VATICAN CORNER
The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), in 1965, established the principle of greater participation by the laity in the celebration of the Mass. It authorized significant changes in the texts, forms, and language used in the Mass and in the sacraments. However, the question of who is responsibility for producing the revised translations from the Latin to the local languages has always been up-in-the-air. The Council wanted that responsibility to belong to the national assemblies of bishops. But an instruction from the Vatican gave instead the responsibility to a Vatican Congregation of appointed cardinals and bishops. In English speaking countries, the translations through the 1970s caused li*le concern. But through the 80’s and 90’s the Vatican was using very careful inspections of translations to make sure they were done “in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content.” Relations between the assembly of bishops and the Vatican Congregation got more and more strained. In one translation review, the Vatican Congregation pointing out 114 errors and said there were many more. The Congregation issued new rules insisting on more literal translations of the Latin text including word order and punctuation. In 1998 all the work of the translation of the Roman Missal by the assembly of bishops was scrapped since it did not follow the new rules. A new translation was prepared using the new rules in 2010. In December 2016 Pope Francis appointed a commission to review the whole translation situation and to prepare a report. On Sept. 9, 2017 while visiting Medellin, Colombia, Francis issued a document presumably as a response to that commission’s report. He put his response into Cannon law and gave the bishops conferences greater authority in translating liturgical language. He altered a key 2001 instruction by Pope John Paul II that gave the Vatican Congregation the power to ensure local translations adhered to the Latin. Some liberal Catholics think that by loosening the Vatican’s grip on the language of prayers, Pope Francis has restored the intentions of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and erased some of the rollbacks of his predecessor Benedict XVI. Some conservative Catholics who favor the Latin Mass or at least more faithful translations to it in the local language and thus ensuring global universality and unity are appalled by Francis’ actions. Pope Francis has made a significant change in direction with regards to who has responsibility for liturgical translations. The Vatican still has the last say on translations and that has not changed, but now the Vatican Congregation that was doing the reviews is redundant. For many that Congregation had been a clear violation of the spirit and the letter of Vatican II in the first place. Regarding the English-speaking Catholic world, and the scrapped 1998 Roman Missal translation, the bishops now have much more authority over liturgical translation and will have to decide how to proceed. The ball is now in their court.
Sources: americamagazine.org, nytimes, Vatican radio