The language of the liturgy: why what we say at Mass matters.

So, the church has a whole team of Bible scholars, writers, and savvy liturgists poised to take a look at Catholic liturgical prayers and readings to make them more faithful translations as well as beautiful and memorable. Sounds great? Not to some in the church who fear this group is out to destroy the very foundations of Catholic worship.

How can such a serious and quiet group be the cause of such an uproar? To find out, U.S. CATHOLIC invited James Schellman, associate director of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, to tell us what the commission has been up to and why it's got some powerful people fighting mad.

What is the International Commission on English in the Liturgy?

During the Second Vatican Council, when the liturgy was sanctioned in the vernacular, a group of English-speaking bishops thought it would be good to have a common English text for English-speaking Roman Catholics around the world. After preliminary discussion, representatives of a number of English-speaking bishops' conferences met in late 1963 and formally established the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, or ICEL. Ten conferences--and by 1967, 11--established ICEL and commissioned it to call upon experts and, under the episcopal oversight of a board of 11 bishops, develop a common English text of the church's liturgy.

ICEL's mandate includes translating the Latin texts of the liturgy and composing new English prayer texts out of the tradition and in the idiom of the English language. The new texts would serve as supplementary texts to the translated Latin texts and address things that the Latin didn't. A third component of the mandate from the conferences of bishops was that all this translation and new composition be done with ecumenical sensitivity and ecumenical awareness. The bishops laid out all of these tasks in 1964, yet it's these very tasks that are causing some friction right now--30 years later.

What friction?

In what is a very moderate project under the bishops' direction for moving the church forward another few steps in the liturgical renewal, ICEL is becoming a lightning rod for issues in the life of the church at present. ICEL is trying to create prayer texts that will be the enduring possession of the present and future generations of Catholics.

This involves the major task of revising the present texts to make them more faithful, beautiful, and memorable. One of the controversies that arises in the midst of all this is inclusive language. Archconservatives are trying to paint every concern for inclusiveness and every feminist consideration as radical. Most of the church realizes that we have to find more inclusive terms for people, as is evident, for example, in the U.S. bishops' and Canadian bishops' guidelines on inclusive language. But suddenly, in the ICEL revision, it has become a battle even to use generic terms in place of the word man. ICEL has been using inclusive language for a decade and a half in texts long since approved by the conferences and confirmed by Rome. Now archconservatives want to deny the evolution of English usage. Nowadays the use of man as a generic reference can cause exclusion or, at the very least, confusion in the liturgical assembly.

ICEL's first translation of the sacramentary came out in 1973. To make the address of God in the prayers more concrete, the 1973 texts used Father many more times than did the Latin. The revision of the 1973 texts that ICEL is currently preparing is closer to the Latin. The revised texts, therefore, use Father less frequently than the 1973 edition. This should satisfy people who thought the first translation strayed too much from the Latin, but some of those same people want the 1973 usages of Father retained because, they say, that for ICEL to take those references away--even if the Latin doesn't have them--is to say that God is not our Father. This, of course, is not ICEL's intention any more than it is that of the Latin corpus of prayers.

What are the steps of getting these texts approved?

Everything that is eventually passed has been through at least six levels of approval before it's even called an ICEL text. This involves first a committee process with a couple of levels of approval; then ICEL's advisory committee of experts who must approve the work before it goes to ICEL's episcopal board for careful scrutiny and, once the bishops are satisfied, final approval. This ICEL text then goes to the conferences of bishops--the American conference, the conference of England and Wales, the Canadian conference, and 23 other conferences of bishops. If they approve it, then every single thing goes to Rome for what's called the confirmation of the episcopal conference's action. With Rome's confirmation, it becomes the official liturgical text of that conference. Just the final two stages of conference approval and Roman confirmation can take two or three years.

Can you give us some samples of ICEL's original prayers and translations?

ICEL has created about 150 original prayers, which can be used at Sunday Masses and major feast days. There will be three additional opening prayers beside the Latin translation, which will draw their inspiration from the gospel of the day. Here is an original opening prayer for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B:

O God,

you graft us onto Christ, the true vine,

and, with tireless care,

you nurture our growth in knowledge and reverence.

Tend the vineyard of your Church,

that in Christ each branch may bring forth

to the glory of your name

abundant fruits of faith and love.

Grant this through Jesus Christ, the resurrection and the

life,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy

Spirit,

God for ever and ever.

This opening prayer picks up on the image of the day very strongly. There's a heightened ritual opportunity to experience the season from Sunday to Sunday.

From the beginning, ICEL has composed some original texts because its mandate called for it. Its current mandate has also been to work on revising the 1973 translations. Here are a few samples of current 1973 texts and the proposed revisions awaiting approval.

This is the current opening prayer for December 18:

All-powerful God,

renew us by the coming feast of your Son

and free us from our slavery to sin.

Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

That translation took the essence of the Latin prayer and conveyed it in straightforward English. With the following revision, ICEL has tried to use strong images in service of the coherence and memorability of the whole prayer:

All-powerful God,

we are oppressed and weighed down

by the ancient yoke of sin.

Grant that the birth of your only Son,

so long awaited, yet always new,

may deliver us and set us free.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy

Spirit,

God for ever and ever.

"Oppressed and weighed down," "yoke of sin," "so long awaited, yet always new," these lines create an interior rhythm to the language and capture a little more of the spirit behind the original Latin.

Here's another example from the text for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Current version:

Father of peace,

we are joyful in your Word,

your Son Jesus Christ,

who reconciles us to you.

Let us hasten toward Easter

with the eagerness of faith and love.

We ask this through our Lord

Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and

the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Proposed revision:

In a wonderful manner, Lord God,

you reconcile humankind to yourself

through your only Son, the eternal Word.

Grant that your Christian people

may press on toward the Easter sacraments

with lively faith and ready hearts.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy

Spirit,

God for ever and ever.

Obviously even the address is more striking in the proposed revision--"In a wonderful manner, Lord God." And the change from "toward Easter" to "toward the Easter sacraments" is about the whole trajectory of the liturgical prayer of the Lenten season, which aims toward the sacraments of initiation. These sacraments are the culmination of experiencing the risen Christ.

Why did ICEL decide to revise their 1973 translations?

What we do at worship forms us for better or worse. Think of how the King James Version of the Bible formed the majority of English-speaking Protestants for several centuries. Their understanding of God, worship, and religious language itself was significantly shaped by that translation of scripture. For Catholics, the dialogic nature of the Mass--the invitation or proclamation and response--has formed us as a worshiping community, so it is very important what we say.

When the council decided that Catholics would, for the first time in more than a millennium, worship in a language that they understood, we had no tradition of that. We had vernacular prayer forms and novenas, but we did not have the official liturgy in our own language. The first attempts at crafting a language for worship had intelligibility as its guiding principle. The language had to be very simple and clear for the speaker and for the hearer because it was such a new experience. Now, after nearly 25 years of vernacular worship in English, we are ready to work toward a language that is more beautiful and memorable--a language that has greater rhythm and cadence in the lines for spoken use. It takes time to do this, so from the start, the renewal of the liturgy presumed that there would be a phase where a second generation of texts would be developed from the first.

We're forming generations of Catholics with our liturgical texts, and it's going to take a generation or two of work to find out how to do that best--how we make it possible for English-speaking Catholics to worship effectively before the living God. We have to pay careful attention to the original Latin texts, but we can't just have literal translations. We need to enrich the language with scriptural images and metaphors. With Vatican II, the church rediscovered that the liturgy is both a divine and human event. It's up to us to work at things human; they can always be improved upon and made more effective.

What work has ICEL done on the structure of the prayers at Mass, or the

Order of the Mass?

The Missale Romanum, or Roman Missal, which contained the celebrant's prayers of the Mass, along with general instructions and ceremonial directives, was divided into the sacramentary, containing all of the Mass texts used by the priest on Sundays and weekdays and the lectionary, containing the scripture readings and responses. The Latin text of the sacramentary was revised and issued in 1970. In 1973 ICEL put out its first English edition of the sacramentary, and we're now working on the second edition.

When the Roman edition came out, there were numerous changes already in place in the dialogue of the Mass. What had up to that point been exchanges between the priest and the altar servers became dialogue between the priest and the assembly or the ministers and the assembly. In addition to more dialogue between the presider and the assembly, acclamatory material, such as the Holy, Holy, became not the preserve of musical specialists but the assembly's proper acclamation.

The Order of the Mass also went from a one-year lectionary, usually offering two readings for each day, to a three-year lectionary in which each year has three readings--an Old Testament, New Testament, and gospel reading--and a psalm. That was a massive change.

The only really significant change that ICEL is proposing in the structure of the Order of Mass is a simplification of the introductory rites. The need for this simplification was expressed again and again in the consultation with the conferences of bishops that ICEL conducted in the mid 1980s. The response from within the U.S. conference was particularly strong on this point. Most elements of the proposed simplification are already officially approved and in use by Catholics in the other major language groups.

Is the lectionary currently in use an ICEL translation?

No. Only the psalm responses and verses before the gospel--the gospel acclamation--were prepared by ICEL.

On a related point, it is worth mentioning that an ecumenical association called the Consultation on Common Texts, representing 16 churches in the United States and Canada, has produced a common lectionary for use by the churches. This is not a translation but rather a system for reading the scriptures at Sunday worship. This lectionary is actually based on the Roman lectionary and is now being used by the Presbyterian Church, United Methodist Church, Reformed Church of America, United Church of Christ, various churches of the Anglican communion around the world, and a number of other churches. Both the Lutheran Church and the Episcopal Church in the United States are formally considering it.

ICEL provides Roman Catholic participation to the ecumenical association that prepared this "common" adaption of the Roman lectionary. To this point the Roman authorities have not sanctioned Catholic use of this lectionary. But there is great hope that the recently released Vatican Ecumenical Directory, which explicitly encourages such ecumenical cooperation on the lectionary, will eventually make Roman Catholic use of a common lectionary possible.

It is a major achievement for many English-speaking Christian bodies that from Sunday to Sunday the scripture readings and any of the prayers each of us uses are largely the same. This is one of the happy results of the original charge of the bishops to ICEL that it show ecumenical awareness and sensitivity in its work.

Besides the language of the liturgy, is ICEL proposing any other

significant changes at Mass?

The first and most obvious change for celebrants is that what is right now a one-volume sacramentary is to be put out in two volumes. The reason for this change is to underline the principle of the reform that emphasizes that Sunday is the preeminent Eucharist because, as the day of the Resurrection, it is the original feast day. So volume one has all the material for Sundays and major feasts, and volume two has the materials for weekday celebrations.

Within this revised two-part sacramentary, there are three elements that we're working on: one is the language itself; the second is how to make the elements of celebration more effective and clarify what they are; and the third is physical arrangement of the book to make it more appropriately a minister's book. The importance of the books that we're producing now is they invite a minister to sit down with them beforehand and read the introductory material, which is reflective and invites them to think about their ministry in this particular setting.

What we're trying to do is clarify the principles and practical directives of the renewal. So before each major section of the sacramentary there is a pastoral introduction that brings together the norms for the season, the themes of the season, and something about the lectionary readings. The pastoral introduction to the Order of Mass offers guidance on the celebration based on the church's directives. It makes clear, for example, where music is presumed in the Eucharist and where it still ought to be done. Some of the conferences will propose changes and additions beyond what ICEL is offering.

In the U.S., for example, consideration is being given to proposing two places for the sign of peace, either at the communion rite where it is now or at the end of the Liturgy of the Word, which is the other historic and traditional place it could occur--just before you bring your gifts to the altar, you reconcile with your brother and sister. But, of course, these changes are going to cause problems for some people. Some will be archconservatives who don't want the sign of peace at Mass at all and have advised priests that it is optional--although it's not--the invitation is optional.

Why do so many Catholics have a problem with the sign of peace?

One reason some people find it difficult is that they're just about to receive Jesus, and their concentration is on that. They don't want to have to think about the person next to them. In fact, to say that Jesus is at that moment present in the person next to them may be hard for them to take as seriously as Jesus' presence in the consecrated bread and wine.

The theological reason some Catholics have trouble sharing the sign of peace is because for so long our understanding of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist was narrowed solely to the Consecration and, then, only those who were worthy could receive Communion. But our faith tradition has always said that Jesus is present in the bread and wine that, when consecrated, become his body and blood. Vatican II broke open that concept, recovered the tradition, and said that Jesus is present in the assembly, in the priest member of that assembly, in the Word proclaimed, and in the bread and wine that become Christ's body and blood. That was a much fuller understanding, spread throughout the whole liturgical celebration, of Jesus' presence, and it is still difficult for many Catholics to grasp that theology.

Catholics were now to understand that the Mass--the Eucharist--is the act of the church, and the church is the assembly of Christ--head and body, priest and people. This is a very traditional concept that was recovered 30 years ago and is simply being underlined in the revised sacramentary.

So ICEL's newest revisions to the sacramentary aren't really that

drastic?

No, not at all. Most of what's being done is to provide revisions and new texts to make the sacramentary more accessible to priests and the prayers more evocative and prayerful for all. There's nothing terribly new that's being proposed. ICEL is being criticized by archconservatives--not conservatives, mind you, but archconservatives--who claim that ICEL is saying that the priest is just a leader of the assembly and not the person who acts in persona Christi. Fundamentally that criticism seems to mean that, in the archconservatives' minds, the priest and no one else is representing Christ in the assembly. The documents of Vatican II say something very different--namely that the assembly together with the priest offer the eucharistic sacrifice.

That reform is what archconservatives find so objectionable. They have been unhappy with it for 30 years, and ICEL is invariably seen as a progressive element of the church because it is an official instrument of the reform. By many of our standards, including mine, ICEL is very moderate. But because it's intimately bound up with the liturgical renewal, it will be seen by the archconservative mentality as having a liberal, progressive agenda.

In Chicago, there's a group forming called We Believe to counteract the archconservative group called Credo, which is trying to persuade the bishops that ICEL is unorthodox. In my opinion, the only way to counter such fear tactics is to say, "This is not the way a church carries on its life, and this is not faithful to Christ." Once we can establish a level of courtesy and Christian charity, then we can start discussing what archconservatives say are the issues. But if we can't get to the point of common courtesy and charity, we're never going to get to genuine Christian dislogue. The problem right now is that there is an atmosphere of fear-mongering, charge-countercharge, recrimination that really makes people mute, including many bishops. Such tactics bring the church to pained silence. It is notable that this kind of stridency is absent from discussions of the ICEL revisions in the other English-speaking bishops' conferences.

With all the controversy, what keeps ICEL going?

The organization has a continuing mandate to carry on its work within and for the church. Until that changes, the many faithful Catholics around the world who do ICEL's work--bishops, priests, religious, laity--will continue to do it with dedication and will, it seems, have to put up with some abuse.

There is a context for understanding where we are as a church. For nearly 100 years before the Second Vatican Council, there was a culture of fear among Catholics. But in the last few decades the church has become the outspoken champion before the world of some of the very developments that previously we feared and even condemned. With the Second Vatican Council the church has once again placed itself in the world, not outside the world, but not of it, either. We have accepted anew the perennial challenge to become Christ to the world. In doing so, we run the risk of being made in the world's image, but it is always our task to critique our ecclesial life against gospel values. The world is from God, and flawed though it is by sin, Catholic doctrine proclaims it fundamentally good and redeemable by God.

Fear is not where we belong. I believe we have learned too much in 30 years to go back to that again. Hope is our vocation.