At St. Anne's 9 AM daily Mass, we had a number of former Episcopalians in attendance and thus I celebrated the Mass using the Ordinariate's Divine Worship, the Missal.
It was a hybrid of Latin and Elizabethan English. If only, if only, Pope Francis would allow us this form of the Mass with our own English translation and omitting of course, the Anglican accretions, which I did today.
Tell me what you think:
It was a hybrid of Latin and Elizabethan English. If only, if only, Pope Francis would allow us this form of the Mass with our own English translation and omitting of course, the Anglican accretions, which I did today.
Tell me what you think:
21 comments:
If something similar had been adopted 50 years ago, acceptance would have likely been high and attendance mostly undisturbed from what it had been. If introduced during this age, other than catechesis regarding ad orientem, I think acceptance would be high. Where that isn't the case and where resulting in upheaval/people leaving, it begs the question as to whether or not they were really "here" in the first place? That aside, if mass were celebrated in this way, with the current translation, I think I would probably be at peace and would enjoy attending as much as I do divine liturgy.
I've seen videos of the Ordinariate Mass. It's so reverent. I'm jealous...I wish our Mass was something like that so that I didn't have the same feeling after it is over that I get when I attend one of my grandchildren's school pageants.
Not versed in faculties granted to whom and for what, am unsure what to think, nor regarding the trimming of their rite, and for same reasons.
I very much admire their rite, far more than the modern Novus Ordo, but simply using an ACCURATE, FORMAL English translation of the 1962 Roman Missal would have been A-OK with me, (such as used of neccessity by 99.9% of Tridentine Mass attendees today) as it was capable of expressing language proper to one's intimates and one's superiors lost entirely in dumbed down "modern" English...same should apply to any other language to best of its ability.
IF seminaries and Catholic schools still taught Latin to a degree of true proficiency, the position of Latin as the official language would be unassailable, it being far more precise and not subject to ambiguity in matters of extreme importance. But it now is a dead language even in Rome, and was very problematic for attending Bishops even at Vatican II.
In my grandfather's day as a dirt farmer boy of immigrant parents in backwoods Missouri, in a one-room/all-grade/coal-stove-heated schoolhouse, they were taught more Latin than most ecclesiastic have about them, today.
For the last two years, I have been going to the Ordinariate. I love it. However, I find the Elizabethan English difficult to pray with except the Our Father. But being hard of hearing, I use my missal and pray alongside in an English I can relate to and pronounce. But I agree this should have been done from the beginning, using regular English.
Theresa Verver
JR - go and join the Ordinariate then and leave the rest of us in peace.
Anon 7:34 - it’s not Elizabethan English, that’s a fallacy. It’s faux Elizabethan English!
Ask any Catholic of a certain age to recite the De Profundis (Ps 129) and he will begin 'Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord! Lord hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.' (Most younger Catholics wouldn't know it anyway.)
Faux Elizabethan English? No, it's the Douay-Rheims (ed. Challoner) translation of the Clementine Vulgate, which until the 1960s was the only officially approved one.
Anglicans used the BCP and AV up until about the same time. They were not using faux Elizabethan English either; they took it for granted that formal prayer should be in a more elevated style than normal everyday speech. The cadences of the King James Bible and the Cranmer Collects were part of a shared linguistic heritage.
When bi-lingual hand missals appeared in the early 20th century the same elevated style of English was used, and when Catholics heard the Sunday epistle and gospel read from the pulpit in English, it would have been in the Douay-Rheims version.
Catholic vernacular prayers which children learned by heart followed the Collect form of the Latin, just as Cranmer had done in the 16th century, although Cranmer didn't simply translate the Latin. To this day, the Our Father and Hail Mary have not been put into modern English.
There were few Catholics who dould not sing the Salve Regina in Latin and recite it in English. 'Hail Holy Queen' is memorable because it is not in modern English prose although the familiar version is that of Adrian Fortescue and dates from 1913.
When, in the early 20th century, bi-lingual hand missals appeared, the translation
Big Nose K,
So charitable, as always.
John Nolan,
I have two missals which predate the Council. One of them employs Elizabethan style English and the other employs what I guess you would call standard "modern" English.
We had a rather unfortunate thing occur in the US following the Council where publishers of hymnals would take out terms like "Thee" and "Thou" and substitute their modern equivalents. Did that occur in England? Being a stubborn cuss, I kept singing Thee and Thou.
There has been no Elizabethan since at least Bishop Challoner's time in most of the 1700s. Thee and Thou does not Elizabethan make. These later works (such as by Challoner) were to update the Elizabethan while preserving the beauty, and specificity of the Romance/Roman language capable of expressing the difference in manner of speech between intimates and those of authority. The modern egalitarian manner of speech puts us on equal footing with God as only pals.
The video will not play for me.
TJM
By far the best Catholic hymnal on the market is 'The Catholic Hymn Book' compiled at the London Oratory in 1998 and containing many traditional Catholic hymns found in the old Westminster Hymnal as well as hymns from other denominations which have stood the test of time. There are also Latin hymns and Mass settings. It includes the melodies and is published in hardback by Gracewing.
'The New Catholic Hymnal' came out in 1971 and assiduously removed the 'thees and thous'. So the ecumenical value of including Anglican hymns was greatly reduced. In 'Lead us, Heavenly Father' the line 'For we have no help but thee' was rendered as 'You for help alone have we'. Ouch. It didn't catch on.
Re what Bob at 6.37 wrote about learning Latin...
On Fr Z's blog recently, the famous Latinist, Fr L Foster is quoted, he used to say: "In ancient Rome even the prostitutes and dogs knew Latin."
Fr Z: it is important to remember Latin is a language not multi-variable calculus !!
PG.
Fr McDonald
My main quibbles about the Ordinariate Missal were that a) it adopted the 1970 Lectionary rather than that of Sarum (largely preserved in the BCP) and b) it used the Coverdale psalms, especially noticeable in Ps 42 with its 'Give sentence with me, O God' and its odd arrangement of the verses.
Yet from what I could hear of your preparatory prayers you did not conform to this. How did you get round it?
I liked it and think this would be a satisfactory replacement for the current NO. It was interesting what parts were in Latin and which parts were English.
John Nolan,
Thanks for referencing The Catholic Hymn Book. I will definitely give it a look.
Sorry to hear the "Thee/Thou" police made it over to England,
Living near Oxford I have encoutered some Ordinariate priests. Their liturgy of choice appears to be not 'Divine Worship' but the Tridentine rite.
TJM
I have to warn you about 'The Catholic Hymn Book'. It doesn't include such well-known favourites as 'Here I am Lord' and 'Gather Us In'. There's nothing about singing a new Church into being. Haugen, Haas, Schutte and Inwood are conspicuous by their absence.
I wouldn't want you to rush out and buy it, thereby risking disappointment.
John, you have taken the wind from beneath my wings.
John Nolan,
No worries, I shan’t be disappointed!
I don't know how often I have heard people say "why couldn't we have gotten these beautiful prayers in English" upon seeing an old translation of the Tridentine Mass.
IMO, if we had to end up with a vernacular Mass, then that really should have been the only reform carried out for at least a century. Textual and rubrical changes should have been put on hold until the success of vernacular could really be assessed. That change alone was so big and disruptive to the entire Catholic musical tradition that it should have gotten singular focus. Instead, we ended up with a new Mass that says very little and pretty much lost the tradition of sung liturgy.
NAK
NAK,
That would have been too sensible
My understanding is that only members of the Ordinariate may use their rite. Priests in card instead into a Roman Diocese are NOT permitted to use the Ordinariate Rite. Isn’t that correct, Fr McDonald and doesn’t that mean you have committed a liturgical abuse?
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