(1) It seemed to me very jejune to leave this great feast with the Common Preface, as the not-entirely-satisfactory Missal of 1962 did. Many people were happier with the older usage of employing the Nativity Preface. Communities enjoying an indult used the 'Gallican' Preface from the 1738 Paris Missal. This, happily, was authorised by the 2020 CDF legislation.
(2) What a shame we don't have a Patristic Preface for the Blessed Sacrament ... but stay: we could have had! The Verona ('Leonine') Sacramentary provided, at Christmas, a superb little Preface (VD tuae laudis hostiam), mentioning ... as you would expect ... the 'typical' figures of Abel, Passover Lamb, Abraham, and Melchisedek. Beautifully Roman; elegantly phrased and terse enough to have come from a very august papal pen.
(3) The EF and OF texts in Missal and Breviary for Corpus Christi are robustly supersessionist. Take the Lauda Sion (novum Pascha novae Legis Phase vetus terminat; Vetustatem novitas, umbram fugat veritas, noctem lux eliminat) and the Pange lingua (et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui). Comments on this blog in 2016 established that German "translations" of the Liturgia Horarum, as early as the early 1970s, eliminated prayers for the Conversion of the Jews.
Do German translations of S Thomas's hymns eliminate his supersessionism? Are the German and English hierarchies known to be agitating for the Angelic Doctor to be mutilated ('abelardised'?) so to make him Politically Correct?
7 comments:
Common preface?! We here used today, as always for the Blessed Sacrament, the Prefatio de Nativitate. O felix ignorantia on our part!
As for the German hymns: The stanza of "Deinem Heiland, deinem Lehrer" (Lauda Sion) is literal enough ("Neuer König, neue Zeiten, neue Ostern, neue Freuden, neues Opfer allzumal! Vor der Wahrheit muss das Zeichen, vor dem Licht der Schatten weichen, hell erglänzt des Tages Strahl" i. e. "new king, new times, new Easters, new joys, a new sacrifice especially; the sign must cede to the truth (it stands for), the shadow must cede to the light, brightly shines the ray of the day"), but usually left unsung because the song is so long.
The "novo cedat ritui" is usually sung, but is usually sung in Latin; on the rare occasions the translation "Sakrament der Liebe Gottes" is sung, we find that the supersessionism has indeed been quietly done away with, and all that is left is the line "Blut, in dem uns Gott besiegelt seinen Bund, der ewig währt" (blood in which God seals with us his Covenant that lasts forever), nothing explicit about a different covenant making place for it.
Adding to the comment by Moritz Gruber, which correctly describes the situation as given by the hymnal issued by the German and Austrian Episcopal Conferences, the German Liturgy of the Hours has yet another text for the hymn of Vespers, where the penultimate stanza is given as (cited after the Stundenbuch app, published by the German Liturgical Institute)
Gott ist nah in diesem Zeichen:
kniet hin und betet an.
Das Gesetz der Furcht muss weichen,
da der neue Bund begann;
Mahl der Liebe ohnegleichen:
nehmt im Glauben teil daran.
The boldfaced verse would be literally rendered in English as The Law of Fear must cease, as the new Covenant began, which sounds rather supersessionist to me; however, that text is only heard (apart from clerics quietly reading the Book of Hours to satisfy their obligation), when OF Vespers are actually celebrated according to the books, which is very rarely done except in cathedral churches and in my experience the hymn is usually substituted by an alius cantus aptus from the hymnal.
Dear Protasius
Now that text really is disgustingly antisemitic. There is nothing, intrinsically, in itself, wrong with the Mosaic Torah ... except that it has been superseded. Calling it a 'Law of Fear' insultingly misdescribes it.
What a mess heretics do get themselves into.
I support Fr Hunwicke's comment entirely. Dei Verbum (yes, some good things did come out of the Second Vatican Council) captured the point admirably: the Old Law is temporary and incomplete, but is still authentic divine revelation to be treasured.
The translation cited by Protasius is the one made by the inevitable hymn-writer Maria Luise Thurmair and has been much criticized by German theologians for its antisemitism. In the 2013 Gotteslob it was replaced by a new translation made by Austrian liturgy professor Liborius Lumma.
It can be found online (alongside commentary by the translator) here: https://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/leseraum/texte/749.html#ch6 "Altes Vorbild möge weichen, da der neue Brauch begann." - the archetype(?) could cease, as the new custom began".
But indeed we are fortunate enough in Germany that even the most progressive people mostly do the Tantum ergo in Latin.
The Lauda Sion is a tiny little Sermo Modernus!!! I never realized that, but the "thema specialis" verse makes it very plain!
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