Vatican City, Sep 9, 2017 / 08:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See has release a new “motu proprio” from Pope Francis outlining a shift in the responsibility of local bishops and the Apostolic See for the revision and approval of liturgical texts.
Dated Sept. 3, the document is titled “Magnum Principium,” meaning “The great principle,” and deals explicitly with two specific changes to Canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law, which addresses the authority of the Apostolic See and national episcopal conferences in preparing liturgical texts in vernacular languages.
The document was published Sept. 9, in the middle of Pope Francis’ six-day trip to Colombia.
Specifically, changes were introduced were to paragraphs 2 and 3 of Canon 838.
Canon 838, 2 has until now stated that: “It is for the Apostolic See to order the sacred liturgy of the universal Church, publish liturgical books and review their translations in vernacular languages, and exercise vigilance that liturgical regulations are observed faithfully everywhere.”
However, with Francis’ motu proprio, the text has been changed to read: “It is for the Apostolic See to order the sacred liturgy of the universal Church, publish liturgical books, recognize adaptations approved by the Episcopal Conference according to the norm of law, and exercise vigilance that liturgical regulations are observed faithfully everywhere.”
Similarly, 838, 3 previously read: “It pertains to the conferences of bishops to prepare and publish, after the prior review of the Holy See, translations of liturgical books in vernacular languages, adapted appropriately within the limits defined in the liturgical books themselves.”
The text will now read: “It pertains to the episcopal conferences to faithfully prepare versions of the liturgical books in vernacular languages, suitably accommodated within defined limits, and to approve and publish the liturgical books for the regions for which they are responsible after the confirmation of the Apostolic See.”
The changes apportion a greater portion of responsibility for the preparation and approval of liturgical translations to episcopal conferences, rather than the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
Additionally, Pope Francis noted that after the Second Vatican Council, the Church was acutely aware of “the attendant sacrifice involved in the partial loss of liturgical Latin, which had been in use throughout the world over the course of centuries.”
However, “it willingly opened the door” so that vernacular liturgical translations, “as part of the rites themselves, might become the voice of the Church celebrating the divine mysteries along with the Latin language.”
In light of the various views expressed by Council Fathers at the time, the Church, he said, was also aware of the challenges the task would present.
“On the one hand it was necessary to unite the good of the faithful of a given time and culture and their right to a conscious and active participation in liturgical celebrations with the substantial unity of the Roman Rite,” he said.
Yet on the other hand, “the vernacular languages themselves, often only in a progressive manner, would be able to become liturgical languages, standing out in a not dissimilar way to liturgical Latin for their elegance of style and the profundity of their concepts with the aim of nourishing the faith.”
Pope Francis expressed that “general guidelines” regarding the use of the vernacular “must be followed by Liturgical Commissions as the most suitable instruments so that, across the great variety of languages, the liturgical community can arrive at an expressive style suitable and appropriate to the individual parts, maintaining integrity and accurate faithfulness especially in translating some texts of major importance in each liturgical book.”
The primary goal of translating liturgical texts and biblical texts for the liturgy, he said, is to “announce the word of salvation to the faithful in obedience to the faith and to express the prayer of the Church to the Lord.”
Because of this, “it is necessary to communicate to a given people using its own language all that the Church intended to communicate to other people through the Latin language.”
Francis stressed that while fidelity “cannot always be judged by individual words but must be sought in the context of the whole communicative act and according to its literary genre,” there are particular terms which “must also be considered in the context of the entire Catholic faith because each translation of texts must be congruent with sound doctrine.”
Given the weight of the task, the Pope said it’s no surprise that certain problems have arisen between episcopal conferences and the Apostolic See along the way.
In order for decisions about the use of the vernacular language to be of use and value in the future, then, “a vigilant and creative collaboration full of reciprocal trust” between the Apostolic See and bishops conferences is “absolutely necessary.”
Because of this, “in order that the renewal of the whole liturgical life might continue,” Francis said ‘it seemed opportune that some principles handed on since the time of the Council should be more clearly reaffirmed and put into practice.”
Apt attention ought to be paid to the “benefit and good of the faithful,” while at the same time ensuring that the “right and duty” of episcopal conferences is not forgotten, since it is their task to “ensure and establish that, while the character of each language is safeguarded, the sense of the original text is fully and faithfully rendered and that even after adaptations the translated liturgical books always illuminate the unity of the Roman Rite.”
In order to make collaboration between the Apostolic See and bishops conferences “easier and more fruitful,” and after having listened to advice from a commission of bishops and experts he established to study the issue, the Pope said he wished to make the “canonical discipline” already in force in canon 838 more clear.
Namely, Francis said he wanted the changes to be more directly in line with paragraphs 36, 40 and 63 of the Second Vatican Council Constitution on Sacred Liturgy “Sacrosanctum Concilium” and the provisions of point nine of Paul VI’s 1964 Motu Proprio “Sacram Liturgiam.” so that “the competency of the Apostolic See surrounding the translation of liturgical books and the more radical adaptations established and approved by Episcopal Conferences be made clearer, among which can also be numbered eventual new texts to be inserted into these books.”
All changes will go into effect on Oct. 1 of this year.
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An “official visit” between abortion-defender, gender-theory-promoter and head-of-state Joe Biden–and the pope. Great!
We are reminded of equally primitive times when another barbarian and cultural leader, Attila, was met by Pope Leo I in A.D. 452, in the River Mincio near Mantua, in an earlier official visit of sorts. And for some reason it was Attila who decided to reverse course, and not to sack Rome or violate the population.
It is recorded that Pope Leo came in grand procession, including a monstrance containing the Real Presence. “A procession of priests and monks…approached. It was being led by an old man with a white beard, dressed in white, upon a white steed.”
How might Catholicism be self-understood–or, instead, be compartmentalized and redefined–by the current visit? Will Eucharistic coherence be dissolved into the modernday monologue called dialogue? No record of Pope Leo giving or enabling Communion to Attila.
A non-event if ever there was one.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wasn’t going to act – but bluster only – before Pope Francis meets Biden and certainly won’t act subsequently.
Pelosi vindicated.
Meanwhile, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ continues to be received in any manner under the guise of indifferent bishops…1Cor. 11:27 be damned.
Liberal meets Liberal.
Pope Francis should be warned ahead of time That all Catholic Art,Icons,Statues,Cross’s and other images of the faithful. Be covered up or removed to the basement at wherever they meet.Nothing has changed since May 27th,2009 When Father Jenkins at Notre Dame set the templet on how Catholics behave when “The One We’ve Been Waiting For” enters the room.Obama/Biden Evil rolls on unabated.It’s how they roll.
If Pope Francis doesn’t talk to Biden about his sanctioning and funding the murders of the unborn, the Catholic Church is done. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age, and this will either signify that end or will confirm that Jesus isn’t with the Church. Please, God, even a Jesuit could understand the teaching Your Son gave us.
I can now hear the lamentations – or the silence – of the extremist rightist Catholics who feel they are the only Catholics and President Biden and Pope Francis are not.
“Extremist rightist Catholics”…oh you must be referring to those who are normal and trying to survive your Woke World.
Who are these ‘extremist rightist Catholics’ you claim in comments but don’t actually identify?
Is it extreme to demand that the Catholic president avoid the Holy Eucharist when he not only talks but uses his power to clearly destroy the Catholic Church’s infallible – by the Ordinary Magisterium-teachings on morality? Either the Church has the objective truth or it doesn’t. What of the grave sin of Scandal???
Pope Francis refuses clarity -and is proud of it- in not clarifying Church doctrine on morality. Confirmation of this is the self-determination of the Church in Germany as the most extreme example.
How about asking the Pope to be a Pope as understood in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
You apparently have no idea how silly that is.
How sad.
Birds of a feather…
Optics are understood by CNA’s Gagliarducci, why his sources are necessarily secondary informants on both sides. Vatican and Washington seek to avoid an embarrassing, hypersuspect nullification of such a grand political religious encounter. Leo the Great and Attila nicely analogized by Beaulieu inspire added comment. How do they match Biden and Francis? Perhaps an answer might start with faithful Pope Francis devotees both modernist and ultramontanist, Pope Saint Francis I meets Emperor Constantine. For the devilish traditionalist [the Pope said so] devilishly rigid ideologue [similarly] we might imagine something similarly foolish, Leon Trotsky meets Martin Luther. Realistically, for those who love the Church we want, pray for a different outcome. Pope Francis today met President Biden with remarkably wonderful results. In a joint announcement to the world Francis first said due to the very favorable response to his recent comments condemning the sins of abortion and euthanasia, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to urge the President to reconsider his in effect duplicitous position on the practice of Catholicism and political expediency. After long discussion on the primacy of revealed truth compared to human law, that the inviolable sanctity of human life, a religious issue that is primarily a natural law first principle, and that the right to life is therefore a first principle justice issue and the basis of any and all jurisprudence – the President changed his previous views and agreed with the Pontiff assuring him he would no longer promote or advance abortion, euthanasia, and also transexuality [now pansexuality] since human life is sacred and inviolable. As ordained by God.
In yet another historic meeting, St. Francis confronted the Sultan Malek al-Kamil at Damietta on the Nile Delta, then under siege by an army of the Fifth Crusade. His message was the peace of Christ, more than the halfway house of humanistic fraternity…
In the Paradiso, Canto XI, Dante says that St. Francis actually sought martyrdom and, that failing this, he left. In the mid thirteenth century, fearful of the Mogul invasions, other Franciscans made their way to Mongolia in unsuccessful efforts to convert the Khan, and with the remote possibility of even joining in an alliance against Islam. One of these (John of Pian de Carpine, 1180?-1252) had been a companion of St. Francis (See Daniel Boorstin, “The Discoverers,” 1983).
But today, with the meetings of the perennial Catholic Church with Islam, China, and now the banner-carrier puppet for the abortion culture and gender theory—-already we have the betrayal of China, politic “pluralism” with Islam, and amnesiac sleep-walking with what’s left of the West.
How will any focus on such historic catastrophes—-also “seeds of truth”!—-survive the continental and yet internally fragmented note-taking of the Synod on Synodality (“walking together”)—-if the successor of the Apostles (!) remain cast only or “primarily as facilitators”?
Fraud meets fraud.
How does a Pope confront an evil ruler who was not even elected legitimately and supports the murder of babies in the womb? We shall see, and it will tell us everything we need to know about Francis.
They are bound at the ideological hip. Tragically what is about to be boldly illustrated before our eyes will only serve to confirm what we already know. Shamelessness reigns.
I already know everything that I need to know about Francis. There’s enough history already.
The leftists are trying to use this exposure to the Pope to prove how much of a faithful Catholic Biden really is. When he is NOT. It would be smart of some Cardinal to clue in the Pope to this reality. They seek to get his approval in even a tacit way in order to move on along their own disordered agenda. This is not unlike the VERY poor deal the Vatican made with the rulers of China. This has benefited the Chinese church not at all. THIS visit will only do more damage to the Church in the US. Its a faint hope that maybe the Pope will tell Biden in no uncertain terms to shape up in regards to abortion. But I would not make any bets on that happening.
Transcript of the secret Biden – Francis Social Justice Warrior meeting:
“C’mon man! I’ve already pushed the most liberal abortion agenda, threw our borders wide open, and committed scandal in receiving the Eucharist. What more do you want?”
Hoping for an on-spot excommunication. The “why” list is really long.
I am certainly glad I embraced Catholicism before reading some of these responses to this article. Sad