The biggest changes in the Catholic Mass in 40 years will greet churchgoers Sunday, the first day of Advent, which marks the beginning of the liturgical year and the Christmas season.
English-speaking Catholics around the world will be celebrating Mass with a more literal translation of the original Latin texts that have guided the liturgy for roughly 2,000 years.
The church hierarchy says the new translation — The Roman Missal, Third Edition — is more accurate, authentic and reverential. Catholics critical of the shift say it is a step backward to less-inclusive, more archaic and stilted language.
The Mass was said in Latin for many centuries, until the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s called for the prayers and instructions of the Catholic Mass to be translated into the local vernacular.
For the past four decades, Catholics have been using a 1973 text (revised again in 1985) that is marked by brevity, concise expression and accessibility, wrote the Rev. Richard Hilgartner, head of the U.S. bishops’ worship office, in the Catholic Update newsletter.
The latest English translation, completed in 2010, is more poetic and more faithful to the Scriptures, Hilgartner wrote. The new missal uses a more formal and elaborate style of English.
For example, the 1970s translation of a Eucharistic Prayer reads: “From age to age You gather a people to Yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of Your name.”
The same prayer in the new missal reads: “You never cease to gather a people to Yourself, so that, from the rising of the sun to its setting, a pure sacrifice may be offered to Your name.”
Yet others balk at many of the changes they say are far from poetry, such as reworking the Nicene Creed, which had said Jesus is “one in being with the Father” and now says Jesus is “consubstantial with the Father.”
A group of local Catholic women who oppose aspects of the new translation will hold a Sunday prayer vigil outside the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, the mother church of the Denver Archdiocese.
“Catholics who have grown up with the freedom and ‘open window’ of Vatican II will find this new translation clumsy and very stilted,” said vigil organizer Mary Ann Cunningham, a retired Latin teacher and member of the Sisters of Loretto.
Cunningham is encouraging Catholics to educate themselves on the changes and to make concerns known to priests, bishops and theologians.
Some priests already have spoken out. Among them, a Seattle priest, the Rev. Michael Ryan, started a petition titled “What If We Just Said Wait,” asking for time for a grassroots review. Almost 23,000 priests, sisters and laypeople have signed it.
Ryan, in articles and letters, has pointed out that at Vatican II, the decision to translate the liturgy out of Latin and into living languages was passed 2,147 to 4.
“Not in my wildest dreams,” Ryan wrote last year, “would it have occurred to me then that I would live to witness what seems more and more like the systematic dismantling of the great vision of the council’s decree. But we Catholics have.”
Kathy Faulkner recently retired from Good Shepherd Parish after 38 years as a music director because, she said, church leaders also are forcing changes in the music, making it less aesthetically pleasing. Replacing the old missal is also a waste of time and money when many parishes can least afford it, she said.
“I can tell you there’s not one Catholic in the pews who asked for these changes,” Faulkner said. “This is not a bottom-up movement.”
In fact, Pope John Paul II in 2000 issued “Liturgiam authenticam,” an instruction that translations of the Mass must adhere to the Latin literally in vocabulary, punctuation, syntax and capitalization.
Cunningham said that a word- for-word literal translation of the Latin doesn’t necessarily lead to greater fidelity to the overarching meaning of a text.
“Jesus didn’t speak Latin,” she said.
A passage that once spoke of how “Christ died for all,” she said, now reads that “Christ died for many.”
This and the other changes have come after 10 years of study and consultation with thousands of experts in the field of linguistics, liturgy and Scripture scholarship, officials at the Archdiocese of Denver said in a recent statement.
Seventeen separate drafts have been scrutinized by 11 English-speaking national bishop conferences throughout the world and given final approval by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome, according to the archdiocese.
U.S. parishes have been preparing for the changes for months.
“How we speak to God must show our profound reverence for the One who made us and saves us,” instructs the website for the Light of the World Parish in Littleton. “How we speak of God should reflect our reverence and belief and in fact be given greater care than a more casual or informal way of communicating with others.”
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver James Conley reviewed the changes in an Oct. 30 column, concluding that they restore transcendence and render a liturgy richer in grace and beauty that will inspire Catholics to contemplate the meaning of the Mass and the sacrament of Eucharist (Holy Communion) at its center.
“This should be exciting to every one of us,” Conley wrote. “Because, when you think about it, the Eucharist is what we ‘do’ as Catholics. Liturgy forms the heart and soul of our Catholic identity.”
Faulkner said the new translation strikes her as awkward and convoluted.
“And there are even deeper theological implications,” she said. “There is not one female pronoun in the whole Mass now.”
Mary Ann Coyle, another member of the Sisters of Loretto, said it’s important to use gender-sensitive language that is inclusive.
“We the people are the church too,” Coyle said. “It’s not just the hierarchy.”
Eileen Mast, a lifelong Catholic who will join the vigil outside the cathedral, said she is disappointed in the new missal.
“I love the church I grew up in,” Mast said. “It formed me. I grew up in the ’60s with Vatican II. We’ve spent 40 years reaching for inclusiveness and ecumenicalism. I don’t want to see that going away.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
