Rorate Caeli

That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet

"A reading from the First Epistle of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians." Corinthians?...

The Church has preserved for us so many homilies of the Latin Fathers of the Church - and we know that, almost since there were written records of the Scripture read in Mass, the exact same Epistle had been used in the City of Rome since time immemorial, and for all centuries thereafter, for the same Sunday, i.e., Romans, chapter xiii: the Epistle Scientes, as it can be seen in countless books and illuminations from so many centuries ago. Not A, not B, and not C.

This is in fact one of the many reasons for which we love the Mass, the Traditional Mass, so much: that Epistle, read over fifteen centuries ago in the City of Rome is the exact same one we will hear this Sunday.

_________________________

Can a "better", "more accurate" translation improve something that was made up under false pretense, based on false assumptions, built on misread or misunderstood historical pseudo-discoveries, and even with hidden malicious and destructive intentions? The New Order of the Liturgy is all that the Roman Liturgy is not: the new one is verbose, the Traditional one is terse; the new is artificial, the Traditional is organic; the new is frivolous, the Traditional is sober; the new is disjointed, the Traditional is fluid; the new is multiform and multifarious, the Traditional is uniform and universal; the new is a kaleidoscope, varying according to language, country, diocese, parish, priest, and congregation (represented in the rubrics of the new rite by the endless litany of or...or...or...or...or); the Traditional is stable and trustworthy: stat crux dum volvitur orbis.

So what will essentially change in the English-speaking world with the new-new translation of the new-new-new-Missal? Nothing. Not a single one of the new problems is lost in translation, for they are not translation problems. Those (very) few communities where there was a solemn celebration will keep having them. The rest will remain with whatever they have. The multiplicity of everything, including the heart of the Sacrifice, the "Eucharistic Prayers"? They are there. Anthropocentric behavior and showmanship? They are there. Communion in the hand? It is there. A crowded sanctuary? There. "Extraordinary Ministers"? There.

Cataclysmic? Disastrous? Calamitous? The Novus Ordo may be described in many ways. We have another word for its translations: irrelevant.