An even-handed article about the upcoming vote on translation changes for the Mass.
It has a perfectly awful example of gender-revisionist language, which happens to be very appropriate following Trinity Sunday, and one I could have gone my whole life without reading:
Consider the most common Catholic utterance: ”In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” It is translated, literally, as ”In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
To the horror of traditional Catholics, some groups — including Dignity USA, a coalition of gay and lesbian Catholics — offer ”In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier” as a gender-neutral alternative.
It has one sensible quote from Bob Sungenis, and another that attempts to boil down the translation issues a little too far:
‘Modernists don’t like redundancy,” he said. ”Traditionalists love it because it reinforces in their mind the point to be made. The modernists want to streamline things. The problem with streamlining is you take away the effect, cadence and rhythm of words.”
Saying “modernists want to streamline things” is a bit like saying that Islamic terrorists want to “have a greater voice in the political struggles of the Middle East.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with things like the Gloria settings for the last 40 years. Catholic hymnal publishers will need to clear cut hectares upon hectares for the reprints. I bet some pastors will be happy they have OCP’s disposable hymnals.
My prediction: if the translation changes go thru, we’ll have the same bishops who act as if the only change in the GIRM was to have congregants stand through communion come up with some convoluted reason to implement only a small amount of the changes.
I understand the Antiochian Orthodox archdiocese of North America has put Episcopalian baptisms on the “conditionally re-baptise” list when they’re dealing w/ converts.
It seems the reason is the popular use of the “Creator/Redeemer/Sanctifier” phrase by some Episcopalian ministers during Baptisms.
Amazing… Father, Son and Holy Spirit is so fundamental. You can’t get around the gender issue just by mucking up how you refer to the Trinity – it pervades everything that is Christian.
“And with your spirit” is a more verbatim translation. And in Latin or Latin based languages it works well. But in English, it just sounds goofy. Do other non-Latin languages use it without sounding awkward (eg, German)?
Scott Hahn deals with the Creator/Redeemer/Sanctifier schtick in one of his books – perhaps “A Father Who Keeps His Promises?” It’s worth looking up, but a) it’s 1:13 am and b) I don’t know where it is offhand.
Bill,
Ironically enough, Hahn expresses his disgust for Creator/Redeemer/Santifier in First Comes Love. The critics who most rabidly accused him of blasphemy and heresy due to it always fail to mention that portion of the book in their attacks.