Paris - It took the French church decades of discussion to change one phrase in its translation of the Lord's Prayer. Meanwhile, the French re-translation of the missal is still delayed.
Eminent Jesuit theologian Fr. Gerald O'Collins has appealed to every English-speaking episcopal conference in the church to seize the moment, dust off the 1998 English translation of the Roman Missal and substitute it for the contentious and clunky 2010 translation.
If the pope's actions surprise us, it is because, five decades out, there remains a substantial gap between the council's reformist agenda and its concrete realization in the church.
In an interview with NCR Oct. 24, Cardinal Donald Wuerl said: "The council clearly said this was the responsibility of the bishops, these translations — in communion, obviously, with Peter."
Distinctly Catholic: Liturgical translations may have been at issue in the pope's rebuke, but more is at stake. In the first place, Pope Francis is sending a message to the entire curia that he will not tolerate insubordination any longer.
Pope Francis issues a public correction Oct. 22 to an article by Cardinal Robert Sarah about the changes the pontiff made last month to how the Catholic Church's liturgies are to be translated from the original Latin into local languages.
We say: Francis' rollback of centralized power is, in political terms, a return to center, to moderation and to a trust of the community's local leaders. Whether the U.S. bishops will claim that trust is to be seen.
For some, Pope Francis' Sept. 9 announcement, about decentralizing the Vatican's authority over translations of liturgical texts, capped a story that spans more than 50 years: the story of the "liturgy wars."
American Catholic: Over its 2,000-year history, the Catholic liturgy has constantly changed in response to new situations and cultures. Like software, it must continue to be updated and adjusted to the people and cultures of today.
Updated Sept. 12, 3:28 p.m. CDT: The change to church law governing liturgical translations released by the Vatican over the weekend is "good news," liturgical experts say. But Catholics should not stop saying, "And with your Spirit," just yet.
Pope Francis has decentralized authority over how the texts used in the Catholic Church's liturgies are translated from Latin into local languages, moving most responsibility for the matter from the Vatican to national bishops' conferences.
From the NCR Archives: May 2001 -- Critics say the document, Liturgiam authenticam, strikes at the heart of Vatican II ecclesiology by centralizing power in the curia and by insisting that local cultures adopt an essentially Roman style of worship.
From the NCR Archives: September 1998 -- The American bishops had spent six years revising the lectionary, the Scripture readings used in Mass, one aim of which was to make the language more gender inclusive, but a Vatican-appointed committee intervened to short-circuit those efforts.
