The piece below appears in today's IN&M's Irish regional newspapers.
By Michael Commane
It's probably true to say that the majority of people who read this newspaper belong to one of the major Christian churches in Ireland. And I presume that the majority of people who read this column are Catholics.
So have you any idea how your parish priest is appointed? Have you any idea how your bishop is appointed?
Do you think you should have a say?
Do you feel you play an active and meaningful role in the church?
Or should all that sort of 'stuff' be left to the priests and bishops?
Have you ever sat back and asked yourself what the word church means?
These are some of the questions the new Association of Catholic Priests is asking among its members.
The ACP held its first AGM two weeks ago in Dublin's Green Isle Hotel.
Among those who spoke to the group was Monsignor Helmut Schüller, former vicar general of the diocese of Vienna, who is the leader of the Austrian Priests' Initiative.
The Austrian priests are asking their bishops for a far more open and
transparent church, where people and priests speak openly and honestly with one another. They are asking for a church which concentrates less on fear and more on trust in the Spirit and Word of God.
The Austrian priests have taken their case to Rome and at present there is type of stand-off between them and the Holy See.
The Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, the Dominican Christoph Schönborn, has been critical of the group. But latest reports indicate that he is willing to sit down and talk to them.
The new ACP in Ireland has been set up in the context or background of all that has happened in the area of clerical child sex abuse. Priests have felt isolated and let down by church leadership.
But there is also an underlying belief among many priests that church leadership is aloof from people and priests and indeed, after all the turmoil and talk, there is still a clerical elite' that rules from on high, far removed from the tone and spirit of what the Second Vatican Council intended.
Those of you who attend Mass will be aware that a new Missal is being introduced. On the first Sunday in Advent it will be fully in use in all dioceses in the country.
The ACP at their AGM pointed out that the new Missal has been introduced with little or no consultation. They argue that a small conservative group within the Vatican has forced this new translation on us.
There certainly are many strange aspects to the new Missal. The Opening Prayer is now called the 'Collect' - a word that was used before the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. A word that has no meaning for large numbers of people who attend Mass. So why use such a word?
Many of the prayers have unwieldy sentences that are difficult to understand. And then there is the issue of exclusive language.
Although the new Missal is supposed to be a considerable improvement on earlier translations as regards inclusive language, it is more than disappointing to find some changes, eg, “for us men and our salvation” in the new version of the Nicene Creed.
Every baptised person is a member of the church and each one of us has a role to play in the church community.
The mission of the church is to make God present in the world and surely that can only be done in the style and the language of the time.
Different groupings within the church might complain and fear that the church might be hijacked. But there is also always the worry that the church could so easily be hijacked by its own clerical class.
As Christians we believe that the Spirit of God works in our church.
Don't ever forget, the Spirit works in and through all of us.
And we owe our loyalty to that Spirit of truth.
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4 comments:
Michael, the change you refer to in the Creed is not a change at all. "for us men and for all salvation" (you omitted the second "for") was in the translation from the 1970s. There are certainly problems with translation - just yesterday in class we were told that the expression "Haec hostia" in the Prayer over the offerings of Friday week I of Lent was a stock pagan religious expression taken up by Christians which originally referred to the animal sacrifices practiced in ancient Rome. The "sacrifices" referred to in this Lenten prayer are/is the one sacrifice of the Eucharist (this prayer over the offerings often looks towards the following Eucharistic Prayer), that sacrifice is the same unique sacrifice made by the Lord Jesus 2,000 years ago. The literal translation of "Haec Hostia" by what's in the new English translation "the sacrificial offerings" just confuses things.
But we might also recall that the very messy English translation work of the 1960s and 1970s had possibly less consultation among lay people but it is that 1975 English version of the Roman Missal which those looking for more consultation are preferring.
Regarding the expression "Collect", it is true, we have lost it from our liturgical language while we gained "Eucharist", "Sacrament of Reconciliation" and "Liturgy" in the period after Vatican II. A story of a child being upset by the priest's introduction to the Opening Prayer/Collect is told to expose the difficulties with this prayer. He/she heard "Let us pray" and exclaimed boldly "But we have been praying for ages!", meaning the hymn, introductory words, Lord have mercy and Gloria. A more serious objection could be raised against the expression "Opening Prayer". It isn't an opening prayer at all - it just concludes what we might call the "opening rites"; if we were to sing a lot and have a long winded priest introducing the Mass, we could wait for 20 minutes of Mass to go by before reaching the "opening prayer". If I'm not mistaken, the collect was the collecting or gathering up prayer of the Pope at the Station Masses in Rome to put order on the gathering which had been praying fervently but in a rather undisciplined way until that point. "Collect" is perhaps a useful title to give the prayer which gathers up the various elements that have preceded, to gather the various expressions of the celebrations' "theme" and to give theme more focus in preparation for the readings. If I was in favour of liturgical creativity of the kind we've experienced in recent decades I might even suggest that before the "collect" the priest might chant/say "Let us collect our prayers" and take the prescribed moment of silent prayer before proceeding to chant the collect.
Not at all as simple as that. The Irish bishops got a special permission at the time.
It is amusing how so many people write and talk about the language of the new Missal and on all and every occasion their own English is incorrect and inaccurate.
Split infinitives, mixing up verb and noun spellings, ending sentences on prepositions, misuse and inconsistent use of upper case. It's material for a great book. Indeed, the new Missal is inconsistent in its own rules re upper case spelling. In this issue it is also inaccurate.
And it fits - another metaphor for far deeper issues.
"And we owe our loyalty to that Spirit of truth. "
What is that truth?
That the Catholic church has demonised all Eve ill women and their children?
That wombmen and children are second class- cattle as described in your sacred texts?
That your church has nothing to do with Iosa?
That your church has the biggest bank and wealth on Mother Earth and millions starve- oh I forgot suffering is good for the souls of the poor but not for those at the top of the Male dominated hierarchy.
Etc to infinity...
Michael, special permission for what exactly?
The tone of your statement on people's knowledge of English grammar seems to me to be identical to that of the cleric who sneered at the incorrect pronunciation of "often".
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