Our Readers Respond-Jan. 4, 2012

Readers debate new Mass translation
Editor: Thank you to John Lando for his recent letter expressing his frustration with the new Mass translation. Yes, I attended the informational session at our parish conducted by the priest from our diocese who was promoting the many spiritual benefits of the new translation. After attending several Masses recently I must conclude “the emperor has no clothes.” I would find it hard to believe that using obscure words like “consubstantial” and tortuously constructed prayers is leading anyone to a deeper spiritual relationship with God. This is not the Mass in the vernacular as directed by Vatican II, because no one who speaks English ever speaks this way! I would encourage everyone to read Bishop Donald Trautman, of the Diocese of Erie, PA and a former chairman of the U.S. bishop’s liturgy committee, who gave a speech at the Catholic University of America in 2009 on the (then-) impending new translation. See it here:

http://catholicview.typepad.com/files/trautman-mcmanus-lecture.pdf. Why did the laity, or even the average Catholic pastor, have no input on something with such major implications?
Mary Lu Callahan
Brookhaven

Editor: Mr. Lando’s letter (TLIC 12/21/11) complaining about the “changes” to the Mass, is filled with factual errors and non-sequiturs. First of all, Latin was the linqua franca throughout the Roman empire in the early centuries of the Church and had already become the liturgical language of the Mass by the year 250 AD. It is precisely because it is a “dead language” that it is a perfect liturgical language. Its meaning is stable, predictable, reliable and thereby more able to withstand the mischievous nuances of dissent endured through the centuries. In fact, most of the so-called changes are not changes at all. They are a return to older translations of Latin into English, and are much more accurate and true to the original liturgy. For example, even an amateur Latin scholar knows (or should have known 40 years ago when the substandard translations were done) that you cannot logically contort “Et cum spirito tuo” into “And also with you.” May I respectfully suggest that to be “turned off” by the new liturgy is an intellectual choice. The truth is, 99 percent of Catholics are readily embracing these translations with the intuitive understanding that they will, at long last, restore some lost beauty to the Mass. That is how faith is restored. That’s called a “turn-on,” not a “turn-off.”
John F. Picciano
Westbury

Editor: I have to agree with John Lando’s assessment of the recent changes to the liturgy of the Mass. One definition of translation is “give the sense of or equivalent of.” The latest translation from Latin does not do that for me in numerous places in the Mass, most of which are where the Latin word or term was translated “word for word” apparently without regard for current English usage. Translation is as much an art as a science, the translators appear to  have forgotten the art of translation
Ralph LaMoglia
Wantagh