Reason derailed by claques of pouting pedants

National Catholic Reporter, July 14, 1995

The other 10 English-speaking Catholic hierarchies of the world -- from Canada to Australia, from Ireland to South Africa -- must think that U.S. fundamentalism has edged its way into the United States Catholic bishops' conference. How could they otherwise interpret the pouting literalism and pedantry that four dozen or so U.S. bishops are directing at the most recent process of translating the Roman Missal into English?

All English-speaking hierarchies -- plus 15 associated hierarchies from countries where English is a major language -- share the work of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, ICEL.

The English-speaking hierarchies founded ICEL in 1964 and approve the scholars who do the translations. Following the directives of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), ICEL has been rendering the Latin into the vernacular. It is now revising an earlier, more hurried translation, needed in the 1960s to get the liturgy into the vernacular.

So the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is regularly presented with portions of the new translation to review and question. However, a core of about four dozen U.S. bishops, augmented by others and urged on by a group of Arlington, Va., priests, has been tying the conference in knots amending, changing and nitpicking, because they want a more literal translation from the Latin.

U.S. church leaders like Archbishop William Levada of Portland, Ore., and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., and their coterie find the process threatening. There are plots within plots -- ICEL is part of the dreaded Second Vatican Council: Fail to capitalize the words body and blood and women priests will be next.

In essence, what's good enough for the English-speaking world isn't good enough for Portland and Lincoln. Levada and Bruskewitz treat the Latin as if it were Jesus' own language. Sacramentary segments approved at the bishops November meeting, in the words of one bishop at the time, were scrutinized "almost to death." Opponents of the translation would like to see that happen.

At the very least, ICEL's opponents want ICEL reined in. At most, they'd like the conference to withdraw from ICEL. Last November, Levada and Bruskewitz were ringleaders with those who contended that new prayers "are simply invented by people from ICEL." Such anti-ICEL arguments are silly. Centuries ago, 1,000 years after Jesus' death, somebody simply invented the prayers in Latin.

Can these bishops actually believe that Latin is somehow a more important key to salvation than prayers and petitions rendered in one's native tongue in the poetry and phrasing of one's time and place?

That other episcopal conferences in other languages, such as Italian, also compose original prayers that, like the prayers drafted by ICEL, reflect the scripture readings of the day does not satisfy the anti-ICELites.

These self-ordained translators, scholars and liturgical poets have found an issue that resonates in Rome's ear. And Portland's Levada let it be known at the bishops' June meeting that his direct pipeline to the Vatican would be used to further the anti-ICEL cause.

The bishops' body as a whole is not too exercised about the issue, rejects the amendments of ICEL opponents and wants the whole business done with.

But like terriers with a rag doll, the anti-ICEL forces have found something to keep their adrenaline up and their names fresh on Rome's right-wing register. In cliques and claques they will continue to conspire against translations they see as threatening the 2,000-year-old deposit of faith.

That they will turn up the pressure in Rome is beyond doubt. The other English-language hierarchies will gaze in wonder as these U.S. episcopal Latin literalists, this knot of right-wing fundamentalists making headway into the U.S. conference, pip and squeak at scholarship that the rest of the English-speaking world considers suitable and, indeed, welcome.