I printed this and read it through several times during the week. Archbishop Vigneron provides an excellent outline for a liturgical translation commission to work with. There are numerous points that can be discussed, but I would like to highlight the points on unity:
A. “Global”/“Over-Arching” Principles
Let me begin my remarks on what I am calling the “global” or “over-arching” principles found in LA by offering what seems to me to be a fairly typical example:
(1) The texts “must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrase or glosses” (LA 20).
This norm clearly aims at the goal of accuracy identified by Cardinal Dulles.
Let me give you a sampling of a few more of the principles from the Instruction which fall into this “architectonic” or “genetic” set:
(2) “The translation must always be in accord with sound doctrine” (LA 26).
(3) The translations of liturgical texts should be “marked by sound doctrine, [exactness] in wording, free from all ideological influence…” and they should be an efficacious medium for the transmission of the mysteries of salvation and the indefectible faith of the Church (LA 3).
(4) “In preparing all translations of the liturgical books, the greatest care is to be taken to maintain the identity and unitary expression of the Roman Rite, not as a sort of historical monument, but rather as a manifestation of the theological realities of ecclesial communion and unity” (LA 5).
(5) The translation of liturgical texts is not a work of “creative inventiveness, [but] of fidelity and exactness in rendering the Latin texts into a vernacular language”. However, note that here there follows immediately this important qualifier: “with all due consideration for the particular way that each language has of expressing itself” (LA 20). Later I will say more about this qualifier and the others that parallel it in the Instruction.
(6) “The translation should not restrict the full sense of the original text within narrower limits” (LA 32).
The Revised Divine Liturgy destroys the liturgical unity of the Byzantine Church, both at the level of those who hold the Ruthenian Recension as their norm and at the larger level of the whole Byzantine Church, both Catholic and Orthodox. Surely the bishops realized that they were violating both the
Liturgical Instruction and
Liturgiam Authenticam, but did they realize that they were destroying the unity of the Byzantine Rite? If we review the text of the Revised Divine Liturgy we can easily see that it violates each of the six points given above from
Liturgiam Authenticam.What incredible wisdom there is in
Liturgiam Authenticam:This Instruction therefore envisions and seeks to prepare for a new era of liturgical renewal, which is consonant with the qualities and the traditions of the particular Churches, but which safeguards also the faith and the unity of the whole Church of God. (LA 7)
It is never too late for the Council of Hierarchs to scrap the Revised Divine Liturgy and direct the liturgical commission to prepare texts that are accurate and faithful to the normative Church Slavonic editions. The clergy and lay faithful deserve an accurate and complete translation of the Divine Liturgy and all of our liturgical texts.
I continue my prayer and appeals that the Ruthenian Bishops will rescind the Revised Divine Liturgy and will instead promulgate the Ruthenian Divine Liturgy.
