Liturgical revisionism

Some comments about the new liturgical translations and the liturgical reform in general need some response, I think, and since this is my blog, I’m going to bring them up front.

Two common inaccuracies keep cropping up: first, that the liturgical reforms after the Council somehow went beyond what the Council actually asked for; and second, that the 1970 translations were somehow bad or inaccurate.

As for the first, Sacrosanctum concilium called for a “general reform” (#21) of all the rites with "full, conscious and active participation" being the “paramount concern” of the reform (#14). By and large the Novus Ordo follows the general order of Trent minus the Latin and a lot of medieval attachments.

The Novus Ordo is not a "new Mass," and Trent itself was hardly some "pure" liturgy; it was simply the Roman liturgy of the time imposed on all the churches, thanks mostly to the printing press. And evidently, the reformers after VCII got the intention of the Council right, because the liturgical reforms of the Council have been widely welcomed and imitated by other Christian churches. Besides, one has to interpret SC (which received only 4 negative votes) not just as an independent text but by how it was received and implemented.

As for the second objection, it's completely inaccurate to say that the Mass wasn't translated correctly in the first place. It was done well, using the principles of dynamic equivalence as found in Comme le prevoit, which outlined the rules in force at the time. This claim that we currently have "bad translations" is completely spurious. They're "bad" only because Rome changed the rules.

The new translation, quite frankly, was prepared more quickly and by fewer qualified people than the 1970 edition and is more ideologically driven. And the purpose of the translation is not somehow to mimic the Latin original, the editio typica, which is more or less a model for the creation, translation, and adaptation of liturgical books for other churches.

No one celebrates the liturgy from the editio typica anyway, except maybe in Vatican liturgies. Everyone uses the translations and texts found in their own language group's liturgical books (created by the bishops conferences; see SC, 22[a]), many of which (German, Italian, English RCIA and OCF), incidentally, include original texts composed in the vernacular language, all of which were approved by the Vatican.

What has happened in the past 15 years is simply regime change, and with the new regime has come a new liturgical theology (or ideology) that treats Roman texts as if they fell out of heaven. Which they didn't. And this approach is quite frankly a novelty in Catholic tradition, which has always permitted liturgical variation. Note that the Eastern churches in communion with Rome have never, not even after Trent, been required to replace their liturgies with those of Rome.

If the Tridentine liturgy receives wider use, we'll know for sure that what's going on is not some great desire for uniformity, but a concerted effort to overturn the 2,147-to-4 vote in favor of liturgical reform.