(Update: Visit Hearing God's Call for an article and the whole interview!)
I sat down with Dave Lozinger of Hearing God's Call last Friday (October 9th) to speak with him about the new English translation of the Mass and my book, Praying the Mass: The Prayers of the People. Our conversation will soon be available on his web site, but here's a short excerpt:
Here's the MP3 (2:26, 2.2 MB):
Dave: What's the background, this new English translation?
Jeff: Well, let's go back to the Second Vatican Council just to put some groundwork down. The Second Vatican Council, the first document they put out was on the liturgy, and that tells you right away how important the liturgy is to the Church.
Dave: And what was the name of that document?
Jeff: Sacrosanctum Concilium which means "This sacred council," that's the first words of the document. Now in this document there are so many phrases that are used almost every day in the Church: the Eucharist as the "source and summit" of the Church's life, "full, conscious, active participation" – those phrases come from this document. Now, one of the things this document said is that the vernacular should have a place in the Mass. (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 36, 54) And where we are today is, most of us know the Mass simply in the vernacular, whether it's English, French, Spanish... Now, the thing is, this vernacular translation comes from the Latin original, which means the English translation we have is only as good as the people who translated it. In the next couple years we're going to have a new translation; there's not going to be a new Mass, but it's going to be a new translation of that Latin original.
Dave: What's the impetus behind it? Who's driving it?
Jeff: Well, it goes back to Rome, it goes back to the Vatican. In 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship put out a document called Liturgiam authenticam which means "Authentic liturgy," and this document was, I think, the fifth document coming from the Vatican about how to properly apply Sacrosanctum Concilium, how to apply that constitution on the liturgy. ["Fifth Instruction 'For the Right Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council' on the Use of Vernacular Languages in the Publication of the Books of the Roman Liturgy"]
Dave: So was there the assumption that it hadn't been applied properly in the first place, or that there needed to be some sort of correction or calibration?
Jeff: I would say correction and calibration; I would say that this is an ongoing experience for the Church, because the vernacular in the Roman Rite is a novelty, let's put it that way. It's something we've only had for a few decades, and it's something that, honestly, it will take a while before we're comfortable with it. There's a lot of misconceptions about the vernacular: people think that if you say "Latin Mass" you're referring to the Mass before Vatican II, when the Mass that we...
Today I mailed four complimentary copies of Praying the Mass: The Prayers of the People to Bishop Vasa of Oregon, Archbishop Chaput of Colorado, Archbishop Vigneron of Michigan, and Archbishop Aymond of Louisiana. The last two are candidates for the position of Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Divine Worship.
Bishop Vasa of Oregon has a weekly column in the Catholic Sentinel, his diocese's paper. Check out his two most recent articles:
I first heard about Jeff Cavins a year and a half ago when my parish decided to use the Great Adventure Bible Timeline study, which brings you through the story of the Bible (14 books' worth) chronologically in 24 weeks. Those of us who wanted to be facilitators for the Bible study attended a Called to Lead conference held at our diocesan center in July of 2008, sponsored by Ascension Press who publishes the Great Adventure series. Jeff (along with a host of other excellent Catholic speakers, such as Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Ted Sri) was there presenting the Timeline and its related studies to my diocese (as well as other dioceses in the NY-NJ-PA are).
Jeff began developing the Great Adventure Bible Timeline back in 1984 as a way of helping Christians see "the big picture" in the Bible, the story of covenants between God and man, the story of a promised Savior: salvation history. He was not a Catholic at that time, but his quest to understand Scripture better led him to the conclusion that the Church which Jesus founded is none other than the Catholic Church.
Jeff has been busy as a Catholic. A friend of Mother Angelica, he filled in for her on her live EWTN shows from time to time, produced and hosted Life on the Rock for six years, and taped a thirteen-part series with Dr. Scott Hahn entitled Our Father's Plan (which serves as a good overview of the Bible Timeline). In addition to being a husband and father, he gives talks at conferences all across the country throughout the year. He writes for Catholic Scripture Study International and has authored several books, including My Life on the Rock (his autobiography) and I'm Not Being Fed! (on the Eucharist).
If Scripture stumps you, if the Bible bores you, if the Word worries you... give Jeff Cavins and the Great Adventure Bible Timeline a chance. You'll receive a wonderful Scriptural foundation that you can build upon for the rest of your life.
Support Jeff Cavins' Scripture ministry by visiting Ascension Press.
This is an excerpt from an interview that took between Catalunya Cristiana and the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, while the Cardinal was attending a conference in Barcelona, Spain.
How can the sense of the liturgy be recovered?
At present we work in a very quiet manner on an entire range of issues having to do with educative projects. This is the prime necessity there is: a good and genuine liturgical formation. The subject of liturgical formation is critical because there really is no sufficient education [at the moment]. People believe that the liturgy is a matter of forms and external realities, and what we really need is to restore a sense of worship, i.e. the sense of God as God. This sense of God can only be recovered with the liturgy. Therefore the Pope has the greatest interest in emphasizing the priority of the liturgy in the life of the Church. When one lives the spirit of the liturgy, one enters into the spirit of worship, one enters into the acknowledgment of God, one enters into communion with Him, and this is what transforms man and turns him into a new man. The liturgy always looks towards God, not the community; it is not the community that makes the liturgy, but it is God who makes it. It is He who comes to meet us and offers us to participate in his life, his mercy and his forgiveness ... When one truly lives the liturgy and God is truly at the centre of it, everything changes.
I am working on the second volume of the Praying the Mass series, which is subtitled The Prayers of the Priest. The second volume will be considerably thicker (i.e. longer) than the first volume, simply because the priest says more than the congregation does, and because I cover all four major Eucharistic Prayers.
The first chapter, "Preparing for Prayer," is about the vestments and the vesting prayers. These prayers were part of the Roman Missal until the the 1960's. I do not know exactly when they were dropped from the Missal, but they disappeared sometime between 1962 and 1969. Despite their absence, I suspect (or at least hope) that some priests who celebrate the Ordinary Form of the Mass still pray them. In fact, the recently published Compendium Eucharisticum ("Compendium of the Eucharist") will include the vesting prayers, so perhaps that will lead to their wider use.
Here is a series of posts, from the second volume The Prayers of the Priest, about the vestments and the prayers which accompany them:
On page 7, the following sentences could use some clarification:
In late 2008, a new English translation of a portion of the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal was approved by the Holy See. This portion, known as the “ordinary” or the “Order of Mass,” makes up the unchanging structure of the Mass. Upon its completion (by Advent of 2010 or 2011), this new translation will be used wherever the Roman Rite is celebrated in English.The Order of Mass translation has already been approved; the translation of the Propers (the variable parts of the Mass) have yet to be approved. Once the Propers have been approved, then the translation of the whole Roman Missal will be completed and, after a suitable period of catechesis, the new translation will be introduced for liturgical use. We will not use the new translation of the Order of Mass before the whole Roman Missal is approved.
The sentences have been changed to:
In late 2008, a new English translation of a portion of the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal was approved by the Holy See.4 After the entirety of the new translation has been approved, and after a suitable period of catechesis, the new translation will be used wherever the Roman Rite is celebrated in English.
4 This portion, known as the “ordinary” or the “Order of Mass,” makes up the unchanging structure of the Mass. The parts of Mass that change from one liturgical day to the next are called the “Propers.” This book is concerned with the Order of the Mass, not the Propers.
On page 22, the sentence that begins "In the book of the prophet Ezekiel", the phrase "God tells Ezekiel to walk through Jerusalem" should be "God tells a certain man to walk through Jerusalem". Ezekiel merely hears this command, he is not the recipient of it.