An interesting development

On 3 September Pope Francis issued the document Magnum principium (“The Great Principle”). It shifts responsibility and authority for translations from Latin into modern languages of liturgical texts (e.g. the Missal), to national Conferences of Bishops, and restricts the role of the relevant Vatican department, the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW). This is a significant step in the Pope’s plan of changing the role of the Roman Curia in the Church, and fostering “shared decision-making between local churches and Rome.”

After Vatican II, there was much discussion about the quality of some translations. In 2001, the CDW’s instruction Liturgiam Authenticam ruled that texts “insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses.” But an alternative view sees translation as “dynamic equivalence”, roughly “sense-for-sense” translation, rather than the more literal word-for-word translation that was now required. Various countries struggled with the new instruction. The CDW tightened its grip on the multi -national International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), created to produce English translations, overruling its proposed revision.

In 2016, Pope Francis formed a commission to review the implementation of Liturgiam Authenticam. He says “some principles handed on since the time of the [Second Vatican] Council should be more clearly reaffirmed and put into practice”. He wants collaboration and trust between the CDW and conferences of bishops, but lays down that the CDW’s role is to ratify the bishop’s approval, not to review the translation itself.

So what will happen? We have the possibility that the 2011 English Missal could be changed, if the Bishops choose to take that route. Will the over-ruled ICEL translation re-emerge? Or something different? Or not? Watch this space…

Fr Matthew