At the very least, reverence for “the Word” should inspire in all Christians a reverence for words in general, for words that deal with the Faith, and most especially the words that form our worship, both public and private. If Christ Himself is the “Word spoken by the Mouth of God,” then the things that we say to God and to each other in church should be approached with great circumspection and holy fear, least we dilute or pervert or weaken the awesome power of the message that comes from God Himself—and is intended to return to Him fulfilling His Holy Will in all things. The ancient Jews did not even allow themselves the privilege of speaking the Name of God. We ought to learn from their awe in the use of words, both as vehicles of meaning and as sacred artifacts of prayer.

As a child growing up in the last years before the changes of Vatican II and the early years of change in musical styles, change in the use of native languages during Mass, and change in postures and gestures used in sanctuary and nave, I felt, as I do to this day, uneasy about the changes that were taking place in the words. This was not because I did not accept the Vatican II documents, or the Paul VI Roman Missal, but because what I understood about the changes did not seem to require all the changes that ended up being made. Somewhere between where the words ought to be and where they ended up, there came discrepancies that did not ring true. If one accepted in faith what we were told as young adults–that nothing in the Mass had changed, but had only been renewed, i.e., that the ‘accidents’ of our liturgy were changeable, but that the ‘essence’ was not–then the words handed to us by the Bishops of Vatican II, who were building upon Sacred Tradition, were meant to be faithful to the same ideas as always, whether in Latin or English. In other words, the translation from the Latin had to capture the essential meaning, the spirit of the original, in order to maintain constancy with the past and future. In this way, even if the language had changed, or the gestures, or music, the essence of the Mass would still ring true: The same echoes across time from the world of the Eternal could be heard within the heart. But has this truly been the case?

I remember being very troubled when we were told that the words we had been saying in English after the changes of Vatican II had already been instituted had to be changed yet again. Instead of “O Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul will be healed,” (which I had been taught to understand in Latin as a child, and therefore recognized as exactly the same as before), we were now told to say: “O Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” Imaginatively, I had always cherished this image of myself as the stable in Bethlehem, some crude little lean-to affair, barely more than a roof of a few sticks and thatch, yet still the humble host to the Incarnate Son of God, the same Christ who was about to become physically present to me in Holy Communion. What echoes of eternal truth were in that image–humility, adoration, devotion, thanksgiving, glory to God! Yet it was all jettisoned with the ICEL second “translation” from the Latin to the English, lost along with the subtle distinction between the words “my soul” and “I” in the prayer for healing. Do people expect to be healed of physical illness as a result of saying this before Holy Communion? Is that what the prayer is trying to convey now? Was it intended to convey that before this second translation into English? Confusion.

Most of my intellectual life has been devoted to the study of Shakespeare. I have read many books about the words he wrote. I have read whole treatises on whether he wrote “base Judean” or “base Indian” in one literary illusion in Othello, whole chapters complete with elaborate research and proofs, arguing how one change in the spelling of one word changed the meaning of the whole play in some small way. Sadly, I have to say it is my experience that the words of Shakespeare are treated by secular scholars with a great deal more reverence than the words of either the Catholic liturgy or the Bible. Those who claim to be scholars in these areas make glaring changes in the meaning of texts based upon far less evidence, more supposition, and far greater subjective analysis than would ever be allowed by literary scholars studying texts much more obscure and difficult than what has come down to us from our religious forebears. Unlike my example from the world of Shakespearean scholarship, here we are not concerned with what the correct words are: the Paul VI Roman Missal (in Latin) is what has been given to us. Here our concern must be to deal just as tenaciously with translating the Latin accurately and beautifully, vigilantly rendering the meaning of the original, both in spirit and in structure, in order to capture and convey the original intentions of the Roman Missal. That is what it means to preserve the ‘essence’ of the words while changing the ‘accidents’ of their form, in this case, from Latin to English.

Frankly, I am tired of all of the chicanery. The man in the pew wants the words of the Mass–the ‘essence’ of the words, if you will–given back to him. I mean to include all the women in the assembly as well, just in case you were wondering whether the old rule of grammar is still in force that “woman” is implicit in the use of “man” for “all.” ICEL has had a deathgrip on the words in English far too long. Praise God that we may now see some relief.

In the meantime, I want to examine here the lack of textual accountability that we have been forced to accept for over 30 years. The ICEL translations from Latin to English are riddled with inaccuracies in vocabulary, syntax, and meaning because of gross liberties that have been taken with the meaning of the original Latin. Quite possibly an agenda which, in the final analysis, runs counter to a proper understanding of the truths locked deep in the ‘essence’ of the words is at work here. This includes the Liturgy of the Hours as ICEL has translated it. A veneer of normalcy appears to mask subtle perversions of meaning that change the emphasis and ultimately might work to obscure the awesome depth and majesty of the Truth. Altogether, ICEL’s efforts have sown so much ambiguity and confusion in the minds of unsuspecting faithful Catholics that the cat may never get put back in the bag.

Though I am not a Latin scholar, I can read enough Latin to know that the prayers we are saying in English are watered-down, truncated remnants of a much richer reality in the original Latin. And, because I have been collecting Missals for over 30 years, I can compare the translations of the Latin which appeared in pre-Vatican II missals and the earliest translation which appeared in English (before ICEL began its monopoly on meaning) with the current translations. My literary background, which taught me to scrutinize the sometimes thorny textual problems in Shakespeare’s works, may serve here as well to highlight very subtle distinctions that add up to some very troubling discrepancies.

To demonstrate, let’s look first at the Gloria from the Mass, a prayer that did NOT change from the Tridentine to the Paul VI “Roman Missal.” I will be using three missals: Text (A), Pius X Daily Missal1, Text (B), The Book of Catholic Worship (Bishop’s Commission on the Liturgical Apostolate, 1964)2, and Text (C), New St. Joseph Sunday Missal and Hymnal, (ICEL, 1974).3 I shall give first the Latin text and then the three translations, the first (A) being a translation in the Tridentine Missal for the sake of the reader only, the second (B) being the translation that the people said aloud during the earliest English Masses, the third (C) being the translation used today at Mass.

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

1. Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace to men of good will.
2. Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace to men of good will.
3. Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.

Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere: Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit: ut, dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem reapiamur.
1. It is truly meet and just, right and available to salvation, that we should always and in all places give thanks to Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, eternal God, because by the mystery of the Word made flesh, from Thy brightness a new light hath risen to shine on the eyes of our souls, in order that, God becoming visible to us, we may be borne upward to the love of things invisible.
2. Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the wonder of the incarnation your eternal Word has brought to the eyes of faith a new and radiant vision of your glory. In him we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.
Even allowing for the fact that A) is an English translation meant to be read privately while the Latin was spoken by the priest, it is still utterly breathtaking to see that “truly meet and just, right and available to salvation” is rendered in(B) as one word: “well.” Here again, the subject of the sentence has been changed from “it” to “we”—this is not too fine a point, for the indirection of “it is right . . . that we should” does not mean the same thing as “we do well to.” There is a world of difference between an objective acknowledgment of the appropriateness of an important action and just saying we do it well. The sentence structure in (A) creates a clear causal relationship between the act of giving thanks and the reason why: “It is meet and just . . . because.” This causality is totally omitted in (B), where the substance of this particular preface just starts up in a new sentence (another syntax change). “By the mystery of the Word made flesh” (which is a literal translation of the Latin) becomes in (B): “in the wonder of the incarnation.” This is not translation, but adaptation of the ideas. Does “wonder” include all the connotations of the word “mystery”? No. Does “incarnation” convey all the values of “Word made flesh”? No.

What follows next may look at first glance to be the same, but look again. There are so many discrepancies in vocabulary, syntax, and thought, that it is hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with the subjects of the next thought group: (A) continues in interlocking clauses, where (B) is divided into separate sentences, again subtly changing the relationship between the ideas. The subject of (A) is “a new light,” where (B) is “your eternal Word.” These are not even the same nouns. Note the verbs: “hath risen” (A) versus “has brought” (B). This is so muddled that it is hard to piece together whatever parity exists between these phrases. The “the eyes of our souls” in (A) becomes “the eyes of faith” in (B)—is that the same thing? I don’t think so. While (A) has no direct object to the clause, the sentence in (B) has one: “vision of your glory”! Where is the word “glory” in the Latin?

The only way I can sort this out is to offer a paraphrase of the sense of the two versions. They are decidedly different in meaning. Version (A) goes something like this: ‘It is good to thank you, God, because through the mystery of the Incarnation, a new light has risen from Thy brightness (read: Thy Mind) to shine on the eyes of our souls (read: inner vision), so that through the Visible God-made-man we will be lifted up to love the Invisible things of God.’ Version (B) says: ‘Father, we do well to thank you through Christ. In the wonder of the incarnation, Christ has brought to our faith a new vision of your glory. Because we see Christ visibly we are caught up in the love of the God we cannot see.’ As my English teacher used to say, “Close, but no cigar.” Where in (B) is the whole dynamic of being “borne upward” (A), being lifted up to the things of heaven from the things of earth? Text (A) also suggests an interior dimension in us, the participation of our own invisible natures, through which God communicates with our souls by virtue of the Invisible God’s making Himself Visible; this dimension is lost in (B), where the idea that we see God because we see Christ lacks any sense of inner vision. The final sentence in (B) even seems to suggest that we need to “see” Christ physically in order to see God through faith. (A) does not say that at all. (B) also subtly changes the goal of this knowledge: where in (A) we are “borne upward” to love “things invisible” (I suggest, the things ‘of God’), Version (B) has us “caught up in” God’s love for us. Not the same thing, really.

Nor can we neglect to point to the Liturgy of the Hours. Recently, I came across excerpts from the 1974 ICEL translation of St. Basil’s treatise On the Holy Spirit, the same translation used in The Liturgy of the Hours, in fact, the only translation approved for public worship in this country. Because the original text is in Greek, I leave that to the experts. The first example (A) is the excerpt as translated by Father Jackson from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.7 The second example (B), the ICEL translation, is taken from The Word Among Us Publishers’ edition of Wisdom from the Fathers:8

1. Just as when a sunbeam falls on bright and transparent bodies, they themselves become brilliant too, and shed forth a fresh brightness from themselves, so souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others. Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, and, highest of all, the being made God. (IX, 23)
2. As clear, transparent substances become very bright when sunlight falls on them and shine with a new radiance, so also souls in whom the Spirit dwells, and who are enlightened by the Spirit, become spiritual themselves and a source of grace for others.
From the Spirit comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of the mysteries of faith, insight into the hidden meaning of Scripture, and other special gifts. Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven, we are admitted to the company of angels, we enter into eternal happiness, and abide in God. Through the Spirit, we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime inspirations — we become God.

The distinctions may seem very minor at first, but they bring the reader to a very different place by the end of the excerpt. There is always a danger in rearranging things as part of translating them—there may be a logic intrinsic to the structure that either the translator does not grasp or does not know how to transpose properly. Sometimes it may even be what is not said or when. One should begin translating something from the perspective that the original author knew what he was doing, and thus the words themselves, the syntax of the structure, and the order of thought should always be preserved. Translators must have a compelling reason to violate the internal symmetry of the original; otherwise, the “translation” is no longer the work of the original author, but an adaptation created by the translator. This excerpt demonstrates why this can make such a grave difference.

In the first sentence, text(A) places the modifying clause about the “sunbeam” first in the sentence, giving it foremost importance. In our mind’s eye we see the image as it naturally occurs–first sunlight falling, then the transparent object, then borrowed brightness coming from the object. It is visual; it makes “crystal-clear” sense. The ICEL version(B) is muddled—we begin in the middle of the image, with “transparent substances.” We hear that they become very bright before we even know why. If we consider the corresponding realities, the first translation gives first place to the motive of action, i.e., the Holy Spirit; the second emphasizes that which is acted upon, i.e., the soul. The second half of the analogy in (A) vs. (B) continues to show this slight difference in emphasis. In “soul wherein the Spirit dwells,” the “wherein” is an indicator of the place where the Spirit is, while “in whom” (B) points more to the person receiving the gifts than to the Giver. “Illuminated” (A) echoes back to the image of the sunbeam, of the action done to the transparent object, showing clearly by analogy that the light in the soul is coming from God. But “who are enlightened by the Spirit” (B), while it does say the same thing, does not have as much of an echo of the original image. “Enlightened” has a different connotation in English than “illuminated,” the former being less connected to the idea of received light than the latter. “Enlightened” for us has less to do with “light” and more with inner knowledge, a fact that again draws a bit more attention to the one receiving the light than He that sends it. “Send forth their grace to others” (A) also gives a sense of the ‘transparent body’ as the medium of the light, like a prism that sends the light it receives off in new directions. To say, as (B) does, that souls “become a source of grace for others” is something really different: “source” conveys the sense that the grace is coming from within them rather than from an antecedent source, such as the sun or the Spirit.

The next sentence in (A) begins “Hence comes,” which I take to mean ‘from this process,’ referring back to the ways in which souls “send forth their grace to others.” But (B) loses this interactive dimension by starting a new paragraph with the simplistic phrase “From the Spirit.” Where (A) lists one long litany of gifts, (B) divides them into two groups. Also, (B) changes the sentence structure even more drastically by introducing “we” as the subject of both sentences, placing primary emphasis again on the person to whom the action is done, rather than the One doing–in this case, the Holy Spirit. This becomes even more important later on.

Note the changes in the list of gifts: “understanding of mysteries” (A) vs. “understanding of the mysteries of faith” (B); “apprehension of what is hidden” (A) vs. “insight into the hidden meaning of Scripture.” In both cases, the genitive phrases serve to limit the meaning of the gifts. “What is hidden” can go far beyond the reading of Scripture to include things like the reading of hearts, as St. Francis de Sales did as a confessor, or plumbing the hidden things of God, as the mystic St. Catherine of Siena did in her Dialogue. “Distribution of good gifts” (A) becomes “and other special gifts” (B): whatever the original Greek, these two things are not the same at all. The emphasis in (B) on “we” and what “we” become, rather than how the Holy Spirit acts within us, becomes even more stark in the next sentence in (B). Where (A) simply continues to list gifts, (B) inserts a verb in active voice, with the subject “we” [remember “we” is not expressed in (A) at all] repeated in three independent clauses.

Now we come to the biggest beam in all this. Note that (A) just continues its long sentence listing gifts, ending with “highest of all, the being made God.” What happened to (B)? We not only have another new sentence structure, but whence comes all this extra material: “likeness to God,” “what is beyond our most sublime aspirations”? Setting that aside, what are we to make of “we become God”? Does “the being made God” really say that? I don’t think so! The phrase “the being made God” is not an independent clause, nor really a clause at all, but a nominative phrase at the end of the series of nouns in (A), with its verb in passive voice. “We become God” is a full-blown sentence, with a verb in active voice. Passive voice conveys again the sense of an action being done to someone, rather than active voice, where the subject performs the action of the verb. We do not “become” God; there is no way that mortals can make themselves immortal. It is impossible for us to enact this and therefore ridiculous to suggest such a thing. But St. Basil did not say that! He said, “the being made God.” Who does the making? The Holy Spirit does, of course. When St. Peter said that through the Holy Spirit we become “partakers of the Divine Nature” (Peter 1:4), one foundation for the Eastern Church’s theology of the divinization of the soul, he did not mean that we “become” God. If God in His Infinite Generosity chooses to lift us up to participate in His Divinity, it is always and forever HIS Divinity, and never ours.

Unfortunately these days the influence of secular humanism tends to glorify human nature and its potential far beyond what St. Thomas Aquinas would have allowed in the Summa. Those who fall prey to these fallacies would find the sentence “we become God” much to their liking, as they also would appreciate all the things that “we” can “do” through the Holy Spirit. The ICEL translation may or may not have wittingly sought to insert these ambiguities into St. Basil’s great treatise On the Holy Spirit, but sadly, they are there.

Words are vehicles of meaning, yes, and so demand a tenacious reverence to preserve their truth in translation intact. But words can also become sacred artifacts of prayer in themselves. When something is really good, such as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, it is called a “classic.” When a prayer is that good, it takes on a life of its own, a sacred identity that must be approached with holy dread. “Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name” just is not the same creature as “Our Father in heaven, holy is Your Name.” It just isn’t. “Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, who is, who was, and who will be forever” does not convey the same ineffable qualities (or, I add, the same meaning) as “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” The latter, a great proclamation of the Trinity, lovely in symmetry and rhythm, strives to do just what it says: ‘give’ GLORY to the Triune God with a proclamation of Trinity as an ontological reality. The original final doxology of time is very specific: “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end” and covers a great deal more than “who is, who was, and who will be forever.” The meaning of all the words in italics in the first version is omitted in the second. The doxology in the original is not really about the eternity of God, but about the eternity of His Glory: “it.” The original doxology refers to the fact that His Glory was present “in the beginning,” i.e., at creation, “now,” and “world without end,” a translation of the Latin phrase “ in saecula saeculorum” (which means literally “in age of ages”), a much fuller, richer concept of the passage of time than the bland “forever.” The ICEL Glory prayer is a pale shadow of former itself, gutted of elegance and drive, bereft of its fullest meaning in honoring the Glory of God.

In summary, then, the translations into English by ICEL, which have been suffered upon us these many years since the Council of Vatican II, have many distressing ambiguities, truncated theologies, and just plain inelegant, prosaic images and pedestrian rhythms. The ICEL translations have leveled off the horizon, obscuring the view of the “eternal hills” and leaving those of us who want the essence of the words still thirsting for the full draught of meaning that we know was left behind somewhere.

Respect the meaning of words! Honor these precious artifacts of prayer that give comfort as they bring light, both through their meaning and their beauty! Simplicity must never be the only litmus test of worship, nor can it ever be the best: beauty, clarity, and reverence, those attributes which array the words with mystery and grandeur (while preserving their true meaning) give the greatest glory to God. Words, our sacred trust to those who come after us, a sacred trust which we ourselves have received from those many centuries of Christians who have gone before us, must be approached with much greater care and circumspection than we have seen in the recent past. Soli Deo Gloria!

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End notes
1. 1 New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1960).
2. 2 Washington, D.C.: The Liturgical Conference, 1966).
3. 3 New York: Catholic Book Pub., 1960).
4. 4 Note the editors’ introduction to Worship II (G.I.A., 1975): “It is the firm opinion of the editors, endorsed through considerable consultation with noteworthy musicians and liturgists, that the so called “translation” of English into English, e.g., “thee” to “you” and “thy” to “your,” is a regrettable practice that upsets the literary integrity of a text, often results in an example of poor grammar, and still fails to yield a “modern” text . . . .
5. 5 Text for the Latin from The New Roman Missal (Christian Book Club of America, 1993; rpt. Father Lasance Roman Missal, 1945), p. 784.
6. 6 Abbaye Saint-Pierre, 1989).
7. 7 Second Series, Vol. 8, ed. Schaff and Ace (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub, 1994; rpt. Christian Publishing, 1895).
8. 8 Touching the Risen Christ: Wisdom from the Fathers, ed. Patricia Mitchell (n.p.: The Word among Us, 1999), p. 123.

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Carol Anne Jones has published articles in various Catholic periodicals.

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