I’m still catching up, but many of you might have seen this on other blogs in the past few days. Cardinal Francis Arinze of the Congregation for Divine Worship sent a letter to Bishop William Skylstad, president of the USCCBureaucracy, regarding proposed translations of the Mass to be voted upon at the US bishops’ meeting next month. Evidently, Skylstad and others met with Arinze last month to talk about the new translations, which are more faithful to the authoritative Latin of the Roman Missal and which some bishops, like Erie’s Bishop Donald Trautman, don’t like.
It seems someone at the Arinze meeting said the CDW shouldn’t allow these new translations—more accurate or not—and Arinze is responding. Trautman has argued for the flawed translations that we’ve been saddled with for the past 40 years against newer, more accurate ones on the basis that the people are used to the current translations and it would be too disruptive to change them now. That same concern for disruption of the status quo didn’t seem to concern many people 40 years ago when there was an even more enormous upset of what the people were used to when a much more radical change occurred, stripping them of the Tridentine Mass in favor of a very different vernacular one. I’m not saying a new adaptation or revision of the Mass wasn’t necessary back in the 60s, but for Trautman and other liturgists to be opposed to comparatively minor changes now when they were in favor of much bigger changes then while claiming to be concerned about upsetting the people is a bit disingenuous. Anyway, here’s how Arinze responded:
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