Whose rite is it anyway?

Saturday, 9th October 2004

Liturgical vandals have trivialised worship in Anglican and Catholic churches. Now, says William Oddie, Rome is trying to do something about it

The effect of hundreds of such changes — impossible to convey without more space — has had a massive cumulative effect not merely on the accuracy of the translations, but on their beauty. They now have a meditative quality that had been all but destroyed by the fanatical economy of language — often leading to a sense of indecent haste — of the Seventies paraphrase. The Latin text is allowed to breathe its full meaning into the new English version. Ideological interferences have been dealt with: the Creed now begins ‘I believe’.

So: mission accomplished and a happy outcome all round? Not quite. Fr Harbert’s draft is now running the gauntlet of the English-speaking bishops. A process of political infighting is taking place. The views of the man and woman in the pews — who are often these days, with varying degrees of sanctimony, referred to as ‘the people of God’ — are being rigorously ignored. The English and Welsh bishops are divided: there is from some a definite opposition to the new version, on the offensively elitist grounds that ‘the people of God’ are so dim that they will not understand it (this is said to be the view of the Archbishop of Cardiff, the Most Revd Peter Smith, who interestingly enough has a track record of supporting heretical texts). ‘And also with you’ is being defended on the grounds that, though less faithful to the Latin, fidelity in this case hampers ‘natural English expression’: as if it were not itself a notable example of grossly unnatural English expression (and if the French can have ‘et avec votre esprit’, why can’t we have ‘and with your spirit’?) The cause of decent liturgical English is by no means home and dry. Many English-speaking Catholics, well aware that their own bishops cannot necessarily be trusted, are now fervently hoping that Rome — having set this whole process going in the first place — will be ready to intervene to see it safely concluded.