22 April 2011

Highlights of Holy Week so far?

Well, attending the Westminster Chrism Mass. Not so much the Mass itself - it was certainly well enough done but former Ebbsfleet clergy have been somewhat spoiled in this respect - as the scene beforehand outside: the Association of Catholic Women with posters and little cards to hand out saying We Love Our Priests. I would have liked to kiss them all. What a lovely lot. Catholic Women are obviously a very superior breed. Why has nobody ever told us this?

Another high point must be the recollection that, Deo volente, this will be the last Holy Week in which the faithful will have been fobbed off with the Comme le prevoit mistranslations by Bad Old ICEL. I thought of this at the Oratory today when we got to the bidding 'translated' as "that God may ... free those unjustly deprived of liberty", as if God were some sort of rather superior Parole Board. The original, you will recall, is the terse, forceful, brilliant, aperiat carceres, vincula solvat. I wonder how Good New ICEL renders this.

G G 'Patrimony' Willis demonstrated the extreme antiquity of those biddings - older even than the beautiful ancient collects which they introduce - by pointing out that they lack cursus.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

In the leaked copy of new translation, it's rendered quite literally, as 'unlock prisons, loosen fetters.'

Woody said...

Highlights so far at Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, Good Friday services starting at Noon with an Office, followed by Stations of the Cross, Via Matris and then Good Friday liturgy with veneration of a relic of the True Cross, etc., concluding at 5:00 p.m. Some of the parish Stakhanovites were there for the whole thing; I took a break after the Stations but returned for most of the Via Matris and then the rest. The PTB prevailed upon me to sign up for the Anglican Use Conference, too, which I have just done, and so look forward to seeing Father H. there.

Woody said...

And confessions, of course.

Father Anonymous said...

The highlights here in Cluj-Napoca have been extraliturgical, I'm afraid: Liszt's Via Crucis and Antonio Caldara's Stabat Mater. Tonight, a small band of us foreigners will venture out to the Greek Catholic vigil.

Anonymous said...

Here at Saint-Eugène in the French capital it was as usual ... famem depellat, aperiat carceres, vincula dissolvat, &c.
No mention of EU “Human Rights”.

Sue Sims said...

Huh.

Over at Waterford in Ireland (where we've escaped for a week while a new kitchen ceiling and floor have been installed, if that's the right word) I was at an 'in the round' church where the veneration of the Cross was just that - kissing a bare wooden cross which was carried in with no veiling (thus no sacred striptease) and some weird St-Louis-Jesuit-style stuff replacing the proper chant. I could have cried.

Mind you, the church was pretty well packed - I'd estimate about four or five hundred people - so that was something.

Cecilia said...

Bare wooden cross here too - no veiling- and the veneration took place after the liturgy was concluded and the clergy had all left.
At least on the way home I was pleased to see the local newspaper billboard announcing that burglars had been released early for Easter!

AndrewWS said...

Highlights of Holy Week?

1) Being received into full communion of The Church under its One Shepherd at the Oxford Oratory (as the esteemed author of this blog will testify).

2) Glorious Liturgy of the Passion at Blackfriars.

3) Seeing friends in Reading received into the same Great Church with exuberant joy.

There is more, but that gets too personal for a blog.

Cecilia said...

A deacon is being ordained for the Ordinariate at our church on Thursday.