Priest Urges Open Revolution Again Church Over Liturgy

Wow just wow. It seems someone is having a temper tantrum in America Magazine over the slight changes in the Catholic Liturgy. Father Z does a great fisking at America Magazine and a 1960’s revolt against the new translation

Who knew this slight changes that makes the liturgy richer would cause such an uproar.

There is irony upon irony in this. The Changes to the Catholic liturgy in the 60's and 70's were to say the least much more earth shaking than this. The "Rev. Michael G. Ryans" of the world have never been hesitant to use the authority of the Church and more often than not twist the meaning of document done on the Liturgy since the Vatican Council to demand obedience. These are the same folks that have been pretty much lying about such things a Latin in the Mass, communion on the tongue , kneeling when receiving holy communion, etc etc. Now they want a revolution!!!

I think this has little to do with the liturgy.

Of course for all his talk of "Let my People Go" he fails to mention under Canon law he has no right to do that. In fact he is denying MY RIGHT under canon law as a Catholic to have the Liturgy in its proper form. Where this priest think he has the authority to do this I don't know. He very well might have problems with the Vatican and the Pope but I am not sure that means we have elected him Pope.

In the link there is this excellent comment in reply from a priest .

My own general reaction to this article is that the author is expending a lot of energy and spite on a very minor problem. He doesn’t like several of the new phrases in the latest missal about to be released. He says that this will result in “an almost certain fiasco”. He attributes this new translation to a determined dismantling of the outcomes of Vatican Council II. He tries to get up a tremendous ire at all this but it comes off flat. His citation of No 40 from the council documents does not give the cover that he wants for experimentation etc. Actually it is precisely the assumption by the clergy that they have a right to always and everywhere tinker with the liturgy that has brought the Novus Ordo into such disrepute and opprobrium.

On occasion, he gives in to disparaging remarks thrown in for seemingly no purpose whatsoever. The “so-called Tridentine Mass” for instance which simply refers to the revised Missal issued by the fathers of the Council of Trent and which since that time up to the Vatican Council II had gone through only minor revisions so the name seems appropriate enough to me. I have no idea what the author wishes to indicate with the adjective “so-called” as if there were some gross mistake underlying this identification.

In his rendition of the historical development and implementation of the Novus Ordo Mass after the second Vatican Council, the author fails to mention that even then there was no consultation with the faithful laity of the Church nor would the council have risked posing such a question for concern that it might be answered overwhelmingly in the negative. The main reason for believing that it would have received a negative reaction is simply that many laity would possibly or probably not have fallen in for “buying a pig in a poke”, a totally unknown yet-to-be new Mass. And they would have been right, seeing the inane, mundane texts we ended up with, watered down and twisted.

When the author does get down to his cases, he cites only five instances of what I suppose he believes are poorly translated phrases but of the ones he cites I cannot for the life of me understand what is so poor about any of them in his understanding except that he says they incited disbelief and indignation at a dinner party. Why any of these phrases would incite such a hostile reaction is hard to imagine. Later he mentions the phrase from the Eucharistic Prayer “Joseph, spouse of the same virgin” and this may very likely be of questionable quality but this is only one phrase from an entire Missal.

The author never once addresses the reasons for this new translation, why it does not come from ICEL (The International Commission on English in the Liturgy) or why the project was removed from ICEL in the first place. The quality and accuracy of ICEL’s translations have long been a sticking point in the English-speaking world and the Vatican has received complaints from laity around the world concerning these translation as well as objections by liturgists in essays, pamphlets and books. When the Vatican tried to work with ICEL, the committee simply ignored or paid lip service only to the feedback provided. So finally in frustration at the inaccuracy and poverty of the translations, the Vatican removed the work on this project from ICEL, and the new translation comes to us from Rome itself. But this history in a nutshell, and the author overlooks it and ignores it entirely, as if this translation fell from the skies of Rome, unannounced and unexpected.

The author cites Bishop Trautman who, in his complaints, sounded more like a turn of the 19th century bishop noting the lack of education among his immigrant flock saying that the words were obscure and not commonly understood and citing incarnate, oblation, etc as examples. I don’t think it wise for a bishop to denigrate the intelligence of 21st century American Catholics. But in truth the author of this article is cut from the same cloth. We ignorant laity need priests such as the author to defend us from the machinations of the Vatican or so the author imagines. I doubt that all laity would want this author defending them insofar as it has been the constant stream of complaints from this laity that was the impetus for this entire project in the first place.

For myself, I am ecstatic that the generation of the Council is passing and that the Church has set herself for the past 28 years to the great task of reforming the reform. I earnestly pray that this great project will continue so that a true liberalism will be born of orthodoxy in every parish where Masses of every sort from Tridentine, to Novus Ordo may be said. I am happy to witness the passing of the phony liberalism of the sixties and seventies clergy, narrow minded liberals denigrating everyone else who dared to question them.

(Just excellent come back for this raw pap spewed by “tormented” liberals – too shay [bad English translation] )