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PDF versionHas the Vatican usurped Vatican II liturgical norms?
by Thomas C. Fox on Nov. 17, 2009
Writes Jerry Filteau, NCR Washington Correspondent: "Another surprise element introduced on the opening day of the bishops’ Nov. 16-19 meeting came during initial informational presentation of several supposedly final segments of the new English translation of the Latin Roman Missal.
"As the first of the five final segments was introduced, Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., rose to ask what had ever happened to the translations of the antiphons – which the bishops had discussed in the first draft form a couple of years ago, he said, but which had never come back to them in final draft form for actual debate and vote.
"Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., chairman of the USCCB Committee on the Liturgy, answered that the antiphons did not come back to the bishops for approval because in the meantime the Holy See has taken their translation to itself.
"Trautman asked, 'How does that square with' the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, which plainly says that vernacular translations of the Latin liturgical texts are the responsibility of the local bishops’ conferences.
He cited Paragraph 36.4 of the constitution, which says, “Translations from the Latin text into the mother tongue intended for use in the liturgy must be approved by the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority,” as a conciliar mandate that, in his view, says no Vatican agency can usurp the role of the local bishops’ conference in vetting and approving such liturgical texts.
Serratelli could only reiterate that the Vatican had assumed authority over the English antiphon translations and taken it out of the hands of the English-speaking bishops’ conferences around the world.
George ruled Trautman’s question out of order in the context of the business at hand, which concerned another set of texts, not the antiphons. When Trautman asked when or how his question might be in order, George assured him that room for his question would be made later in the meeting.
Trautman is being very
Trautman is being very dishonest here. When the ICEL distorted the language of the liturgy, he was its band leader!
While the carpetbaggers,
While the carpetbaggers, usurpers and curial interlopers were hijacking Vatican II, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone was riding President Obama's coattails by releasing a letter to China's clergy.
http://www.ucanews.com/2009/11/17/vatican-stresses-reconciliation-in-let...
The RAPE of Vatican II is
The RAPE of Vatican II is unfolding before our eyes, as the corporate office dismantles the guiding ECCLESIOLOGY of the council. It's NOT about language or liturgy, it's about the continuing centralization of POWER and CONTROL begun by JP2 and continued by his major domo Benedict XVI.
Agree 1000 percent.
Agree 1000 percent.
The "rape of Vatican II"
The "rape of Vatican II" happened right after the council when the content of the documents were exchanged for the "Spirit of Vatican 2." It should have been called "Reformation 2."
"George ruled Trautman’s
"George ruled Trautman’s question out of order in the context of the business at hand..."
Indeed. The business at hand being about controlling everything to be in conformity with the Vatican usurpation of the Council. Bishop Trautman was surely out of order with that business at hand.
It's not news these antiphons
It's not news these antiphons were pulled from the timetable for implementing the translation of Roman Missal III. The streamlined version of the missal approval has been out for months. I'm assuming the Vatican decided it needed to get the English-speakers back on track after all the previous delays.
I don't expect Bishop Trautman's question to be answered. His brother bishops will just see this as another annoying delay. They want to be done with this liturgical stuff and hand it off to their clergy. What do they care? They have Masters of Ceremony opening books and pointing to the texts.
An apt question for these antiphons: given the assumption that they will be set to music, my question is less the role of bishops and more the role of musicians.
It's just another instance of the general air of incompetence hovering all over this translation fiasco. What we have is a magic word theology: as long as we have a slavish connection to the Latin original, all we need is the right people saying the right words at the right time, and the Hholy Spirit will take care of everything else. Personally, I don't know what to criticize here: is it the laziness of bishops, the incompetence of ICEL, the apathy in Rome, or the long slumber of concerned folks like Bishop Trautman?
Todd poses: "An apt question
Todd poses: "An apt question for these antiphons: given the assumption that they will be set to music, my question is less the role of bishops and more the role of musicians."
Apt or not a question, the assumption requires revision, as most frequently Antiphons, in this day and age and hemisphere mainly stripped of English speaking monastic choirs except for our collegial women religious, are read silently, hurriedly and individually by guys trying to catch up on their Daily Office.
Has not Todd kept up, aptly or not, with his?
And due to the unbridgeable gap between the mater linguae Latin and the low germanic anglo-saxon, translations of ineffable Latin antiphons, so poignant, so timely, so profound, so strengthening, so revivifying, so edifying, so apt, are rendered utterly incomprehensible and hollow tin sounding gongs in English, of no sense and only another senseless barrier to our prayer life and our daily mission of service.
Call it a day and get a Spanish language breviary, if not the Latin in ipsa.
Bishop Trautman is correct
Bishop Trautman is correct that the bishops have to approve the translation, but that doesn't preclude the Vatican's translating and proposing them to the bishops. I suppose if the bishops conferences and the Vatican don't eventually come to a meeting of the minds, it will be
LATIN TIME!
Sacrosanctam Conciliam # 36.4
Sacrosanctam Conciliam # 36.4 can be read as meaning that there are no congregationally-improvised texts, but that a uniform text in a particular region or territory must be approved by that territory's "competent ... ecclesiastical authority." It does not exclude the notion that the Holy See is universally competent. Indeed, considering that Sacrosanctam Conciliam was the FIRST document Vatican II approved--in 1963--I think it would represent a bending of history to think that the Fathers would have agreed to say that in adapting the liturgy, they were entrusting this authority to local groups of bishops TO THE EXCLUSION OF THE HOLY SEE. Yet that is essentially what Trautmann's objection claims.
Indeed, # 36.4 refers back to # 22.2, which speaks of responsibility for the liturgy being "conceded" to local ecclesiastical authorities. "Conceded" by whom? See # 22.1: "Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop."
Hence, pace Bishop Trautmann, the Holy See is "usurping" responsibility for the liturgy only when one has first distorted the plain meaning of the texts being used to advance the charge.
The article reads: He cited
The article reads: He cited Paragraph 36.4 of the constitution, which says, “Translations from the Latin text into the mother tongue intended for use in the liturgy must be approved by the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority,”
I was hoping you might address this with a more complete quote of the relevant paragraph, which I do not have easily at hand here at work, although abundantly in the hermitage.
A loud alarm rang with the reading of this citation from the Conciliar documents.
"Translations from the Latin text into the mother tongue . . ."
Dudes,
Latin IS THE Mother Tongue, mater linguae.
English into which she is so cruelly and impossibly being contorted, despite the unbridgeable gaps, into the illegitimate, low germanic-French mongrel pup of the Englishman is NOT the mother tongue (except the mother of war and hatreds and division and of death), no matter how much its empire has forced its cacophonous phonemes upon oppressed peoples world wide, especially painfully under the Penal Code in Ireland, and continues to do so by US law. In Dallas people are arrested for driving their own car while Spanish speaking.
I was hoping you might clarify this point. Fortunately due to its own vindictive confrontation and hateful in-fighting the English speaking Church in this hemisphere is in a rushed process of immanent deconstructionism, a process whose completion the Vatican awaits before troubling itself with any translation into this useless and dysfunctional tongue. Why bother with impossible English translations when the English Church in the Americas is so thoroughly cutting off its own head to spite its body, the People of God?
GO Spanish instead.
Not sure what this all means.
Not sure what this all means. I suppose it means that every nation on earth should have a vernacular translation, except those nations that speak English and they should use the Spanish instead? Yes? My, what an arrogant statement for one to make (assuming, of course, that my read is correct).
On the other hand, perhaps good Frere Charles is advocating a return to Latin as the liturgical language of the Church? I would not support the entire Mass being in Latin, though I would heartily endorse Latin being used for the Common of the Mass (those parts that do not chang from week to week: Gloria, Creed, Eucharistic Prayer, Our Father, Rite of Peace, etc.).
I do enjoy Frere Charles's attacks on English as the "mother of war and hatreds and division and death". Granted, English-speaking people have made many mistakes, been the cause of, or participants in, many wars and much fighting, empire-building, and yes, death. I suppose no Spanish-speaking person ever participated in a war (how soon we forget the Spanish Armada!). I suppose no Spanish-speaking person ever participated in hatreds and division (how about the Spanish Inquisition, a perversion of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition by Ferdinand and Isabella into a political weapon to purge their empire of Muslims and other enemies of the state). I suppose no Spanish-speaking person ever caused the deaths of others (Cortes, Coronado, et al...do these names ring a bell?). I suppose no Spanish-speaking person ever created an empire (except, of course, for Central and South America, areas of the world that still speak an imperial language!).
I regret to say, dear Frere Charles, that history and facts tell a different story from your passionate, but ill-informed, remarks. You might consider that in future.
When will NCR-type dissident
When will NCR-type dissident libs adhere to 22.3 of the same Constitution? "3. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority."
With due respect to Professor
With due respect to Professor Joseph O'Leary of Sophia University, Tokyo---I reprint a letter which he first posted. This letter was written to a Dr. HeinzLothar Barth (Liturgical Prof in Germany)---and I would like to post it here.
To Dr. Heinz-Lothar Barth, 23 June 2003
Dear Dr. Barth,
...You are asking me to act for a broader availability of the old Roman rite. Actually, you know yourself that I have no deaf ears towards such a request. My work on behalf of this cause is meanwhile generally known.
Whether the Holy See will "admit the old rite again for every place and without restrictions" as you desire and have heard it rumored cannot be simply answered or confirmed without further ado.
Still too great is the aversion of many Catholics, instilled in them over many years, against the traditional liturgy which they scornfully call "preconciliar". Also one would have to reckon with considerable resistance on the part of many bishops against a general readmission.
Things look different, however, if one thinks about a limited readmission. The demand for the old liturgy is limited, too. I know that its worth, of course, does not depend upon the demand for it, but the question of the number of interested priest and laypeople, nevertheless, plays a certain role.
Besides, such a measure can now, only some 30 years after the liturgy reform of Paul VI, be implemented only stepwise. Any new hurry would surely not be a good thing.
I believe, though, that in the long term the Roman Church must have again a single Roman rite. The existence of two official rites is for bishops and priests difficult to "manage" in practice. The Roman rite of the future should be a single rite, celebrated in Latin or in the vernacular, but standing completely in the tradition of the rite that has been handed down. It could thak up some new elements which have proven themselves, like new feasts, some new prefaces in the Mass, and expanded lectionary---more choice than earlier, but not too much, an "oratio fidelium", i.e., a fixed litany of intercessions following the Oremus before the offertory where it had its place earlier.
Dear Dr. Barth, if you commit yourself to work for the cause of the liturgy in this way, yuo will surely not stand alone, and you will prepare "public opinion in the Church" for eventual measures in favor of an expanded use of the earlier liturgical books. One should be cautious, however, about awakening too high or maximum expectations among the traditional faithful....
Sincerely yours,
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
---------------------------------------------------------------
Has the Vatican usurped Vatican II liturgical Norms? Absolutely! And this has been in the works for years. With the massive demonstrations of grief at the death of John Paul II and the very carefully staged "santo subito"---these manifestations doubtless had an effect on the Electors of the Conclave. It convinced them that they had better find someone associated with John Paul who would continue his policies. After almost 25 years of faithful collaboration, Joseph Ratizinger certainly fit the bill.
Ratizinger was the hope of the 'anti-Vatican II factions' everywhere---and as Pope, he certainly has continued the reversal of the reforms of the Council. Of course, restorationist groups began to prepare for the liturgical and other changes that they knew he would and has made. This process began well before the death of John Paul II.
As we used to hear in the movie cartoons "Fee, dida Fee, dida Fee---That's all Folks!"
Maybe the Code of Canon Law
Maybe the Code of Canon Law will address the ultimate jurisdiction of the antiphon translation. I would think that Bishop Trautman would have looked it up, though, before he rose the question. We will see what they say.
what would the Holy Spirit,
what would the Holy Spirit, immanent, ineffable, inexpressible within and amongst us, pray?
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