england and wales" "
Issued in February, the first draft (green book) of the translation of the Ordo Missae was subjected to the scrutiny of all bishops in the English-speaking world (11 Bishops’ Conferences). The new Ordo Missae is supposed to replace the missal currently in use (adopted in 1974) in January 2005. Many bishops in England and Wales, however, have expressed misgivings about the green book: they say they are “dismayed” by the language used, which they call “clumsy”, and are therefore asking for a second draft of the text to be issued for them to examine before preparing the final version (‘grey book’) to issue to Conferences. The translation, prepared by the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), in the attempt to come closer to the original in Latin, has been criticised by the bishops for its ungainliness: they say it is loaded with useless adjectives and unnecessary archaisms. The bishops fear that some parishes will refuse to adopt the new missal, which might give the impression of “wanting to turn the clock back to a more hierarchical Church”; some American bishops think the text is “too English”. Hence the fear that it will not be adopted within the deadline of January 2005 fixed. In comparison with the previous version, however, the translation of the new missal seems more in line with the liturgical principles supported by the Congregation for Divine Worship. Some of the more important changes have been widely discussed and welcomed by liturgists; but the text contains hundreds of small adjustments that could alter its spirit, and re-introduce obsolete terms out of touch with common language. “The Bishops wished further attention to be given to the question of sentence length and syntactical construction”, commented Msgr. Mark Jabalé of Menevia, bishop of Menevia (Wales) and chairman of the Department for Christian Life and Worship of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. He pointed out that “each has expressed his own opinion about the draft, but on the whole the Bishops’ Conference has given a positive welcome to the document”. Msgr. Jabalé sees the greatest drawback of the text “in the fact that the translation, in its effort to be as literal as possible to the original Latin, in some cases does not take into account the idiomatic structure of present-day language”. “Finer and more elegant than the previous version”: that’s how Father Desmond Connolly, parish priest of St. John the Baptist at Andover (Hampshire), calls the ICEL “green book” translation. In particular “the eucharistic prayer gives us the sense of being really in the presence of God”, he declares, convinced “that many priests will welcome with satisfaction a text that is closer to the Latin than the current version, considered by many to be inadequate” and the reason for “frequent improvisations of prayers and ‘deviations’ from the written formulae”. “It would be foolish to reduce the debate on the issue to an argument between liberals and conservatives writes the Catholic Herald in its comment on the new translation -. English-speaking Catholics, irrespective of their preferences, ought to be aware of the fact that the translation of the mass currently in use is unable, at times, to transmit the richness of the Latin”. In the view of the UK’s Catholic weekly, “the English Mass of the new millennium must accomplish what, albeit with some shortcomings, the Tridentine Mass was able to do in a wonderful way: capturing the beauty of holiness. We have not yet succeeded in this, but there’s no cause to despair. There’s no hurry”.
