The members of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) think the words used in today’s Catholic Mass are inadequate and want them changed. If they have their way, within the next two years the Catholic faithful will say new versions of well-established prayers at Mass, including the Creed, the Our Father, and the Gloria. Priests will say new and unfamiliar versions of prayers as well. Most Catholics know nothing of the impending changes. By the time the faithful and most parish priests find out about the changes, they will be too far along to stop.
The thought of changes in the Mass causes many practicing Catholics to shudder, and ICEL’S involvement does not exactly inspire confidence. It has been pushing at the frontiers of Catholic liturgy for nearly three decades, with the consideration of modern “relevance” high on its agenda. It operates under the authority of the English-speaking bishops and cooperates with the interdenominational English Language Liturgical Consultation. Located in Washington, D.C., ICEL was founded in 1963 to carry out the work of translating the Latin into English. Its present 11-man board is chaired by Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati; its executive secretary is Dr. John L. Page; and its Treasurer is Father Frederick J. McManus, former Catholic University professor and longtime liturgical reformer. Its budget is entirely funded from copyright fees paid by missal publishers, and thus it has economic incentives to alter texts regularly.
After almost 30 years of liturgical reformation (and some would say revolution) under the Commission’s guiding hand, a pattern begins to form. Each new “progressive” attempt to improve the Mass presents the danger of making it less distinctively Catholic. The newest revision follows this pattern by making concessions to pressures that have persisted against the Catholic Church for some time.
Consider the proposed changes in the Our Father, from this year’s “Third Progress Report on the Revision of the Roman Missal.” In Christendom at large, no prayer is more well known, beloved, and theologically significant. It is “the most excellent of all prayers,” as one catechism says. ICEL’S revision provides a flavor of what they have done so far to the Roman Missal:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
What is wrong with the version we use now? Not that much, says the Commission, and it acknowledges that “many Christians are deeply attached to more traditional versions.” But that attachment, presumably based on irrational sentiment, must be subordinated to a version “likely to commend itself to widespread ecumenical use.” So in one fell swoop we find that Catholics are to adopt the practice of Protestants since the time of the Reformation, and the Eastern Churches since the early days of the Church, by appending the doxology (“For the kingdom, the power….”) to the prayer. It did not appear at all in the Roman Rite codified at the Council of Trent (1545-63) and appears in the current Mass only after the Libera Nos (“Deliver us”) prayer of the priest.
Yet even Protestants have to acknowledge that current Catholic practice is closer to the biblical text. Such a doxology does not appear at the end of the Lord’s Prayer in either Saint Matthew’s or Saint Luke’s account. There is, of course, nothing wrong with adding praises at the end of prayers, but it is peculiar that Catholics should adopt a version that is backed by neither Scripture nor Catholic tradition. The desire to get along with others may suggest the change, but it is an odd ecumenism that requires Catholics unilaterally to adopt the practices of other churches.
The “archaic” language in the present version—like “who art,” “thy,” “this day”—will all be gone. Few people are willing to defend a high liturgical language any more, and apparently none on the Commission. Indeed, the liturgical reformers seem to prefer the contrived simplicity of the “Children’s Mass.” But if there were ever a time for elevated language, it is here, when we speak a translation of the venerable words our Lord addressed to his Father in Heaven. After all, elevated language is appropriate for the elevated purposes of the Mass—and helps to elevate our thoughts.
But the Commission has other work to do. The word sins will replace trespasses. Why? According to the Commission, “many find” the term “puzzlingly concrete and narrow.” And “lead us not into” becomes “save us from,” a construction warranted by neither the original Greek (“may eisenenkais haymas”) nor the faithfully translated Latin (“ne nos inducas”). “Temptation” becomes “time of trial” because the Commission thinks we need to be more eschatological, that is, thinking about the Last Days. That raises the objection: sin might ensnare us before the end of the world arrives, and it would be a good thing to pray to avoid it. The Commission responds by curiously invoking the authority of Martin Luther. In any case, the new phrase, “Save us from the time of trial,” seems to deemphasize the danger of everyday temptations to sin.
We will no longer say “but deliver us from evil,” since the phrase that precedes it is no longer negative (“Lead us not into temptation”) but positive and presumably more uplifting: “Save us from the time of trial.” To connect the two thoughts, we will have to say “and deliver us from evil.” Yet this translation directly contradicts the Latin: “Sed [“but”] libera nos a malo.” Our liturgical reformers have created such tangles for themselves.
It also appears that the new version will eliminate the traditional priestly Libera Nos, which today is: “Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day.” If the Commission were looking for eschatology, it could have found it here. The prayer refers to waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is a marvelous prayer, and many lay Catholics will miss it.
We should count our blessings, however. The Commission wanted to replace the word Hallowed in the Our Father, since it, too, “has an archaic ring.” But unfortunately, “no satisfactory synonym for it is at hand.” That claim is dubious: a brief glance in a thesaurus lists “divine,” “holy,” “pure,” “sanctified,” and “celestial.” The Commission probably expected too many objections to, “Our Father in heaven, your name is holy,” and so postponed any change.
We are already beginning to see inconsistencies in the Commission’s method of revision. There appears to be no single or even dominant standard driving the changes. Sometimes the Commission actually justifies changes on the basis of fidelity to the Latin text; other times they are willing to scrap the Latin text altogether. The layman, moreover, might object to the entire project since the prayers being altered are memorized prayers, and dramatic changes are disorienting to the faithful. The Commission acknowledges this as a valid objection, but often ignores it.
For instance, in the revisions to the Invitation to Communion (the Ecce Agnus Dei), for example, the faithful will still say, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” The Commission comments that it is left unchanged because “it is a memorized text.” This is a sensible rule; yet everybody memorizes the Our Father and the Creed, and both are dramatically changed in the new translation.
Despite its official explanation, there is probably another reason why the Ecce Agnus Dei remains intact: the Commission has already won its battle over this text in the 1970 version we use today. The appropriate translation from Latin (“et sanabitur anima mea”) would render this passage, “and my soul shall be healed.” We already say “I shall be healed,” which suggests physical healing, instead of “my soul shall be healed,” which conveys a better understanding of grace.
In addition to extreme gestures toward ecumenism and the use of prosaic language, the new version offers predictable obeisance to a more pressing agent of cultural change—feminism. The words of the old Orate Fratres are “Pray, brethren, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” The new version reads, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, pray that our sacrifice will be pleasing to God.” “Brethren” becomes “brothers and sisters,” and “almighty Father” is dropped for simply “God.” The National Organization of Women could not have provided a better rendering.
Yet apart from trendy academics and the Commission’s consultants, how many faithful Catholic women does the present version truly offend? “Brethren” is not supposed to refer exclusively to the male sex, and few really think that it does. (Dictionaries still list “fellow member” as a definition for “brethren.”) It is surely not necessary to drop all references to “almighty Father,” and the Commission apparently agrees, so only drops them most of the time.
Consider the familiar Preface Opening. “Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord” will be tossed out. Its replacement is a wide variety of invocations, including “O God of hope and promise” and “Merciful and faithful God.” But the Commission in other places restores references to God’s eternal power and life. In this liturgical shell game, “God our Father” in the Asperges (Sprinkling with Water) will become “All-powerful and ever-living God,” that phrase having passed the inclusive language test. And in the Eucharistic Prayers IV, the word men is to be dropped most of the time, as it is throughout the revisions. The only consistency is that each change is in accord with contemporary political trends.
The Commission’s changes to the Prefaces that precede the Sanctus (“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord….”) do seem closer to the Latin, in part because the Commission’s 1973 versions were rightly criticized for having strayed from it. What the Catholic faithful will notice is the absence of any recognizable Preface Openings, because these will vary week to week. This continual change is more in line with the Congregational and Baptist traditions, in which liturgical improvisation is seen as a sign of spiritual depth.
In breezing through the revisions, the reader notices dozens of ideologically driven changes. One begins to cast a jaundiced eye over the entire project. Consider the Orate Fratres. Today the faithful say, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name.” Under the revision, the first part of the sentence will be dropped, so it will no longer refer to the priest’s unique power to consecrate the bread. Instead, the faithful will begin the prayer, “For the glory of God’s name,” therefore also getting rid of the reference to the Lord as “him.” The Commission says this is to “overcome the distancing of presider and assembly, and to make the language more inclusive.” But surely the “distance” that recognizes a sacramental distinction between the priest and the faithful is a good thing and should not be “overcome.”
And what is this notion of the priest as a “presider”? Is he offering a sacrifice in the person of Christ, or is he simply representing the people? Indeed, at one point, the Commission transfers the sacramental role of the priest to the community by using grammatical sleight-of-hand with the pronoun “it.” In section one of its Pastoral Introduction, the Commission writes: “In the liturgy of the word the assembly listens with hearts burning… in the liturgy of the eucharist it [the assembly] takes bread and wine, gives thanks, breaks the bread, and receives the body and blood of Christ.” This gives new meaning to “God’s people” exercising “its royal priesthood.”
What, then, becomes of the special role of the priest? Recall that only our separated Protestant brethren have wanted to abolish the priestly office. The Council of Trent spoke to this matter at a time of extreme anti-clericalism. It anathematized anyone who “saith that there is not in the New Testament a visible and external priesthood; or that there is not any power of consecrating and offering the true Body and Blood of the Lord and of forgiving and retaining sins; but only an office and bare ministry of preaching the Gospel.”
When in Church history we find a diminishing of the priesthood we also find corresponding doubts on the nature of the Eucharist. It’s true this time as well. The Catholic doctrine (though a recent poll shows only 30 percent of Catholics believe it) is as follows, according to the standard Question and Answer Catholic Catechism by John A. Hardon, S.J.: “The center of the whole Catholic liturgy is the Eucharist… a sacrament which really, truly, and substantially contains the body, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.” Christ instituted the Apostolic succession so priests could carry on the sacrifice. They are not mere head waiters at a meal shared by believers, as in other churches.
The new revision seems to step away from Catholic doctrine rather than reinforce it. In the Pastoral Introduction, for example, the Commission refers to the Eucharist only in the lower case. Indeed, it wants to make the “Liturgy of the Word” equal in status with the “Liturgy of Eucharist”: “the two principal parts of the Mass are so closely connected as to form one single act of worship.” In another place, the Commission instructs that “biblical readings,” not the Canon itself, are “preeminent among the texts of the Mass.”
Neglecting to remind us of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, the Commission chooses to describe it as a meal, with the Instructions consistently avoiding the term “altar” in preference for the word table. When the altar is referred to, it becomes the place for the “memorial banquet.”
Accordingly, the flat, round Host as we know it seems to be on the way out. The Second Progress Report encourages “the regular use of larger breads.” The Third Progress Report says: “The very nature of sacramental symbolism demands that the elements for the eucharist be recognizable, in themselves and without explanation, as food and drink.” Bread, for example, “should be large enough to be broken and shared with at least some of the faithful, and in color, taste, texture, and smell should be identifiable as bread by those who are to share it.”
Interestingly, the Instructions speak more to the Host’s natural aspects than its supernatural ones. The “smell” of the Host has nothing to do with its power to impart grace, and the problem with “large breads” is obvious enough: they risk particles of the consecrated Host falling to the ground. It’s one thing to denounce “crumb theology” (the alleged obsession with such a risk) and quite another to replace the Host with baguettes.
It is true that receiving communion under both the bread and wine is widespread today, but the Commission suggests this practice is to be preferred to receiving under just one species. “Drinking is an integral part of any meal,” says the Commission. “When communion is received in both kinds the sign of the eucharistic meal appears more clearly and completely.” Does the term “more” also modify “completely”? That would imply that reception of the Eucharist under only one kind is incomplete. It was only a few years ago that the Church’s enemies alone argued on behalf of reception under both species. Conciliar pronouncement has always taught that we are not obliged to receive under both species because Christ exists, wholly and entirely, under the appearances of each element (Trent, in fact, condemned alternative beliefs).
It is difficult to escape the impression that the Commission wants to soften Church teaching on the sacrificial and divine nature of the Eucharist and the priest’s special powers of consecration. What, then, is the Commission’s view of the Church herself? The new Orate Fratres provides some clues. In today’s liturgy, we say “for our good, and the good of all his Church.” Under the revisions, we find that the Mass will be offered “for the good of the Church [no “his”] and the salvation of all the world.” There is no mention of “the world” in the Latin. (As authority, the Commission invokes a modern French translation, which has itself come under sharp criticism.) Perhaps the Commission was concerned that we Catholics are too wrapped up in private concerns—such as whether or not we are going to Heaven. Under the new version, as the song says, “We are the World.”
Saving the environment also plays a role in the Commission’s newly politicized version of the Mass. In a revision Al Gore could love, Eucharistic Prayer IV will be made environmentally correct. It presently reads (with emphasis added): “You formed man in your own likeness and set him over the whole world to serve you, his creator, and to rule over all creatures.” But that will no longer do in today’s political climate. So the Commission’s revision reads: “You formed man and woman in your own likeness and entrusted the whole world to their care, so that in serving you alone, their Creator, they might be stewards of all Creation.”
The Commission explains that the changes are “more faithful to the Hebrew understanding behind the creation accounts in Genesis.” Yet Semitic language expert Paul Mankowski, S.J., says that in this context no argument from Scripture can justify replacing “rule” with “stewardship.” Apart from scholarship, the proposed version is clearly less evocative of the Genesis story than the current version. And maybe that is the problem: we must now revise our understanding of the Bible, as well as the liturgy.
Perhaps closer to the point in this case, the Commission explains that the new translation is “more reflective of contemporary concern for the relation between humankind and creation.” While there is nothing wrong with being good “stewards” nor, for that matter, with establishing wise “rule”), there is a problem with appealing to this “contemporary concern.” For instance, many environmentalists hold positions on issues like population control that are flatly incompatible with Christian teachings. Moreover, consistency would demand that other “contemporary concerns”—abortion and birth control come to mind—receive similar treatment. The Commission’s focus on environmentalism, then, suggests deference to yet another activist political lobby.
Not surprisingly, the Creed has also been found inadequate. References to “men” are gone because they are “tied to only one gender.” “For us men” becomes simply “For us.” That leaves ambiguous who “us” refers to. The people attending the Mass? The Church as a whole? All of humanity? As Father Mankowski has pointed out, the Council of Nicea said “men” because they wanted it to refer to all people in the world. Ironically, the new version’s “inclusive” language tends to imply a less inclusive vision of Christ’s redemption.
The phrase “By the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man” is changed to: “was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary and became truly human.” But Christ was a man. Moreover, it is not clear what adding “truly” contributes to our understanding of “human.” At the very least, it introduces ambiguities: “human” is a more loaded term than “man” (as in, “I’m only human”). And in any event, what could “falsely” human mean?
It took the Church fathers 300 years to hammer out the doctrine of Christ’s relation to the Father. Yet without explanation the Commission has changed “one in being with the Father” to “of one being with the Father.” At issue is the Latin term “consubstantialem,” at one time translated “consubstantial.” The present “One in being” seems a more faithful rendering. The difference between the two turns on whether the preposition “in” or “of” best reflects the unity of Father and Son. Saying “of” may imply unwarranted separation. What heresies, if any, may lurk in this change only theologians will know. At any rate, people who toss traditional usage out for the sake of appeasing feminists and environmentalists are probably not to be trusted with the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit poses special problems for the Commission. As we have noted, the Commission takes pains to avoid referring to God as “Father,” and it prefers describing Jesus as “truly human” to calling him “man.” Ever sensitive to the “concerns of women,” the Commission now makes the personal nature of the Holy Spirit ambiguous by substituting the pronoun “who” for “he.” Thus we will say, “who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.” And, “who has spoken through the prophets.”
The Holy Spirit, of course, has no human sexual nature. How, then, do we refer to Him (Her, It)? The reformers may not realize this, but what threatens Catholics today is less “gender exclusivity” than a sort of impersonal spiritualism that would understand the Holy Spirit not as a (divine) person, but rather as some kind of New Age ether. In its own way, the Commission may even agree. Radical feminists have agitated for years to give the Holy Spirit the metaphorical identity of a woman. Given the rise of feminist theologians, and the Commission’s concern for their approval, it is possible to imagine the Commission’s adopting this position ten or 15 years down the road, or whenever the current version no longer satisfies “contemporary concerns.”
Such potential changes may well accord with the “spirit” that has animated the Commission since its founding, but in the flush of these successive “Progress Reports,” one easily forgets what was actually written at the time. It is easy to forget that Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, for instance, mandated that “the use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved” in the Mass, and the vernacular was meant for use in “readings, directives, and in some prayers and chants.” In subsequent years, ICEL played the key role in widening the mandate, granting itself a right to scrutinize and change any and every word spoken at Mass. Latin, if it appears at all in the Mass, is introduced only in select prayers at the discretion of the priest. It is not uncommon for faithful Catholics in the American Church to encounter Masses that bear only a vague resemblance to prayers printed in new missals. And the liturgical forms that dominated the Western world for more than a millennium before the 1960s are only available in large population centers and at limited times.
The Commission’s present efforts to alter the liturgy could be dismissed as the scribblings of a few, except that they profoundly affect every Catholic in the English-speaking world. Its international episcopal board still must complete and approve the changes, and the various bishops’ conferences still have to vote on them, up or down. But Pilarczyk writes in the most recent ICEL report that “the work is now decisively on track.”
What will the laity think of these changes? A handful of activists will be thrilled. But most older Catholics have been through more changes than they care to remember and treasure stability above all. Young Catholics, too, are often disturbed at the pace of change, both official and unofficial. Because liturgy and doctrine are intertwined, such changes could serve to undermine the faith.