The great Canadian scholar of all things liturgy, Shawn Tribe of the NLM blog, has this nice article which the faithful ought to pay special attention to:
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2012/08/the-potentialities-of-english-missal.html.
Very interesting thoughts, and history.
And I think this missal is more in line with what the Council Fathers had actually intended.
The liturgical renewal of the Council gave us the 1964 Missale Romanum. All parties seemed satisfied. Everybody went home. All was well. Then...
Then came the 1968 and finally the 1970 version of a (new, let's face it) liturgy written by committee (Bugnini and company who were not experts in existing Gregorian repertory or proper liturgical principles - they got their new pericopes all wrong) which went much further (and independent) of anything the Fathers had expressed interest in.
Would be nice to see the Gregorian Rite offered in both Latin or vernacular, to take the place of the Novus Ordo Missae.
The language of prayer in the vernacular? Yes, the Byzantines do it. But we really missed the boat in our English translation when we opted for the English of the Beetles, Paul Simon, or Peter, Paul, and Mary over and above Shakespeare and friends.
Just sayin'.
The translation of this old missal into English actually works because it is, for once, philologically accurate. This is important.
The literary style (genus literarum) of the Latin original has been wholly considered and, for a change, preserved (and not partially as is the norm today).
The translator was already fully conscious of the idiom of the language as spoken by the faithful in worship and so proper idioms were used without falling into vulgar, modish, etc. vocabulary or expressions.
It can be done and this is a fine model.
One of the major turn offs for the TLM for middle aged people is Latin. The youth are fine learning it, if interested, and the older generation remembers it, but the middle aged seem see it as too large a gap to bridge.
ReplyDeleteI have long advocated for a vernacular EF mass because it is not the use of Latin which draws people, but rather the attention to rubrics, orthodox preaching, and the lowest probability of seeing liturgical dance or clowns.
I totally agree and think with wonder at what this would be like.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Shawn Tribe is Canadian? I thought he was English.
Nothing was more damaging, aside from a "new" liturgy itself, than the Latin rite putting aside her liturgical language. Tradition and the words of the Popes have proven that it must remain. As for the Byzantines, they, too, for the majority, left aside Church Slavonic and Greek for the vernacular. Just because it can be done [tastefully] does not mean it should.
ReplyDelete-Donnacha
Well said! Introducing the vernacular into the Mass itself, was a big mistake.
DeleteDo it. It will put the NO Missae out of business.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 7:24 (Donnacha):
ReplyDeleteLatin should remain? Of course it should. But having Latin remain doesn't mean that a good liturgical vernacular cannot come into play as well. That, after all, it was Sacrosanctum Concilium itself envisioned.
Tradition, history and popes have also shown and spoken to a place for the vernacular. Pius XII himself (while speaking to the importance of Latin) said in Mediator Dei, "the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people."
What was damaging in the new liturgy around the vernacular was the kind of banal form of vernacular that was used, and using a dynamic equivalence translation at that.
The symbolic significance of the Latin language, as vinculum linguae liturgicae will never change. The conciliar generation remembers the interim '64 Mass. A "new" Mass never should have been written. The Novus Ordo is not the Mass of the Council. It replaced the Mass of the Council. And it never should have been called Novus Ordo (way too overtly Masonic and this says a lot about the reformers).
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I say no more tinkering. Return to the Latin Mass, wait 100 years then see what happens. Too many changes based on the whims and fancies of the last 50 years. Enough is enough.
ReplyDeleteGiving some English options hardly seems like tinkering to me. In a way it's kind of a shame this kind of thing just wasn't done earlier on, maybe under Pius XII for example.
ReplyDeletePerhaps then we might have avoided this whole postconciliar mess in the first place.