A Debate For My Classical Scholars
All one of them (as far as I know) who is expected to be away from his desk all weekend.
Wheat & Weeds - Everybody Stay Calm
The fraught and tempestuous debate surrounding “et cum spiritu tuo”.
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News Blinks
May 29th, 2006 at 3:02 am
My bugbear has always been translating “Credo” as “we believe” - I’ve never felt confident about speaking for the bloke stood next to me in the pew, he might just be turning up on Sunday for the company, after all. Or maybe he’s got a crush on the priest. And saying something that’s a blatant mistranslation goes against the grain as well.
The “under my roof” bit is a direct quote from the centurion whose servant Our Lord cured, and who so impressed him with his humulity and obedience - we’re trying to evoke the same feeling in ourselves before receiving the sacrament.
For reasons I needn’t go into here my school had a very early preview of the new liturgy back in 1969, with all sorts of wheezes - congregation standing round the altar in the sanctuary, communion under both kinds, “innovative” bidding prayers (one had fun with those!) - being given a trial to see how they worked. Then came the day the new text of the liturgy came out and, well, it killed all enthusiasm for the changes stone dead. The language really was of such banality even the thickoes in the school were looking askance. Suddenly the Mass wasn’t the most stupendous event in human history - the offering of a perfect sacrifice to God (OK, try and think of an event more stupendous!)- but rather a bit of a get-together with some gush and uplift about being a bit nicer to one another and maybe having a coffee afterwards. If the liturgical specialists didn’t find the Mass important, why should anyone else?
Cardinal Heenan of Westminster was shown the new liturgy at about the same time. He immediately forecast that it would empty the churches of men. Which it did.
May 29th, 2006 at 5:18 am
What’s a “bidding” prayer?
May 29th, 2006 at 5:18 am
It can’t be like atonement by Open Outcry?
May 29th, 2006 at 8:49 am
It’s the bit after the homily when one asks for something specific, or perhaps fairly specific, and the lector says “Lord hear us” and the congregation answers “Lord graciously hear us”.
One can pray about anything. Once, in a spirit of fellowship and outreach, I got the lector to read a prayer asking God’s mercy, forgiveness and grace for a leading theologian (Catholic, ordained) who’d just run off with a rather toothsome graduate student (female, usually was in those days). The priest flashed a look of unfocused anger at us all. Then it got a bit more focused and I was on the receiving end of an unfortunate interview after Mass. Happy days!
May 29th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Haha!
Damn I forgot what I was going to Oh right, who says Lord graciously hear us? It’s Lord hear our prayer. Jesu, we get the boring version of the boring version!
I went to a Latin mass at Stanford once (they have the loveliest church, if you’re ever in the area) and obviously I couldn’t quote any of it, but I could quote you any of the regular mass either, afterwards, so… The thing that has me worried about all this is that I step foot inside a church just twice a year now (thank god for Christmas and Easter this year or I couldn’t say that) and I can still speak along all the proper responses with everyone else, it’s so ingrained. If they change anything, though, it’ll through me right off and I’ll be completely lost. I’d make an analogy to a drivetrain, but I’m not that good about cars.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:24 am
O! I’ve always known those as The Prayers of the People.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:46 am
No, people soon got used to it. The responses at Evensong (the Anglican amalgam of Vespers and Compline) are so beautiful that I’d go to it even were it not for the beautiful language, sublime music and the clergy kept in their place. It’s a liturgy that makes, say, being gay seem irrelevant. Which it is, in one sense.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:57 am
“Thank God for Christmas and Easter” Isn’t that precisely what we as Christians are meant to be doing anyway?
Funny how much Latin stays with one even though one hasn’t heard it since about 1970. The Christmas Gradual and verse - “Tecum pricipium in die virtutis tuae, in splendoribus sanctorum ex utero ante luciferum genui te. Dixit Dominus Domino meo sede ad dextris meis donec ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum. Alleluia alleluia. Dominus dixit ad me: Filius meus es tu. Ego hodie genui te. Alleluia alleuia.”
Latin sort of moves in on one, and it’s quite pleasant to be able to write that out without having to refer to one’s liber usualis. More practically, it gives one something to think upon at Christmas when one finds oneself stuck on a bus with nothing to read.