At the moment there is some troubling stuff in the ether about the new translation of the Mass, including an emotive but very wrong and rather wicked article in America magazine written by a rather senior American priest from Seattle, Monsignor Michael G. Ryan, aimed at inciting priests do stupid things.
Ryan somehow sees the new translation as a sign of the systematic “dismantling” of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. Such a charge is simply unsustainable from the text of Sacrosanctum Concilium, especially since it is obvious to anyone of goodwill that the new translation in fact aims at making the real richness of the content of the liturgy (the “people’s prayer”, if you will) actually MORE accessible to the people than the previous translation did.
Monsignor Ryan tries to substantiate the “dismantling” claim by referring to articles 36 and 40 of SC. I don’t see how that supports his claim, since those articles provide for Bishops Conferences to approve translations and submit them to the Holy See. Ryan presumes that the Holy See doesn’t have a role in this pastoral process, and that the proposed translations can’t be “ initiated, nitpicked and controlled by it”. Nothing in SC says that the Holy See shouldn’t exercise any initiative, and the fact that the Council said that the Holy See should have the final say on the translations is ignored by Ryan. What Ryan is doing is trying to suggest that the ecclesiology permeating the Council texts is somehow being dismantled by the wicked Pope and his minions.
As far as ecclesiology goes, I’ll be backing Ratzinger as an interpreter of the Council as a safer bet than Ryan, who has been rector of the cathedral in Seattle since 1988 and is probably therefore a protégé of Archbishop Hunthausen (in other words, there’s a bit of “baggage” there...)!
About the new texts themselves, Ryan feels that they are “not ready for our parishes.” Now notice this: not that “our parishes are not ready for the new texts”, but the other way around! Ecclesiology again. But it isn’t Vatican II ecclesiology that Ryan is espousing, so far as I can see because Vatican II ecclesiology would want the pastors to help their brothers and sisters to participate in the liturgy, not to leave them poorly catechised and languishing! “No, we’re comfortable as we are! Don’t disturb us!”
OK, so Monsignor Ryan and some others don’t like the style of language in the new translations. He makes that perfectly clear.
Fine. But Vatican II doesn’t give Ryan the call, it gives the Bishops' Conferences and the Holy See the call, and these have now pursued that part of their pastoral duty. What Rome, the Bishops' Conferences, and priests in parishes and cathedrals need to do is to cultivate an understanding of the prayers and the language that is being freshly presented by the Church. New wine in new skins – this should be a time of excitement and refreshment from the new texts: our ancient but ever-new Catholic faith heard with new joy and thoughtfulness. But sadly some priests of a certain age are too much fond of their present set of wine-skins.
And I find the language of Monsignor Ryan and his ilk (that American bishop Trautman is another) very, very patronising. He says that at a recent dinner conversation his friends’ reaction to the expression “incarnate of the Virgin Mary” was “somewhere between disbelief and indignation”. Absolutely no sign of comprehension that outside of Seattle, in Australia and elsewhere we’ve been using “incarnate” quite happily for decades. And no awareness of how laden with meaning “incarnate” is –not to mention that it is so obviously closer to both the Latin model text and the Greek creedal statements and all the beautiful theology and truths they rest on. Ryan and his dinner-party apparently want to deprive the dumb lay people of the language of the Christian faith. But Vatican II did not put the decision into the hands of a Seattle dinner-party, thank God.
Here’s a very pastoral statement for you: “what if we were to trust our best instincts and defend our people from this ill-conceived disruption of their prayer life?” What, people have to be defended against words of more than two syllables? Their prayer-life will be disrupted by rich scriptural allusions? I don’t think so!
I think what’s really bugging Monsignor Ryan and friends, (including some a little closer to home) is the prospect of having to grow a bit themselves, of having some of their prejudices challenged, and of having to be really pastoral, and having to explore more deeply the spirit of Vatican II.
