Saturday, May 25, 2013

The first comment from Fr. O'Leary on this post at Commonweal identifies a "glaring heresy" in the Collect for this Trinity Sunday. After reading the Collect myself, I couldn't spot it, despite the Athanasian Creed being my favorite.

A deacon turned up an explanation of the heresy from the Pray Tell blog. And the deacon also remembered a theological problem in the EPIV of the 1970 translation that had been corrected. So there is precedent for correcting translation flubs, especially in this case where there is no Latin to stand behind it.

Here's Deacon Jim Pauwels's comment, with a quotation from Fr. McNamara archived at EWTN1 -
For those who are interested, here is what I was recalling regarding the problem in the old translation of EPIV - it is somewhat similar to that of the Trinity collect under discussion. This is Rev. Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University. as quoted by Felix Just, SJ:
A more delicate problem arose from an English reader who asks:
The difficulty that I, as a mere layman, have with this Preface [of Eucharistic Prayer IV] is that it clearly and most obviously, in English, denies the divinity of Our Blessed Lord and of the Holy Spirit. It starts: "Father in heaven, it is right that we should give you thanks and glory: you alone are God, living and true." Is not this heresy? I know good priests here in England who never use this Eucharistic prayer now. It has to be said, by the way, that all this kind of thing simply causes confusion among the poor laity. Priests and, indeed, bishops should remember the laity when they consider the liturgy. We do not all have degrees in theology; mine is in English and I can, therefore, understand the meaning of words in that language.
Far be it from me to accuse the liturgy of heresy. But our reader certainly has a point that we are before a less-than-adequate translation. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, this translation was corrected in the missals used in the United States and now reads "you are the one God, living and true."
http://www.ewtn.com/library/liturgy/zlitur107.htm


1 I haven't tracked down where Fr. Felix mentions this.

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