Fr. Stephen Somerville is a priest who, for over ten years, collaborated in the official work of translating the new post-Vatican II Latin liturgy into the English language, when he was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Commission on English Liturgy (ICEL).
This a transcript of an audio on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSYpKfjek8 ) where you will hear him publicly apologize before God and the Church renouncing this evil he took part in.
“It also led me to my public letter to many Catholic magazines renouncing and repudiating my work with ICEL because that work had contributed to seriously damaging the faith of Catholics. Those that attended the Novus Ordo liturgy. Remember there were huge numbers who had stopped going to mass because of the changes. Let me read to you now the main paragraphs of that letter. Its an open letter to the Catholic Church so it is addressed to you as well. Dear Fellow Catholics in the Roman Rite, this was published 4 years ago last month. I am a priest who for over ten years collaborated in a work that became a notable harm to the Catholic Faith. I wish now to apologize before God and the Church and to renounce decisively my personal sharing in that damaging project. I am speaking of the official work of translating the new post-Vatican II Latin liturgy into the English language, when I was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Commission on English Liturgy (ICEL).
I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, ordained in 1956. Fascinated by the Liturgy from early youth, I was singled out in 1964 to represent Canada on the newly constituted ICEL as a member of the Advisory Board. At 33 its youngest member, and awkwardly aware of ,my shortcomings in liturgiology and related disciplines, I soon felt perplexity before the bold mistranslations confidently proposed and pressed by the ever-strengthening radical/progressive element in our group. I felt but could not articulate the wrongness of so many of our committee’s renderings.
Let me illustrate briefly with a few examples. To the frequent greeting by the priest, “The Lord be with you,” the people traditionally answered “and with your (thy) spirit”: in Latin, Et cum spiritu tuo. But ICEL rewrote the answer: “and also with you.” This, besides having an overall trite sound, has added a redundant word, “also.” Worse, it has suppressed the word “spirit” which reminds us that we human beings have a spiritual soul. Furthermore, it has stopped the echo of four (inspired) uses of “with your spirit” in St. Paul’s letters.
In the “I confess” of the penitential rite, ICEL eliminated the threefold “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault,” and substituted one feeble “through my own fault.” This is another nail in the coffin of the sense of sin.
Before Communion, we pray “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst (you should) enter under my roof.” ICEL changed this to “. . . not worth to receive you..” We lose the roof metaphor, clear echo of the Gospel (Mt. 8:8), and a vivid, concrete image for a child.
ICEL’s changes amounted to true devastation especially in the oration prayers of the Mass. The Collect or Opening Prayer for Ordinary Sunday 21 will exemplify the damage. The Latin prayer, strictly translated, runs thus:
O God, who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will, grant to your peoples (grace) to love that which you command and to desire that which you promise, so that, amidst worldly variety, our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are found.
Here is the ICEL version, in use since 1973:
Father, help us to seek the values that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world. In our desire for what you promise make us one in mind and heart.
Now a few comments: To call God “Father” is not customary in the Liturgy, except “Our Father” in the Lord’s prayer.
“Help us to seek” implies that we could do this alone (Pelagian heresy) but would like some aid from God. Jesus teaches, “without me you can do nothing.” [John 5:15] The Latin prays “grant (to us),” mot just “help us,” ICEL’s “values” suggests that secular buzzword “values” that are currently popular, or politically correct, or changing from person to person, place to place. “Lasting joy in this changing world,” is an impossibility. “In our desire” presumes we already have the desire, but the Latin humbly prays for this. “What you promise,” another phrase, omits “what you (God) command,” thus weakening our sense of duty. The phrase “Make us one in mind (and heart)” is a new sentence, and appears as the main petition, yet not in coherence with what went before. The Latin rather teaches what uniting our minds is a constant work of God, to be achieved by our pondering His commandments and promises. Clearly, ICEL has written a new prayer. Does all this criticism matter? Profoundly! The Liturgy is our law of praying (lex orandi), and it forms our law of believing (lex credendi). If ICEL has changed our liturgy, It will change our faith. We see signs of this change and loss of faith all around us.
The foregoing instances of weakening the Latin Catholic Liturgy prayers must suffice. There are certainly thousands of mistranslations in the accumulated work of ICEL. As the work progressed, I became a more and more articulate critic. My term of office on the Advisory Board ended voluntarily, with a little pressure as I recall, about 1973, and I was named Member Emeritus and Consultant. As of this writing I renounce any lingering reality of this status.
I am still reading my letter to the magazines I wrote 4 years ago:
The ICEL labors were far from being all negative. I remember with appreciation the rich brotherly sharing, the growing fund of Church knowledge, the Catholic presence in Tome and London and elsewhere, the assisting at ta day-session of Vatican II Council, the encounters with distinguished Christian personalities, and more besides. I gratefully acknowledge two fellow-members of ICEL, who saw then, so much more clearly than I, the right translating way to follow: the late Professor Herbert Finberg, and Fr. James Quinn, S.J. of Edinburgh. Not for these positive features and persons do I renounce my ICEL past, but for the corrosion of Catholic Faith and reverence to which ICEL’s work has contributed. And for this corrosion, however slight my personal part in it, I humbly and sincerely apologize to God and to Holy Church.
I think I will stop there, but you see the point. I wanted to be through and that letter went all over the world, not just the Angelus magazine, that did a very splendid display of it with all the pictures of ICEL I had.
Well that letter brought about rapid and emphatic commendation to me and I do not remember any criticism. Several other magazines published it, but the liberal Tablet of England printed a fair, brief summary paragraph without comment. The Angelus magazine as I told you included a lot of pictures. I had been wanting to elucidate for you the UK, USA translation transatlantic clash in the liturgy. Let me now state the real process of that clash. It was behind the scene, it was not very visible at the ICEL meetings but it soon became clear ICEL’s first forays into translation mainly into the ordinary of the mass were very disturbing to the conservative English taste, piety and theology. The English were frightened.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 