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June 12, 2011

Comments

shane

One change in the liturgical translations that would really make my heart sing would be the restoration of 'thee' and 'thou'. I remember the first time I went to a TLM (High Mass in St. Audeon's in Dublin) they had those beautiful Una Voce missalettes in gorgeous Elizabethan English. I was enthralled by the beauty of the prose. In fact the translations in old hand missals are generally vastly superior to either the new or old ICEL.

I completely agree that the new translations are of poor literary merit. But I certainly don't accept that they're worse than the current translations. The 1966 Irish translation of the Roman Canon is much better than 1973 or 2010, although still vastly inferior to Dom Murray's 1956 translation: http://lxoa.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/canon.pdf

Perhaps we should just nick Coverdale. Modern man seems to be incapable of anything in the realm of beauty.

Spirit of Vatican II

Sorry, Dom Placid's version, at first glance, is hopeless -- all those "deigns". The 1966 version you sent was far better. The new translations were launched somewhere in Sydney today; all known responses from participants are negative, some violently so -- as expected. Interesting to see if any positive responses emerge.

For modern beauty, the French translations are quite good (a poet was involved, of course).

Tiggy

Oh Fr O leary, you really need to move on. Its a done deal.

Tiggy

Shane,
How right thou art!

Spirit of Vatican II

Tiggy, I doubt if Trinitarian heresy can be regarded as a "done deal" -- see the posting on that. Your failure to find any enthusiasm for the new translations on your recent trip to Ireland tells how far we are from "moving on" as you put it. I think people should refuse to budge, and that in effect they will -- but probably now in the time-honored way of passivity, apathy, and the continued quiet drifting of feet toward the exit. Sad, unutterably sad; the People of God deserved better.

Tiggy

The people of God and God himself deserve better than the half baked English we have at the moment.ICEL was a Idisaster. I doubt as many people will walk as did when the 1970 s "Nu Church" stated evolving. Thankfully now halted i most places.

shane

The Irish texts are being changed also, except this time they're being translated from the English rather than the Latin:

http://irishcatholics.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=catholics&thread=592&page=2#9277

Posted by: Beinidict Ó Niaidh

I think Father O'Leary, as much as I disagree with him, has a point. I got pretty afraid for the situation in the English Mass, when I saw this:

http://tuamarchdiocese.org/2011/05/irish-language-liturgy-committee-for-the-new-missal/

There is not one serious scholar of Modern Irish on this committee. There is only one member of this committee with extensive pastoral experience in the Gaeltacht areas - that is Bishop Brendan Kelly and he only represents one of the three major dialects of Irish. Bishop Boyce is a native Irish speaker from the Donegal Gaeltacht, but he has neither academic background nor working experience in the language. Archbishop Neary and Bishop Boyce have significant theological scholarship. This contrasts poorly to the committee who drafted the original Irish language Mass, who between them had significant background in Modern and Old Irish, Ancient Classics, Hebrew, Theology and other languages and who represented each of the seven main sub-dialects of Irish and indeed more (Rev Brendan Devlin, MA, DD, was a native speaker of Irish from the now almost dead Sperrin Mountain Gaeltacht in Co Tyrone).

BTW - the original Irish is much closer to the Latin proto-Mass than the English Mass is.

My point - if this is how the committee for the liturgy in Irish is constituted, how will it go with other languages.

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