Christine Mohrmann followed de Saussure and Bally in pointing out that "language by no means serves only to communicate actual facts but is also ... a medium of expression. Whereas ... language used purely as a means of communication normally strives towards a certain degree of efficiency, which results in linguistic simplification and standardisation, language as expression usually shows a tendency to become richer and more subtle. It aims at becoming, by every possible means, more expressive and more picturesque, and it may try to attain this heightened power of expression ... by the preservation of antiquated elements already abandoned by the language as communication". It is on these grounds that she resisted the introduction of the vernacular into the liturgy (except for the readings); modern languages, in her view, develop their efficiency as media of communication, but this makes them less suitable for sacred stylisation.
It was not until 1997 that the Magisterium of the Latin Church caught up with the questions Mohrmann had posed, and in an admirable instruction Liturgiam authenticam (hysterically vilified by the illiterate vested interests) called for nothing less than the creation of new sacral vernaculars. Unhappily, this document is now very much under a cloud. But here is one of its points which have lasting validity, irrespective of the views of the current degenerate Vatican regime.
"If, indeed, words or phrases can sometimes be employed in liturgical texts which differ from common and everyday speech, this in fact quite often actually leads to the texts being more memorable and more effective in expressing heavenly things. So it appears that observance of the principles explained in this Instruction tends to the gradual production in every common language of a sacred style, which also is to be recognised as the correct dialect for worship (sermo proprie liturgicus). So it can happen that a certain way of speaking which might seem a trifle obsolete in everyday speech, can be preserved in a liturgical context".
Perhaps those of us who are not ashamed to be traddiish should do our bit to keep alive the authority of Liturgiam Authenticam.
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Here is an article on the status of the document:
“since the release of Pope Francis’s motu proprio, Magnum Principium, on September 9, 2017, the status of Liturgicam Authenticam has been called into question. Are its norms and guidelines still in force? If yes, to what degree? If no, ought old texts be retranslated, or current translation projects be put on hold?
https://adoremus.org/2018/01/q-current-status-translation-document-liturgiam-authenticam/
Dear Father. That is too complicated a process. I say we let our own selves be led by some Bishop to occupy several (more ideally) churches and to celebrate only the Holy Holocaust in a Neo-Ambrosian Rite Type Riot and not leave until publicly granted permission by Our Pope and Our Cross to celebrate only the Real Mass.
The revolutionaries(and Saints let's not forget, Popes Paul VI and JP II both claimed that the worship hack of the N.O. is the rite required By S.C.) and one must, I suspect become Counter-Revolutionaries (see Plinio Correa de Olivera)if one wants to win the winnable.
You have to be careful though when using obsolete words and phrases: because if it is not done skillfully the words just end up sounding obsolete - or worse awkward and stuffy. Does using a ridiculous phrase like like 'buckler and shield' in Psalm 90/91 really help anyone?
While reviewing Fr Denis Twomey's The Dynamics of Liturgy, a study of Ratzinger's liturgical theology, I came across the following quote from the anthropologist Mary Douglas writing in 1970 which backs up the de Saussure / Mohrmann thesis on the importance of language as expression:
"When I ask my clerical friends why the new forms are held superior, I am answered by a Teilhardist evolutionism which assumes that a rational, verbally explicit, personal commitment to God is self-evidently more evolved and better than its alleged contrary, formal, ritualistic conformity… We find in all this a mood which has inspired so many evangelical sects."
That would seems to be the mood in Rome - and it is not Catholic, as Mary Douglas points out.
We are forever being told to use the Anglo-Saxon word. They are stronger, more direct, shorter, and more evocative. Except, it seems, in matters liturgical. As a boy, I often heard old people say Holy Ghost, especially old Irish people. There were the Holy Ghost Fathers. They were a powerhouse. Now they are called "Spiritans", or at least I am told that there are. Somewhere. There was a Holy Ghost Parish in Brooklyn. Actually, there were two of them. Latin and Ukrainian/Greek. Across town, there was another one in The Bronx. Obviously, it was a good name. Strong. Now, almost every reference to the Holy Ghost has been latinized,and becomes Holy Spirit. In this one, single case, Latin rules! Which is a real shame. In English, Ghost always refers to a single person, while Spirit usually means a mere emotion, feeling or idea. Catch the Spirit!!! This has been a disaster, and has totally eliminated any awareness of the Third PERSON of the Blessed Trinity among young people. God becomes nothing more than the cringe exuberance of "charismatic" Catholics. The Paraclete disappears in a fog of confused thinking. Which is ironic. Or perhaps, revealing.
Just look at the English Orthodox Divine Liturgy to see Liturgicam Authenticam being "lived out". So sad that we have to look to the East to refind ourselves and even sadder that we are so reluctant to do so.
Joanna, one may then well ask, "Why the reluctance?" In answer, may I submit for your consideration that said reluctance stems from western dismay at the centuries-old claim of the east that the Papacy itself, as it developed in the second millennium, was an engine of innovation, beginning with the Filioque. To this day, whenever the Filioque is brought up, Westerners' backs go up, become devoted authoritarians of Papal centralization of power, and even the most ardent admirers of the protestant influences in the Novus Ordo become such wild-eyed ultramontanists as to make Cardinal Manning seem like an Old Catholic. Because it's all about authority and power.
Worse still are those who claim that the East indulges Arianism by not formally accepting the Filioque, as if the western adoption of that innovation has proven to be this huge bulwark against that heresy. Not a lot of evidence to support that now, is there?
No, to speak of language, one must speak truth, and what passes for the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed" in every missalette in every western church (Roman Catholic and every Protestant branch) for one thousand years to this day is not, in fact, identical to that Symbol of Faith promulgated in the first millennium. It was changed in the west purely by virtue of an act of Papal authority, an ukase plain and simple, no different than how the Novus Ordo was introduced. And that is the origin for the reluctance you have identified.
Dear Stephen:
You are partly correct when you say that the Filioque controversy was about power, and who has it.
The problem is that the Popes were not the ones trying to extend their power.
No attempt was being made at the time to impose any change on how the creed was recited in the Byzantine Liturgy. Rome stood at the time for the preservation of traditional liturgies.
The non-Apostolic see of Constantinople always claimed that it had some sort of parity with Rome, based on its Imperial status. It ran roughshod over any liturgy that differed from its own, no matter how valid.
The original controversy was never, ever, based on a point of doctrine. It was a liturgical dispute. Constantinople insisted that the adoption of the Filioque in the West was invalid- that somehow no liturgy could be approved of where they had any possible standing to object. They claimed to have standing because the Nicene Creed was adopted at a council, with their participation- So, it could never be changed without their permission, even in the West.
The Filioque was already long established, starting, I think, in Spain, long before it was extended to general use in the West. The Pope had a perfect right to adopt it.
The objection to the Filioque falls flat when one considers that the Catholic Church used, and still uses BOTH forms of the Nicene creed.
No Byzantine Christian can object to the Filioque on doctrinal grounds, because it comes right from the Bible: totally ignoring the plain words of sacred scripture: "when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father...."
The Byzantine objections currently involve a series of tortured arguments about something called "double ontological procession" It is all just an excuse to maintain division, in the service of pride, power, and the state.
Dear Arthur,
The point is a lack of truth that undermines the communion of faith. Call what is prayed in all the west, Roman Catholic and Protestant, the revised Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed,, or the Creed of Charlemagne, or the Creed of Toledo, but it is not the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of Faith promulgated by the Church. It is not what Pope St. Gregory the prayed, nor Leo, nor a great many other saints. Can you deny this?
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