Bishop James Wall of Gallup says Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Credit: Peter Zelasko. Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Gallup.
Denver Newsroom, Feb 8, 2021 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- The US bishops’ conference last week decreed that in the translation of the conclusion of collects in the Roman Missal, “one” is to be omitted before “God”. The conclusions will now read “God, for ever and ever”.
The decision follows a letter sent in May 2020 to Anglophone episcopal conferences by Robert Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, addressing a concern about the English translation.
A Feb. 4 note from the USCCB’s Committee on Divine Worship said the correction will take effect in the dioceses of the US from Feb. 17, Ash Wednesday.
Until now, in the conclusions to collects the Latin words “Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum” had been rendered in English as “one God, for ever and ever”.
The committee’s note said that Cardinal Sarah had observed that “there is no mention of ‘one’ in the Latin, and ‘Deus’ in the Latin text refers to Christ … The Cardinal Prefect has pointed out the importance of affirming this Christological truth amid the religious pluralism of today’s world.”
The note added that English hand missals that preceded Vatican II “reflected the corrected translation … however, when the post-conciliar texts were published in English, the word ‘one’ was added.”
The English-Latin Sacramentary, a missal published in 1966 during the period of transition from the Traditional Latin Mass to the Novus Ordo, omitted the word ‘one’ in the conclusion of collects. The English translation found in The English-Latin Sacramentary was copyrighted by P. J. Kennedy & Sons, and had been approved by the National Conference of Bishops Sept. 3, 1965.
The USCCB committee wrote in its Feb. 4 note that it “should be noted that when the translation of the Missal currently in use was in progress, ICEL pointed out the discrepancy to the Congregation in Rome, but was told to retain the use of ‘one God’ in the new translation.”
The note said that the Latin rite bishops of the US have voted to amend the country’s version of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to reflect the change, and that it has been confirmed by the CDW.
The most common formula, used when a collect is addressed to the Father, will read: “Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.”
The change is in harmony with the bishops’ conferences of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, as well other English-speaking territories.
The same change was effected by the English and Welsh bishops, beginning Nov. 29, 2020.
The decree of the English and Welsh bishops’ conference said that “The addition of ‘one’ before ‘God’ in the conclusion of the Collects could be construed as mistaken and problematic. ‘Deus’ here refers to the earlier mention of ‘the Son’ and is a Christological, anti-Arian affirmation, and not directly Trinitarian in this context.”
The addition of “one” before “God” “could serve to undermine the statement of the unique dignity of the Son within the Trinity”, or “could be interpreted as saying that Jesus is ‘one God,’” an explanatory note to the English and Welsh decree stated.
“Either or both of these interpretations is injurious to the faith of the Church.”
Continuing, the note said that “one” “risks suggesting that Jesus became a god independent of the Blessed Trinity and is one god among many … what we pray needs to express what the Church believes, requiring that, in liturgical formulae, we uphold the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity.”
The Trinitarian doxology that concludes the collects “emphasises the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who as the Incarnate Son, intercedes on our behalf to the Father … thus, the Son’s role of priestly mediation is made clear.”
The explanatory note says the phrase was adopted in the fourth century “as a means to combat the Arian heresy,” which held that Jesus Christ became God, rather than having been God eternally.
Moreover, the note adds, “one” is not used in the translations of the conclusion in French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese: “The English translation has, therefore, diverged from those of other major language groups.”
The English and Welsh bishops’ explanatory note said that “since the addition of the word ‘one’” could obscure prayer and thus belief, the Congregation for Divine Worship “has ruled it should no longer be used in the translation of these texts into English.”
The USCCB has been approving new translations of components of the Liturgy of the Hours, a new translation of the Roman Missal having been adopted in 2011.
At its 2019 fall general assembly, the conference voted overwhelmingly to approve the ICEL grey book translation of the hymns of the Liturgy of the Hours.
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“What’s the Eucharist?” Kent Shi, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student, asked that question when he attended eucharistic adoration for the first time. The answer put him on a path to conversion. / Julia Monaco | CNA
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Apr 16, 2022 / 09:03 am (CNA).
One convert’s journey to Catholicism began with an invitation to an ice-cream social.
Another says he instantly believed in the Real Presence the moment someone explained what the round object was that everyone was staring at during eucharistic adoration.
For a third, the poems of T.S. Eliot — and a seemingly random encounter with a priest on a public street — led to deeper questions about truth and faith.
Their paths differed but led them to the same destination: St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they are among 31 people set to be fully initiated into the Catholic Church during the Easter vigil Mass on Saturday, April 16.
That number of initiates is a record high for St. Paul’s, a nearly century-old Romanesque-style brick church whose bell tower looms over Harvard Square.
A scheduling backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is partly responsible for the size of this year’s group of catechumens (non-baptized) and candidates (baptized non-Catholics.) But Father Patrick J. Fiorillo, the parochial vicar at St. Paul’s, believes there’s more to it than that.
“There’s definitely a significant segment of people who started thinking more deeply about their lives and faith during COVID-19,” Fiorillo said. “So, coming out of Covid has given them the occasion to take the next step and move forward.”
Fiorillo is the undergraduate chaplain for the Harvard Catholic Center, a chaplaincy based at St. Paul’s for undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard University and other academic institutions in the area. This year, 17 of the 31 initiates are Harvard students.
“Everybody assumes that, because this is the Harvard Catholic Center, that everybody here is very smart and therefore has a very highly intellectual orientation towards their faith,” Fiorillo told CNA.
“That is definitely true of some people. But I would say the majority are not here because of intellectually thinking their way into the faith. Some are. But the majority are just kind of ordinary life circumstances, just seeking, questioning the ways of the world, and just trying to get in touch with this desire on their heart for something more,” he said.
Fiorillo says welcoming converts into the Church at the Easter vigil is one of the highlights of his ministry.
“It’s an honor. It gives me hope just seeing all this new life and new faith here. So much in one place,” he said.
“When I tell other people about it, it gives them hope to hear that many young people are still converting to Catholicism, and they’re doing it in a place as secular as Cambridge.”
Prior to the Easter vigil, CNA spoke with five of St. Paul’s newest converts. Here are their stories:
‘This is what I’ve been looking for’
Katie Cabrera, a 19-year-old Harvard freshman, told CNA that she was excited to experience the “transformative power of Christ through his body and blood” at Mass for the first time at the Easter vigil.
A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, she said she was baptized as a child and comes from a family of Dominican immigrants. Her father, who grew up in an extremely impoverished area, lacked a formal education, but always kept the traditions of the Catholic faith close to him in order to persevere in difficult times.
Her father’s love for her and his Catholic faith deeply inspired Cabrera, and served as an anchor for her faith throughout her life.
Growing up, however, Cabrera attended a non-denominational church with her mother. Because she felt the church’s teachings lacked an emphasis on God’s love and mercy, Cabrera eventually left.
“Even though I Ieft, I always knew that I believed in God,” Cabrera said. “So, I was at a place where I felt kind of lost, because I always had that faith, but I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” says Katie Cabrera, a Harvard undergraduate student. She discovered what was missing when she started to get involved with the Harvard Catholic Center. Courtesy of Katie Cabrera
After she arrived at Harvard, she accepted a friend’s invitation to attend an ice-cream social at the Harvard Catholic Center — “and that was like, sort of, how it all started,” she told CNA.
Once she was added to the email list for the center’s events, she felt a “calling” that she “really wanted to officially become Catholic” after many difficult years without a faith community.
Catholic doctrine about the sacraments was no hurdle for Cabrera, as she credits Fiorillo with explaining the faith well.
“There was a void that existed in my heart,” she said. “As soon as Father Patrick started teaching about marriage and family, theology of the body, and the sacraments, I was like, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life.’”
‘What’s the Eucharist?’
“What is that thing on the thing?”
Kent Shi laughs when he recalls how perplexed he was the first time he attended eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s of the Assumption in Cambridge.
Someone helpfully explained that what Shi was looking at was the Eucharist displayed inside a monstrance.
“What’s the Eucharist?” he wanted to know.
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle. But Kent Shi, a Harvard graduate student, says that once the Eucharist was explained to him, he instantly believed. Julia Monaco | CNA
For many non-Catholics considering entering the Catholic Church, the Real Presence can be a major obstacle.
Not Shi. He says that once the Eucharist was explained to him that day, he instantly believed.
Shi, 25, told CNA that he considered himself an agnostic for most of his life, meaning he neither believed nor disbelieved in God.
Between his first and second years as a graduate student in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, however, he accepted Christ and started attending services at a Presbyterian church.
One day in the summer of 2021, a crucifix outside St. Paul’s that Shi says he “must have passed multiple times a week for months and never noticed” caught his eye, and deeply moved him.
Shortly after, he accepted a friend’s invitation to attend eucharistic adoration at St. Mary’s even though he “didn’t know what adoration meant.” Unaware of what he was about to walk into, Shi asked a friend what the dress code was for adoration. His friend replied, “Respectful.”
And so, respectfully dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, Shi sat in the front row with his friend, only a few feet from the monstrance. That’s when the questions began.
It wasn’t long after that encounter that Shi began attending Mass at St. Paul’s and the parish’s RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) program. Shi asked CNA readers to pray for him and his fellow RCIA classmates.
“There’s a lot of prodigal sons and daughters here, so we would very much appreciate that,” he said, “especially me.”
Poetry and art opened the door
For Loren Brown, choosing to attend a secular university like Harvard proved to be “providential.”
The 25-year-old junior from La Center, Washington, said he comes from a “lapsed” Catholic family and wasn’t baptized.
He didn’t think much about the faith until the spring semester of his freshman year, when, he says, Catholic friends of his “began to question my lack of commitment to faith.”
Later, when students were sent home to take classes virtually due to the pandemic, he had time to reflect and began to read some of the books they’d recommended to him. The poetry of T.S. Eliot (his favorite set of poems being “Four Quartets”) and the “Confessions” by St. Augustine, in particular, “pulled me towards the faith,” he said.
Brown describes his conversion as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role.
One day in the summer of 2021 while walking back to his dormitory he encountered a man wearing a priestly collar outside St. Paul’s Church on busy Mount Auburn Street.
It was Father George Salzmann, O.S.F.S., graduate chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Center.
“He asked me how I was doing, what I was studying, and we immediately found a common interest in St. Augustine,” Brown told CNA.
“You know, there’s this great window of St. Augustine inside St. Paul’s and you should come see it,” Brown remembers the gregarious priest telling him. Salzmann wound up giving Brown a brief tour of the church, which was completed in 1923.
Harvard undergraduate student Loren Brown describes his conversion to Catholicism as a “gradual process” which backed him into a “logical corner.” But a chance meeting with a priest also played a pivotal role. Courtesy of Loren Brown
The next week, Brown found himself sitting in a pew for his first Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s. He hasn’t missed a Sunday since, a routine that ultimately led him to join the RCIA program that fall.
Brown says he now realizes that coming to Harvard was about more than majoring in education.
“What I wanted out of Harvard has completely changed,” he said. “Instead of an education that prepares me for a job or a career, I want one that forms me as a moral being and a human.”
‘I can’t do this alone. Please help me.’
Verena Kaynig-Fittkau, 42, is a German immigrant who came to the U.S. 10 years ago with her husband to do her post-doctoral research in biomedical image processing at Harvard’s engineering school.
The couple settled in Cambridge, where they had their first child. Two subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriage, however. That second loss was overwhelming for Kaynig-Fittkau, who says she was raised as a “secular Lutheran” without any strong faith.
“It broke me and a lot of my pride and made me realize that I can’t do things by myself,” she told CNA.
She found herself on knees one Thanksgiving, pleading with God. “I can’t do this alone,” she said. “Please help me.”
She says God answered her prayer by introducing her to another mother, who she met at a playground. She was a Christian who later invited Kaynig-Fittkau to attend services at a Presbyterian church in Somerville, Massachusetts.
In that church, there was a lot of emphasis on “faith alone,” she said. But Kaynig-Fittkau, who now works for Adobe and is the mother of two girls, kept questioning if her faith was deep enough.
A YouTube video about the Eucharist by Father Mike Schmitz sent Verena Kaynig-Fittkau on a path toward converting to Catholicism. Courtesy of Verena Kaynig-Fittkau
Then one day she stumbled upon a YouTube video titled “The hour that will change your life,” in which Father Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest from the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota, known for his “Bible in a Year” podcast, speaks about the Eucharist.
Intrigued, she began watching similar videos by other Catholic speakers, including Father Casey Cole, O.F.M., Bishop Robert Barron, Matt Fradd, and Scott Hahn, each of whom drew her closer and closer to the Catholic faith.
Familiar with St. Paul’s from her days as a Harvard researcher and lecturer, she decided to attend Mass there one day, and made an appointment before she left to meet with Fiorillo.
When they met, Fiorillo answered all of her questions from what she calls “a list of Protestant problems with Catholicism.” She entered the RCIA program three weeks later.
Recalling her first experience attending eucharistic adoration, she said it felt “utterly weird” to be worshiping what she describes as “this golden sun.”
A conversation with a local Jesuit priest helped her better understand the Eucharist, however. Now she finds that spending time before the Blessed Sacrament is “amazing.”
“I am really, really, really excited for the Easter vigil,” Kaynig-Fittkau said. “I can’t wait, I have a big smile on my face just thinking about it.”
The rosary brought him peace
Another catechumen at St. Paul’s this year is Kyle Richard, 37, who lives in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston and works in a technology startup company downtown.
Although he grew up in a culturally Catholic hub in Louisiana, his parents left the Catholic faith and joined a Full Gospel church. Richard said he found the church “intimidating,” which led him eventually to leave Christianity altogether.
When Richard was in his mid-twenties, his father battled pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he expressed a wish to rejoin the Catholic Church. He never did confess his sins to a priest or receive the Anointing of the Sick, Richard recalls sadly. But years later, his non-believing son would remember his father’s yearning to return to the Church.
“I kind of filed that away for a while, but I never really let it go,” he said.
While Kyle Richard’s father was dying from pancreatic cancer, he returned to the Catholic faith, which made a lasting impression on his non-believing son. Courtesy of Kyle Richard
Initially, Richard moved even farther away from the Church. He said he became an atheist who thought that Christianity was simply “something that people used to just soothe themselves.”
Years later, while going through a divorce, he had a change of heart.
Feeling he ought to give Christianity “a fair shot,” he began saying the rosary in hopes of settling his anxiety. The prayer brought him peace, and became a gateway to the Catholic faith.
Before long, he was reading the Bible on the Vatican’s website, downloading prayer apps, and meditating on scripture.
A Google search brought him to St. Paul’s. Joining the RCIA program, he feels, was a continuation of his father’s expressed desire on his deathbed more than a decade ago.
“I think he would be proud, especially because he was born on April 16th and that is the date of the Easter vigil,” he said.
Kansas City, Mo., Oct 20, 2021 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
A Kansas City-area Baptist megachurch has reached a $150,000 settlement with the county over coronavirus restrictions, with the church claiming that the county tre… […]
From left to right, front row: U.S. President Joe Biden, First Lady Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamla Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Second row: former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Presiden… […]
9 Comments
OK Fine.
The little gimmick misslette booklets in the pews have all sorts
of BS in them. Bishops don’t care.
But Cdn Sarah cares. Pray for him.
Interesting how this widespread confusion and disorientation and its cumbersomely bureaucratic aftermath of correction have come about. The “problem” does not even exist in the Traditional Latin Mass and has never existed there. Instead of returning to the dogmatically precise traditional liturgy, there is now still another wholesale revision of the liturgical books at vast labor and needless expense. By the way, how many have there been now in the U.S. since 1970 since I have lost count and interest.
The problem doesn’t exist in the Eastern rite Churches either. They’ve maintained accuracy in all the vernacular languages, and any change or update has never been an all-consuming issue.
Another point scored for Latin.
🙂
But Eastern Rite liturgies seem to be doing fine also. I don’t know what it is about the English language that we keep trying to bring it down to the lowest common denominator. Even during Mass.
It was, again, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman who remarked that we worship the Triune Oneness, not a “quaternary” as with a hybrid Christ (another God). What does Newman mean? This, from Walter Farrell OP, STM and Martin Healy, STD, in My Way of Life, Confraternity of the Precious Blood, 1952):
“The union between the two natures in Christ is a personal union. It takes place in the Person of the Son of God….They are not mixed or fused with one another to form a third thing distinct from both [forming a quaternary with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit]. Rather they are united to one another indirectly in the Second Person of the Trinity…But in the Incarnation, the person pre-exists the union of the two natures, because it is the Person of the Eternal Son of God.
“In the Incarnation the Son of God, Who is eternal, assumes to Himself a complete human nature, a body and soul. By this union the human nature becomes the human nature of the Son of God. He is the Person existing in this human nature, the Person responsible for all its actions, the responsible Agent acting in and through the human nature in the world of men […] If we were to look at the human nature of Christ and ask […] ‘Who is he?’ then we could not give in reply the name of any human or created person, because there is no created personality present in Christ. We should have to say, ‘He is Christ, the Son of God’” [Matt 16:16 !].
But, if scribblers of verbiage simply kept their mouths shut, how would some publishing houses remain in front of the parade??? God bless Cardinal Sarah…someone, somewhere, is not asleep at the switch.
Language requires philosophical examination, similar to Wittgenstein’s Linguistic Analysis. What does, “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.” Does it indelibly confirm a divine Trinity? Working with pre Christian Africans Malawi, Tanzania they had many gods. It’s fine for the Scot who no longer paints himself blue or the Englishman whom doesn’t today practice Druidism to immediately come to a unitive apprehension of One God. Not so for Cardinal Sarah when he honestly examines his conscientious experience, and the many gods that African bush animists believe exist. Jesus mustn’t be presumed anywhere at any time as a god among many, rather a One God in the unity of the Holy Spirit as identical in his divinity to Father and Spirit. This is vital. Should Scots need stop brooding in their dank corners and Englishman surrender the belief that God is an Englishman and listen to the humble African with real wisdom Cardinal Sarah. God forever and ever means God. One God may be construed as a separate god. Equally God forever can also be construed as one god among many. Although I’m not convinced Sarah is entirely correct, and that the change is not a quibble. Does return to everything that preceded 2021 mean orthodoxy?
Rather than beat a dead horse I hope to revive this comment a bit. “Rather a One God in the unity of the Holy Spirit”, although hazily placed speaks to the Anglophone mind of the Trinity. Scots and Englishmen notwithstanding Latin is a different language whose structure parallels a different mindset, more concise, definitive. Whereas English is more loosely knit leaving much to colloquialism, how words are used the meanings we attach. For the American One God in unity clearly references the Trinity. Latin, the Latin trained mind doesn’t require excess words as we find in English. We think differently in each language, for myself learning Latin taught me to think and better organize my thoughts. We find the difference in some of the new translations of the Liturgy from the Latin, some of which are awkward. Apparently the result of attempting exact translation from an entirely different language. And mind set. Whereas a theologian comfortable and adept with English literature could offer the concise meaning better worded. That is why I question Cardinal Sarah’s removal of ‘One’ God in the American translation.
Other wording subtleties have included these: the words of Consecration as for “all” rather than “the many” (actually meaning all those not Israelites); “through God, with God and In God” (rather than “Him”), and at the Consecration again: the “everlasting” Covenant” (rather than eternal as from eternity). All heard in a major archdiocese and recently corrected, locally.
Not only were these nuances Arian in implication (like “one God,” rather than “God” as Sarah explains), but as less than incarnational, do they almost give off the fragrance of lavender? So, not to discount the contributions of linguistic scholars, it might also be that Sarah knows the tip of a larger iceberg when he sees it…
Something like St. Ambrose in 386 A.D. when he refused the demands of Emperor Valentinian II and his mother Justina for compatible inclusion of Arian services in his Milan Cathedral (with Christ as “one” God among many?), or for the placement of Christ in the niche of a tolerant pantheon, all in an effort to prop up a crumbling empire.
Or, as Pope/Emperor Biden has said, his cafeteria-Catholicism (with Aztec accretions) still “coincides” with the Church. Also, and of possible relevance today, Ambrose excommunicated from the Church the Emperor Theodosius of the East for his massacre of a mere 7,000 in Thessalonica in 390 A.D., until such time as the emperor awakened from his bubble world and converted.
So, with Sarah, the single word here and there as iceberg thing: the modern-day prophet Stalin said, “one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” And 60+ million? Hypothetically, what of an Arian potentate who excommunicates himself? From the collarless Fr. Joe of the 1970s now to empty-suit President Joe…
OK Fine.
The little gimmick misslette booklets in the pews have all sorts
of BS in them. Bishops don’t care.
But Cdn Sarah cares. Pray for him.
Interesting how this widespread confusion and disorientation and its cumbersomely bureaucratic aftermath of correction have come about. The “problem” does not even exist in the Traditional Latin Mass and has never existed there. Instead of returning to the dogmatically precise traditional liturgy, there is now still another wholesale revision of the liturgical books at vast labor and needless expense. By the way, how many have there been now in the U.S. since 1970 since I have lost count and interest.
The problem doesn’t exist in the Eastern rite Churches either. They’ve maintained accuracy in all the vernacular languages, and any change or update has never been an all-consuming issue.
Another point scored for Latin.
🙂
But Eastern Rite liturgies seem to be doing fine also. I don’t know what it is about the English language that we keep trying to bring it down to the lowest common denominator. Even during Mass.
It was, again, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman who remarked that we worship the Triune Oneness, not a “quaternary” as with a hybrid Christ (another God). What does Newman mean? This, from Walter Farrell OP, STM and Martin Healy, STD, in My Way of Life, Confraternity of the Precious Blood, 1952):
“The union between the two natures in Christ is a personal union. It takes place in the Person of the Son of God….They are not mixed or fused with one another to form a third thing distinct from both [forming a quaternary with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit]. Rather they are united to one another indirectly in the Second Person of the Trinity…But in the Incarnation, the person pre-exists the union of the two natures, because it is the Person of the Eternal Son of God.
“In the Incarnation the Son of God, Who is eternal, assumes to Himself a complete human nature, a body and soul. By this union the human nature becomes the human nature of the Son of God. He is the Person existing in this human nature, the Person responsible for all its actions, the responsible Agent acting in and through the human nature in the world of men […] If we were to look at the human nature of Christ and ask […] ‘Who is he?’ then we could not give in reply the name of any human or created person, because there is no created personality present in Christ. We should have to say, ‘He is Christ, the Son of God’” [Matt 16:16 !].
But, if scribblers of verbiage simply kept their mouths shut, how would some publishing houses remain in front of the parade??? God bless Cardinal Sarah…someone, somewhere, is not asleep at the switch.
Language requires philosophical examination, similar to Wittgenstein’s Linguistic Analysis. What does, “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.” Does it indelibly confirm a divine Trinity? Working with pre Christian Africans Malawi, Tanzania they had many gods. It’s fine for the Scot who no longer paints himself blue or the Englishman whom doesn’t today practice Druidism to immediately come to a unitive apprehension of One God. Not so for Cardinal Sarah when he honestly examines his conscientious experience, and the many gods that African bush animists believe exist. Jesus mustn’t be presumed anywhere at any time as a god among many, rather a One God in the unity of the Holy Spirit as identical in his divinity to Father and Spirit. This is vital. Should Scots need stop brooding in their dank corners and Englishman surrender the belief that God is an Englishman and listen to the humble African with real wisdom Cardinal Sarah. God forever and ever means God. One God may be construed as a separate god. Equally God forever can also be construed as one god among many. Although I’m not convinced Sarah is entirely correct, and that the change is not a quibble. Does return to everything that preceded 2021 mean orthodoxy?
Rather than beat a dead horse I hope to revive this comment a bit. “Rather a One God in the unity of the Holy Spirit”, although hazily placed speaks to the Anglophone mind of the Trinity. Scots and Englishmen notwithstanding Latin is a different language whose structure parallels a different mindset, more concise, definitive. Whereas English is more loosely knit leaving much to colloquialism, how words are used the meanings we attach. For the American One God in unity clearly references the Trinity. Latin, the Latin trained mind doesn’t require excess words as we find in English. We think differently in each language, for myself learning Latin taught me to think and better organize my thoughts. We find the difference in some of the new translations of the Liturgy from the Latin, some of which are awkward. Apparently the result of attempting exact translation from an entirely different language. And mind set. Whereas a theologian comfortable and adept with English literature could offer the concise meaning better worded. That is why I question Cardinal Sarah’s removal of ‘One’ God in the American translation.
Other wording subtleties have included these: the words of Consecration as for “all” rather than “the many” (actually meaning all those not Israelites); “through God, with God and In God” (rather than “Him”), and at the Consecration again: the “everlasting” Covenant” (rather than eternal as from eternity). All heard in a major archdiocese and recently corrected, locally.
Not only were these nuances Arian in implication (like “one God,” rather than “God” as Sarah explains), but as less than incarnational, do they almost give off the fragrance of lavender? So, not to discount the contributions of linguistic scholars, it might also be that Sarah knows the tip of a larger iceberg when he sees it…
Something like St. Ambrose in 386 A.D. when he refused the demands of Emperor Valentinian II and his mother Justina for compatible inclusion of Arian services in his Milan Cathedral (with Christ as “one” God among many?), or for the placement of Christ in the niche of a tolerant pantheon, all in an effort to prop up a crumbling empire.
Or, as Pope/Emperor Biden has said, his cafeteria-Catholicism (with Aztec accretions) still “coincides” with the Church. Also, and of possible relevance today, Ambrose excommunicated from the Church the Emperor Theodosius of the East for his massacre of a mere 7,000 in Thessalonica in 390 A.D., until such time as the emperor awakened from his bubble world and converted.
So, with Sarah, the single word here and there as iceberg thing: the modern-day prophet Stalin said, “one death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” And 60+ million? Hypothetically, what of an Arian potentate who excommunicates himself? From the collarless Fr. Joe of the 1970s now to empty-suit President Joe…
Also to clarify, I’m not referring to the canon of the Mass, rather the attached prayers, Opening Prayer and so forth.