The keynote address by the Reverend Professor Robert Taft, S.J., of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome (himself an Eastern Catholic) dealt with translation problems with respect to liturgy, language, and ideology. He made known his dislike of “sacral,” “numinous,” or “archaic” liturgical English (as confusing obfuscation with mystery). He endorsed “horizontally” inclusive language, on the grounds that liturgical translations are for “people of today” and should be in an idiom and style most readily comprehensible to them.
He prescribed as axiomatic that the nature and style of liturgical translations should be determined by the nature of the recipient rather than the donor language, and that fidelity to the nature of the recipient language must take precedence over that to the donor. Whatever criticisms might be levied against the current International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) translation of the Latin Catholic liturgy into English, the members of the translation team had clearly set forth the principles on which they were to operate before embarking on their task—a thing unheard of among translators of Byzantine liturgical texts into English. He observed also that the very flexibility of the English language itself encouraged clumsy vocabulary and syntactical usage among people lacking a wide experience of reading and writing it.
As a problem of ideology he cited making shibboleths of mistranslations by reading into them matters of deep significance. Examples included “writing ikons” (instead of painting them), translating chram as “temple” rather than “church,” translating Theotokos as “Birthgiver” (an otherwise nonexistent English word; does one say “Good morning, Birthgiver” to one’s mother?), or basing a whole theology on the misunderstanding of “Orthodoxy” as derivative of orthos and doxa (i.e., right worship) rather than, as in truth, of orthos and dokeo (i.e., right teaching). On the issue of gender-inclusive language, he ended with the statement that it is because it gives power to the disenfranchised that it is feared and resisted by the clergy. In the subsequent discussion Archimandrite Serge Keleher noted that what Fr. Taft described as axioms might more accurately be seen as postulates.
Although the issue of inclusive language was seldom explicitly raised in the subsequent course of the conference, there appeared to be a tacit consensus—at least among the experts—that its advocates had won the day. This was in notable contrast to the related issue of traditional versus contemporary English liturgical language, in which there was also a striking contrast between the Eastern Catholics (who have almost universally gone over to the contemporary) and the Orthodox (who are still debating the issue).
And Fr. Taft's speech for the 2007 McManus Award:
Maior autem his est caritas: Fr. Robert Taft SJ on liturgical reformThen why have we now entered into a period of darkening storm clouds, when the liturgical renewal of the Roman Rite is under attack, the gearshift has been put into reverse, and the order of the day seems to be full-speed backwards? The short answer is that those who want that don’t know much about the history and theology of liturgy. One anecdote will suffice to illustrate that. A reliable eye-witness reported to me that during the 2006-2007 academic year, the graduate students of liturgy from the Pontifical Liturgical Institute Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, during their customary annual courtesy visit to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, were informed by a high official there that the purpose of the Mass was the devotion of the priest! That would be simply funny, were it not also rank heresy.
Having sunk so low, all roads must lead up. So my wish for you today, fellow-workers in the Catholic liturgical ministry so marvelously renewed at Vatican II, is to be of good heart! We are passing through a bad patch, as often happens in the history of an organization so complex and huge as the Catholic Church, which may occasionally stumble, as I believe it has recently with regard to liturgy. But in this time of shockingly mediocre liturgical leadership on the part of some of our Church authorities, we should take courage that the People of God and the vast majority of our bishops throughout the world are with us—even if not all of them have the courage and integrity to exercise the leadership we have a right to expect of them by speaking up like Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, PA.
Let me illustrate popular sentiment on these issues by what took place on December 11, 2003 at the Symposium “Sacrosanctum Concilium Forty Years Later,” in the basilica of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute Sant’Anselmo in Rome. In his talk, the recently deceased Catalan Servite priest Fr. Ignacio Calabuig, OSM, spoke with deep emotion about the “greats” of the Liturgical Movement he had known. Towards the end of his paper, he turned to Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments seated to my right in the presidium, and, in a trembling voice, departed from his written text, saying (in Italian of course) something like this (I am paraphrasing what I recall, not translating literally): “I feel I must tell the Prefect [Cardinal Arinze] that the devastating impression the Congregation [for Divine Worship] seems to be spreading throughout the Church, that men of great culture in their own lands are not capable of translating liturgical texts into their own mother tongue, is causing great discontent and concern in the Church”—at which point the entire audience, some 600 strong crowding the basilica, spontaneously exploded into prolonged, enthusiastic applause that thundered on for about three minutes. It was an historic moment, the message was crystal clear, and even Cardinal Arinze himself finally joined in the applause that went on and on and just would not stop. This is my 43rd year in Rome and I have never seen anything like it before or since.
Such a resounding affirmation of the Vatican II mandated liturgical renewal by God’s Holy People does not mean, however, that our work is over and done with. For the Council also taught us that the Church is “semper reformanda.” So let me add my wish list to your own ideas regarding what remains to be done or redone.
- First, in seeking solutions to problems new and old, the “Magisterium doctorum”—i.e., the common teaching of reputable Catholic scholars and theologians—must be returned to its proper and fully traditional place in the “ordinary magisterium” of Catholic theological discourse. The Magisterium is not a substitute for a brain, or for a solid formation in the history and teaching of the Church across the entire continuum of its history, and not just what happens to be in vogue today, or was at Trent.
- Second, as for what some call “the reform of the reform,” I continue to maintain that the western liturgical renewal in the wake of Vatican II was a great success, returning the liturgy to the People of God to whom it rightly belongs. The Vatican II reform was not perfect because only God is perfect. But we have a saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” So we should stop tinkering, leave alone what has been done already, and concentrate on what was not done well or not done at all. Done well were the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the Mass, the translations into the vernacular, which are certainly not to be redone according to the norms of that unfortunate document Liturgiam authenticam—at least not until one has read the absolutely devastating scholarly critique of Prof. Peter Jeffrey of Princeton in his book Translating Tradition: A Liturgical Historian Reads “Liturgiam Authenticam”[3] So instead of messing eternally with already finished business, I think it is time to turn to unfinished business. The Vatican II reforms were done as well as was humanly possible at the time, and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude and respect, not denigration, to those, some of whom are now with God, that had the courage to carry them out and implement them. The problems in ritual and language came not from the language and the restored rites, but from implementing them poorly or employing them abusively, and one does not change a language because some of its native speakers and writers are incapable of using it well. This demands not “reform of the reform,” but better liturgical formation.
- Finally, the unfinished business not done well or not done at all would include, in my view, the Liturgy of the Hours, some aspects of the Lectionary, and the Calendar, especially the Sanctoral, where more space should be given to local saints over against the centralized cult favored by the overly-centralized canonization process with its unfortunate “political canonizations” directed at the self-glorification of the ecclesial nomenklatura. And above all, one must restore the Roman Rites of Christian Initiation of infants to their traditional sequence and unity, because the way they are structured now is little better than ridiculous.
Liturgical scholars shouldn't be entrusted with reforming the liturgy? I can respect his scholarship on the Byzantine rite, but I disagree with many of his recommendations for the Roman rite, and his judgment on the post-conciliar "reforms."
Related:
Fr. Serge Keleher is an admin and participant at the Byzantine Forum.
Serge Keleher: Studies on the Byzantine Liturgy �
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