What do these prayers really say?

It's natural for a Catholic teacher to want to illustrate points through the liturgy. If the law of prayer governs the law of faith, then the liturgy should back up everything that a catechist would want to say.

However, we all know how bad our current English translation is, and how it fails to convey the meaning of the Latin prayers that it should be rendering in elevated and accurate English. Concepts like 'grace' seem never to make it into our prayers. This makes it a near-useless catechetical tool.

(And what damage has the expunging of any mention of supenatural grace done to the faith of the Church? I remember once reading this rather extraordinary letter. I suppose it is authentic?)

It is common place to excuse the poor standard of the current translation by saying that it had to be done very quickly, and mistakes are inevitable. Also inevitable, it is said, is the periodic re-translation of vernacular texts, made necessary by the changes in idiom that are inherent in the nature of a 'living' language.

In the first place, many of the prayers were already translated in the old missals. Where these were not ideal for public recitation, alterations could have been made. But there is no question of the ICEL translators being the first ones to translate many of the introits, collects, post-communion prayers etc., not to mention the fixed part of the Mass. Secondly, the mistakes are not of the sort that are made in a rush. For example, a 12-year-old knows how 'credo' should be translated, and it's not in the first person plural. In other words, the errors are deliberate, not the result of time-pressure.

In the second place, I don't see why vernacular translations should have to be made every three decades. One need only point to the Book of Common Prayer, which was used in the Anglican church for several centuries and is still beautiful today (theological difficulties aside).

It is good news, therefore, that the reformed ICEL has finished its draft of the new Roman Missal (2002). This now goes to the bishops' conferences, who have until March 2008 to make recommendations. It is hoped that the whole thing will be finalised by the end of 2008, and then things just need rubber stamping.

It will have been a long time coming, but with Summorum Pontificum one might well ask whether it will be enough to preserve the reformed Roman Rite in the long run. As the old rite becomes more common I think that many people, especially us young people, will vote with their feet.

Lefebrvolet

Model shown is in an eastward facing position.

Prof Cardini, in his excellent remarks about the new film about the well-known heretic, schismatic, and usurper Queen Elizabeth I (I'm a proud member of a facebook group dedicated to the propogation of this idea), makes another good point. Anti-Catholicism, he says, stems from a knowledge among other faiths that "without Catholicism, Christianity would lose its true fulcrum". Ouch. Try this one out on your Protestant friends.

John Henry Newman - All Saints Day

So many were the wonderful works which our Saviour did on earth, that not even the world itself could have contained the books recording them. Nor have His marvels been less since He ascended on high;—those works of higher grace and more abiding fruit, wrought in the souls of men, from the first hour till now,—the captives of His power, the ransomed heirs of His kingdom, whom He has called by His Spirit working in due season, and led on from strength to strength till they appear before His face in Zion. Surely not even the world itself could contain the records of His love, the history of those many Saints, that "cloud of Witnesses," whom we today celebrate, His purchased possession in every age! We crowd these all up into one day; we mingle together in the brief remembrance of an hour all the choicest deeds, the holiest lives, the noblest labours, the most precious sufferings, which the sun ever saw. Even the least of those Saints were the contemplation of many days,—even the names of them, if read in our Service, would outrun many settings and risings of the light,—even one passage in the life of one of them were more than sufficient for a long discourse. "Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?" [Numb. xxiii. 10.] Martyrs and Confessors, Rulers and Doctors of the Church, devoted Ministers and Religious brethren, kings of the earth and all people, princes and judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men and children, the first fruits of all ranks, ages, and callings, gathered each in his own time into the paradise of God.

Parochial and Plain Sermons, II

Happy All Saints!

There's Something About Jesus, I

Christ Among the Doctors

Giotto, 1304-6, Cappella Scrovegni, Padua

Beginning our series of excerpts from Pope Benedict's book Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus' wisdom does not proceed from learning, but from His constant dialogue with the Father:

Jesus' teaching is not the product of human learning, of whatever kind. It originates from immediate contact with the Father, from "face-to-face" dialogue - from the vision of the one who rests close to the Father's heart. It is the Son's word. Without this inner grounding, his teaching would be pure presumption. That is just what the learned men of Jesus' time judged it to be, and they did so precisely because they could not accept its inner grounding: seeing and knowing face-to-face.

Again and again the Gospels note that Jesus withdrew "to the mountain" to spend nights in prayer "alone" with his Father. These short passages are fundamental for our understanding of Jesus: they lift the veil of mystery just a little; they give us a glimpse of Jesus' filial existence, into the source from which his action and teaching and suffering sprang ... (p. 7)

Final causation

Why does the movement of natural bodies, like the planets,
give us reason to know that God exists?

Today, my sixth formers were all convinced by St Thomas' fifth 'way'. Just to remind you:

Quinta via sumitur ex gubernatione rerum. Videmus enim quod aliqua quae cognitione carent, scilicet corpora naturalia, operantur propter finem, quod apparet ex hoc quod semper aut frequentius eodem modo operantur, ut consequantur id quod est optimum; unde patet quod non a casu, sed ex intentione perveniunt ad finem. Ea autem quae non habent cognitionem, non tendunt in finem nisi directa ab aliquo cognoscente et intelligente, sicut sagitta a sagittante. Ergo est aliquid intelligens, a quo omnes res naturales ordinantur ad finem, et hoc dicimus Deum.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

The Vocation to Blog

Cardinal Ruini, vicar of the Diocese of Rome and leading ally of Pope Benedict, has turned his thoughts to bloggers.

"A priest from Novara told me that the theme of 'Jesus' is very much discussed by youth in blogs. The focus, though, comes from destructive books that are widespread today, and not from Benedict XVI’s book ‘Jesus of Nazareth.'"

"I don’t understand the Internet, but especially young religious ought to enter blogs and correct the opinions of the youth, showing them the true Jesus.”