As the bishops gather in Baltimore this week, an important topic of discussion will be the new mass translation.

Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes a look:

Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie has led the charge against what he sees as a “slavish” rendering of Latin into convoluted, ungrammatical English.

“American Catholics have every right to expect a translation of the new missal to follow the rules for English grammar. But this violates English syntax in the most egregious way,” he said.

The bishops didn’t write it. Rome requires one international committee to translate for each major language, and this text is intended to serve nations as diverse as Ireland and Pakistan. The bishops can propose amendments, but Vatican officials have final say over the text.

In 2001, the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments published Liturgiam Authenticam, new rules for translation. It stressed faithfulness to fourth-century Latin texts that were translations from Greek, Hebrew and other languages. It encouraged a special vocabulary for prayer that differed from everyday speech.

“Thus it may happen that a certain manner of speech which has come to be considered somewhat obsolete in daily usage may continue to be maintained in the liturgical context,” it said.

Bishop Trautman, a biblical scholar and a past president of the bishops’ committees on doctrine and liturgy, has been the most vocal critic of the resulting translations. The bishops have already approved most of the new Mass. The last few parts — mostly prayers for saints days — are now up for a vote.

Bishop Trautman’s objections aren’t to the most recent changes but to the tone of the entire translation. He wants the bishops to reject at least one set of translations this week, then send a high-level delegation to Rome to work out revisions throughout the Mass.

“This is our last chance to raise these issues and talk about them. But the parliamentary laws probably won’t allow us to get at the heart of the issue [in Baltimore], because we can only discuss and debate the four items before us,” he said.

In a recent lecture at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he cited examples of mangled English.

A Lenten prayer says, “May we bring before you as the fruit of bodily penance a cheerful purity of mind.”

A current Easter prayer says, “Almighty and eternal God, for the glory of your name fulfill the promise you made long ago to men and women of faith, to bless them with descendents forever. Increase your adopted children throughout the world, that your Church may see accomplished the salvation which those saints of old so firmly expected.”

The new version is, “Almighty everlasting God, for the honor of your name, surpass what you pledged to the faith of the Patriarchs, and by sacred adoption increase the children of promise so that your Church may now see abundantly fulfilled what the holy ones of old never doubted would come to pass.”

“If you just read them silently, it isn’t so bad. But, if you read it out loud, it’s hard to understand,” Bishop Trautman said.

He already has lost arguments against changing the Nicene Creed’s declaration that Jesus is “of one being with the Father” into “consubstantial with the Father.” His focus now is on an issue that any parochial school student should understand: poor grammar and syntax.

You can read more examples of that “poor grammar and syntax”
here.

And the USCCB link with the new mass translation is right here.