Tuesday, October 25, 2011

True and improved ...

... The new translation of the Mass restores its beauty and splendor. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I have reviewed hundreds of pages of Latin text, with the first Novus Ordo’s rendering beside me. I defy any English-speaking Catholic in the world to defend the work, on any grounds whatsoever, linguistic, poetic, scriptural, or theological. Eventually, the Vatican, noticing that the liturgy had in fact not been translated into English, ordered that the job be done. Hence every prayer said at every Mass for every day of the year and every purpose for which a Mass may be said has in the last few years been translated, an immense undertaking.
I'll stick with the Tridentine Latin Mass, which is celebrated every Sunday at noon at my parish. There is such a thing as ritual language, too. I don't go to Mass for contemporary relevance. I go for, among other things, a sense of the timeless. (Principally, I go for the miracle.)

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