desert experience, which we've all experienced," Roche said June 22.

The archbishop said that it was "important to recognize the presence of the Lord in the Eucharistic and to develop that within your own life."

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Roche replaces controversial conservative Cardinal, Robert Sarah, whose resignation Pope Francis accepted on 20 February.

The Vatican liturgy office is charged with overseeing the Catholic Church's liturgical rites, and senior New Zealand people involved in liturgy told CathNews they quietly optimistic about him pressing ahead with post-conciliar liturgical reform.

They say Roche seems to have worked well with Francis and cite two examples of the relationship, the reform to the "mandatum" to include the washing of women and even non-Catholics feet on Holy Thursday, and the 2017 Magnum Principium document giving bishops' conferences more say over the liturgical translations they use.

While hopeful, they remain cautious and are keen to see if the appointment will lead to a more intelligible English Missal.

"It will be interesting to see what Roche will do in his own right", a senior priest told CathNews.

"It's hard to see that despite Magnum Principium, an improved version of the Missal was going to go anywhere because Sarah was in charge", the priest told CathNews.

Appointed as Secretary in the Liturgy Office (No 2), by former Pope, Benedict XVI, Roche (71) came from Leeds, where he was also the chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

In his role as Liturgy Secretary, he ruled out using the 1998 ICEL translation, a document he as chairman of ICEL had close involvement with.

A former head of the Diocese of Leeds, England, Roche is known in Rome as something of a quiet voice and more of a team player than his predecessor.

Unlike Sarah, who was often seen as an opponent of Francis' vision for the global church, Roche is not known to maintain a Twitter account, he does not often give interviews and prefers to stay out of the limelight except when making press statements.

The new prefect has been leading the liturgy office on an interim basis since Francis accepted Sarah's resignation.

Beyond Roche, Francis also appointed new No. 2 and No. 3 officials for the congregation.

Italian Bishop Vittorio Viola will serve as secretary and Msgr. Aurelio Marcias, formerly a department head at the office, will now serve as its under-secretary.

After Sarah resigned, Francis broke with tradition and asked an outside consultant to meet with liturgy office staff, review the office's procedures and consider what might be needed in a new prefect.

In 2017, the New Zealand Catholic Bishops called for a prompt review of the 2011 Latinisted Missal and to review the 1998 draft Roman Missal translation.

Five years later the Bishops and New Zealand people still wait.

Bishop Patrick Dunn, then president of the New Zealand Bishop's Conference said at the time, despite Magnum Principium, the New Zealand bishops were also not inclined to go it alone because they acknowledge the importance of working collegially with ICEL.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: National Catholic Register