- Written by: Alex Walker
The Tablet - Letters Page - 6th December 2017
There were notable exceptions to the consensus among the bishops about the new translations but I think Eamon Duffy is right when he writes that most of us were content “to let sleeping dogs lie”. With the benefit of hindsight, I confess that I was wrong and am therefore partly responsible for the appalling texts with which we have now been saddled. I am sorry!
I am regularly engaged in supplying Masses in our local Clifton parishes and I now constantly have to adapt or change the texts with which we are presented because, as they stand, they are so often unintelligible or so clumsy as to be virtually unusable.
If, as I understand it, Magnum Principium gives the Bishops’ Conference the opportunity to think again, and revisit the 1998 Missal, then such a move would have my full support and encouragement. The matter is urgent; things will not get better and we need to think again.
But then, I am only a retired bishop!
Crispian Hollis
Emeritus Bishop of Portsmouth
Mells, Somerset
- Written by: Alex Walker
A better translation of the phrase “lead us not into temptation” found in the Lord’s Prayer is needed, Pope Francis has said.
“That is not a good translation,” the Pope said during an interview TV2000, an Italian television channel when discussing the Our Father.
Read more: What the phrase should read, Francis explained, is 'don’t let me fall into temptation'
- Written by: Alex Walker
New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference
The new translation of the Mass is six years old. Notwithstanding the introduction of some evocative language, its clunky sentence construction and often awkward vocabulary have tested us all.
A few weeks ago Pope Francis sidelined the principles which guided that translation. He issued a motu proprio (personal edict) shifting the responsibility of liturgical translations from Rome back to national Conferences of Bishops. Thus he has reaffirmed the teaching of the second Vatican Council which states that it is local groupings of Bishops who oversee then approve translations into the language of the land.
- Written by: Alex Walker
Association of Catholics in Ireland
Why exactly did we find ourselves in 2011 suddenly obliged to declare that Jesus as Son of God is ‘consubstantial’ with the Father? Why had it been supposed that this would clarify what had been meant by ‘of one being with’ the Father – the previous translation of the Creed from the Roman missal, used in Ireland since 1972?
- Written by: Alex Walker
Chris McDonnell CT Friday December 01 2017
Our Bishops have spoken. Following their November meeting in Leeds, the Bishops of England and Wales have issued a statement of no-change; the current translation of the Roman Missal will remain in use in spite of the recent statement of Francis restoring the responsibility for liturgical translation to local churches.