| May 2007 |
Volume 12, Number 1 |
|---|
Getting it right at last
During November 2006, the Vatican ruled that the liturgical misrendering of pro multis as “for all” had to be dropped in favour of "for many" in all future translations of the Eucharistic Prayer. Oriens’ Executive Editor R. J. Stove provides background to this decision.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
''The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
- Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking-Glass
To read the more absurd defences of that most regrettable among modern liturgical mistranslations – the rendering of Latin’s pro multis (“for many”) as “for all” – is to remember Humpty Dumpty’s freewheeling lexical approach.
Sometimes we have been asked to believe that pro multis can actually mean “for all”. Others affirm that maybe it cannot actually mean “for all”, but the original words in Semitic tongues can. Still others affirm that maybe the original words in Semitic tongues cannot either, but only “Jansenists” (never defined) and other extremist troublemakers ever make an issue of the problem.
Dissension and grief
Ever since Pope Paul VI promulgated the Novus Ordo Mass in 1970, the “for all” mistranslation has caused particular dissension and grief. It actually originated not in 1970 but in 1967, when the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) decided to use the phrase in its rendering of the Roman Canon. The result so obviously threw into confusion the precise nature of Christ’s salvific powers, that no good could ever have come of it.
On those powers, the orthodox teaching is this: that while Christ obviously wishes everyone to be saved, numerous persons shall consciously reject His grace, through perverse misuse of their God-derived free will. It is true that, contrary to the more feral assertions of cyberspace’s lay magisterium, we may not say with absolute certitude which particular human beings have condemned themselves to hell. (For all we know, even Hitler and Stalin might have achieved the grace of final repentance in their last seconds of life, although – if one may adopt Damon Runyon’s phraseology on such a subject – that is not where the smart money is.) Nonetheless we are duty-bound and charity-bound to admit that hell is indeed the destination for certain obstinate individuals.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent emphasises the crucial difference between the traditional understanding of Christ’s Passion, and modern misconstructions of that Passion. It says:
“[W]e believe that the Redeemer shed His Blood for the salvation of all men; but looking to the advantages which mankind derive from its efficacy, we find, at once, that they are not extended to the whole, but to a large proportion of the human race ... With great propriety, therefore, were the words, ‘for all,’ not used.”
St Alphonsus Liguori similarly observed in his treatise The Holy Eucharist:
“This precious blood is (in itself) sufficiently (sufficienter) able to save all men, but (on our part) effectually (efficaciter) it does not save all - it saves only those who co-operate with grace.”
More than two centuries after St Alphonsus, the theologian Monsignor Klaus Gamber (whose Reform of the Roman Liturgy appeared with an introduction by then-Cardinal Ratzinger) described “for all”, in 1987, as “a falsification which directly compromises the faith.” To which it is worth adding that Protestant, as well as Catholic, Bibles eschewed the words “for all” in the Synoptic Gospels.
Efficacy versus sufficiency
A simple secular example will help illustrate the difference between the Passion’s efficacy and its sufficiency. Suppose a man has deposited in my bank account a fortune, intended for my lasting good. Will I necessarily benefit from this fortune? By no means. I might, for instance, remain unaware that I have been given it. Or I might refuse to draw on it, believing it to be a computing error on the bank’s part. Or I might draw on it, but waste it on vicious pastimes that will do me no lasting good whatsoever. Yet none of these possible responses will have altered the donor’s original intention.
Such banal remarks would hardly be worth making but for the increasingly desperate rationalisations of “for all” which liturgical pseudo-scholarship contrived. A myth has emerged that Aramaic, the language in which Our Lord spoke, lacked any means for differentiating between “many” and “all”. One would think from this myth that Aramaic was as primitive an argot as present-day Ebonics. In fact, it constituted a medium as respectable, elaborate, and internationally accepted for international political, diplomatic and business communications as Latin would be in the Middle Ages, or French in the nineteenth century. To report that “for all” was the sole, or for that matter the sole major, ICEL mistranslation would be pleasant but false. Space precludes detailed analysis here of the approximately four hundred errors the ICEL perpetrated; readers craving more data are referred to Richard Toporoski’s Fall 1977 Communio article “The Language of Worship”.
Arinze speaks
Fortunately the Congregation for Divine Worship’s Cardinal Francis Arinze, as reported by Catholic World News on 18 November 2006, ordered that in future “for all” should be scrapped in favour of “for many”. Henceforward it will now be much harder for the modern liturgy’s defenders to tie themselves in knots trying to excuse the “for all” foolishness. (Certain prelates will, admittedly, continue to try. National Catholic Reporter on 10 January 2007 quoted Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pennsylvania, as having complained that restoring the correct meaning of pro multis "will confuse the faithful". Unlike, presumably, the cowardice of Trautman's fellow bishops in the face of homosexual predators.)
Even American anti-traditionalist Jimmy Akin, who in his 1999 pamphlet Mass Confusion sought to defend “for all” by charging its opponents with Jansenism, has greeted the Cardinal’s move enthusiastically. In the 20 November entry 2006 for his blog www.jimmyakin.org, he professed himself “DEE-lighted” with Cardinal Arinze’s ruling, which he lauded with the outburst “YEE-HAW!!! ... Kudos to His Awesomeness Cardinal Arinze and His Most Awesomeness B16. Y’all’re aces!” Sadly, Akin declares himself interested less in preserving Christ’s actual words than in his own favourite blood-sport of traditionalist-bashing: “The simple step of getting rid of the mistranslation will help enormously with anti-rad[ical] trad[itionalism] apologetics.”
Repairing the break
At an incomparably higher level of discourse than Akin’s hootenanny verbiage occupies, the late Michael Davies, in Appendix V of his Pope Paul’s New Mass (1980), gave a characteristically blunt and unadorned verdict. “To translate pro multis as ‘for all men’ represents”, Davies said, “a serious and completely unjustified break with tradition.” (The Novus Ordo liturgy itself keeps to the “for many” formulation in its Latin version. Also uncorrupted by “for all”: the Japanese, Polish, and Vietnamese versions.)
Notice that Davies never claimed that “for all” actually invalidated the Mass, that is, prevented transubstantiation from occurring. This accusation has indeed been made, notably by American-Australian Patrick Omlor; but then Omlor advocates sedevacantism, which Davies most certainly did not. Nevertheless the mere fact that “for all” might raise the possibility of such invalidation forms in itself, one would have supposed, cause to rejoice in its abandonment.
The present article is being written at a time when the Catholic air reverberates with open letters (from France, Italy, Poland, and the English-speaking lands), as well as with continuing talk of a motu proprio from the Holy Father freeing up the traditional Mass. (Some commentators said this motu proprio would be issued by Easter 2007, but it was not.) For the moment, however, let us content ourselves with saying that Cardinal Arinze’s decree inspires gratitude; and that, simultaneously, we should not overlook the wider doctrinal and liturgical issues which it leaves untouched.
Return
to Oriens contents page