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Transcendent Truths

This Rock Volume 20, Number 7   September-October 2009     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Want to Evangelize? Start with Scriptural Prayer By Fr. William Dillard   Lectio Divina through the Ages   The Language of Prayer Is the Language of Poetry By Anthony Esolen   To See Him Face to Face   Lord, We Are Not Worthy   Transcendent Truths   A New Fisher of Men: St. Louis the Crusader By Christopher Check   A Formidable Queen Mother   A Pole-Vault across Purgatory   Further Reading   Justification Sola Fide: Catholic after All? By Christopher J. Malloy   Pope Benedict and Trent   Damascus Road There and Back Again By Sebastian R. Fama   By the Book Health and Wealth—or the Cross? By Jim Blackburn   Eyes to See Beauty beyond Price By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told America’s Catholic Colony By Matthew E. Bunson   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

In its 2001 document on the use of the vernacular in the liturgy (Liturgiam Authenticam), the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments outlined the principles for translation of liturgical prayer:

The words of the Sacred Scriptures, as well as the other words spoken in liturgical celebrations, especially in the celebration of the sacraments, are not intended primarily to be a sort of mirror of the interior dispositions of the faithful; rather, they express truths that transcend the limits of time and space. Indeed, by means of these words God speaks continually with the Spouse of his beloved Son, the Holy Spirit leads the Christian faithful into all truth and causes the word of Christ to dwell abundantly within them, and the Church perpetuates and transmits all that she herself is and all that she believes, even as she offers the prayers of all the faithful to God, through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Latin liturgical texts of the Roman Rite, while drawing on centuries of ecclesial experience in transmitting the faith of the Church received from the Fathers, are themselves the fruit of the liturgical renewal, just recently brought forth. In order that such a rich patrimony may be preserved and passed on through the centuries, it is to be kept in mind from the beginning that the translation of the liturgical texts of the Roman liturgy is not so much a work of creative innovation as it is of rendering the original texts faithfully and accurately into the vernacular language. While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax, and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer, the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. . . (19-20)