Mixed news ...

... from the American RC Bishops. The 2008 English translation of the Ordo Missae has now been published in a definitive version, which we can call 2010.

Mind you, the 2008 version was pretty definitive too, or, as Cardinal Arinze put it, "is to be considered binding". Non-RCs sometimes need to be reminded that when Rome says that something is Definitive and Binding, it only means that this is where we are until something even more Definitive and Binding is issued. I often wonder what legal jiggery pokery has to go on behind the scenes: for example, JP2 signed the Third Typical Edition of the Latin Missal; the Instructio generalis from it was published as a separate booklet; but then, when the printed version of the Missal appeared, it had been extensively changed (the directions for saying a Novus Ordo private Mass were completely rewritten). And the recent 'reprint' of that Missal contains, not just a correction of misprints, of which there are indeed several hundred; but substantive alterations.

I will give you the Good News first. The 2008 version has not been 'improved' (forgive the Anglican terminology) too much. It's main lines remain intact. Anglicans will give it a mixed reception. Those of us who, devoted admirers of Christine Mohrmann, believed in the importance of a specifically sacral dialect and accordingly valued the liturgical dialect associated with the name of Cranmer, will be moderately delighted. There are some actual Cranmerisms: notably, the use of "Hosts" to render "Sabaoth" in the Sanctus. But the main joy is that, since when Cranmer was translating canticles he did it quite literally, and since 2010 is also quite literal, the two versions (except that 2010 eschews thou/thee English) are often very similar, both in wording and rhythms. Thus 2010 will seem very unstrange to those brought up on the Prayer Book or its idiom.

Anglican Catholics, however, who out of slavish imitation of English Roman Catholicism adopted the old ICEL texts, will, like Anglophone RCs, have a great deal of rehabituation to do. And a category of Anglicans who will be chewing glass will be the Bubbles Stancliffes, who were dotty about the idea of common translations being used across the Anglophone ecumenical scene. They saw to it that the ICEL renderings were incorporated into Common Worship, and they even tried to be sexily ahead of the Roman game by incorporating formulae from the abortive ICEL version of the 1990s. That whole game is now definitively (er) over. It marked a particular ecumenical phase which is now also over. If the Stancliffes are irritated that it is over, let them ask themselves who killed it.

Concludes soon.