Madam, – In relation to the new liturgical texts due for implementation in the Catholic Church next November, it may be of interest to your readers to learn that the liturgical adviser to the American bishops, Fr Anthony Ruff, has recently resigned from his position, saying, “I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity”. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Maybe it’s a good thing that we now have been exposed to the thinking of one of our major theologians as stated by Rev Dr D Vincent Twomey (February 8th). His reasoning would suggest that the celebration of the Eucharist is a ritual being performed by specialists and we, the great unwashed, are sitting in the audience without any connection with what is taking place because it is “beyond immediate comprehension”. He also asserts that ritual cannot be the prisoner of passing fashion. I believe that Jesus cannot be the prisoner of ritual. I am fed up with the process that follows a line that keeps Jesus glued to the manger and nailed to the cross and infers all else is a mystery.
Anyway, what is all this Latin and Greek? We all know Jesus spoke Aramaic. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Voices have been raised against the new Roman Missal because of its use of arcane language. Instead of all this negative comment and nay-saying, surely church members could make an honest effort to give phrases like “consubstantial with” and “and with your spirit” common currency by dropping them into daily conversation.
Failing that, church members might equally be encouraged to speak and write using longer sentences than has heretofore been their wont, to wit: eschewing full stops while favouring commas, sequential semi-colons and – who knows? – perhaps the occasional full colon, followed by an extended hierarchy of Latinate clauses, all the better to underscore the particular, not to say, sacred nature of the entire linguistic edifice.
Even after many years of unstinting effort, few of the Catholic faithful, I fear, will come to love this new variety of Latin-English mishmash. Most, I suspect, will always see it for what it is: a very lame variety of pidgin, dreamed up by men with too much nostalgia for Latin and not enough sense to speak, write and communicate in plain English. – Yours, etc,