The chalice was rescued from a Syrian Catholic church in the town of Qaraqosh on the Nineveh plain in Iraq. It was brought to the Malaga diocese by the papal charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to be displayed during Masses offered for persecuted Christians.

"This chalice was used by the jihadists for target practice," explained Ana María Aldea, an ACN delegate in Malaga. "What they did not imagine is that it would be re-consecrated and taken to many parts of the world to hold Mass in its presence."

"With this, we want to make visible a reality that we sometimes see on television but we are not really aware of what we are seeing." Read more

• Read Fr Merv Duffy's liturgy article in the Marist Messenger
• Image: Orthodox Church Supplies

Fr Merv Duffy sm lectures in Systematic Theology and is Dean of Studies at Good Shepherd College, Auckland.

Such language, so different from the plainspoken words of Jesus in prayer and parable, is in contrast to the directive of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II: "In this restoration [of the liturgy], both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community."

We have also become accustomed to hearing presiders stumble over the convoluted syntax of the prayers and watching them hurriedly turning pages as they wend their way through the labyrinthine new missals. Yet, there is one new expression that involves a significant translation error with serious implications for a proper understanding of the Last Supper as a Passover meal, along with implications for continued Jewish-Christian understanding. In the final analysis, it enshrines poor pastoral theology in the Sunday liturgy.

"Traduttore, Traditore"

All translators are familiar with the caution that translations often distort or even betray the nuances of the original language. This is dramatically true in the substitution of the term "chalice" for "cup" in the words of institution in the Eucharistic prayer from the 1970 missal approved by Pope Paul VI:

When supper was ended he took the cup [chalice].
Again he gave you thanks and praise,
Gave the cup [chalice] to his disciples, and said:

Take this, all of you and drink from it;
This is the cup [chalice] of my blood,
The blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
It will be shed for you and for all
So that sins may be forgiven.
Do this in memory of me. Continue reading

Sources

• Commonweal
• Image: Marist Messenger
• See also The Marist Messenger, "Chalice versus Cup" by Fr Merv Duffy sm