Some
Remarks On the Occasion of Receiving the Frederick R. McManus Award of
the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions of the United States
I have come to
Seattle reluctantly but with great gratitude for this recognition of
ICEL and of the revised Sacramentary given through me. Surely the word
“reluctantly” needs some explanation. Two points. In 1980 I was
asked to be executive secretary of ICEL. I was at that time associate
executive secretary. My response to “Friend, come up higher” was
“no.” “You need a more public person in that job.” But the
search team came back and said, “Look, there are plenty of people in
the ICEL world who are ready to be the public face of ICEL. We want you
to be the person inside, guiding the work from day to day.” And so I
agreed.
For the most
part that bargain has been kept. One exception that comes to mind was
the Holy See’s International Liturgical Congress, held in Rome in
October 1984. To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the
Constitution on the Liturgy, the bishop chairmen of all the episcopal
liturgical commissions and the secretaries of the commissions were
invited to come to Rome to give reports on the liturgical renewal in
their countries. Representatives of the international commissions were
also invited.
The meetings
were held in the Synod Hall over a five-day period. One afternoon was
set aside for discussion groups in five languages. The English-speaking
group turned out to be by far the largest and the most outspoken. The
meeting space set aside for the English-speaking group was much too
small, and so we had to go back to the Synod Hall. Archbishop Denis
Hurley, then chairman of ICEL, was elected chairman of the group, and I
was elected secretary, which meant that I would read out the resolutions
agreed to when the full assembly reconvened the next day.
Now I have to
mention that just a few days before our coming to Rome the Tridentine
Indult was announced. The English-speaking bishops and secretaries,
after a very lively discussion, adopted a tough series of resolutions,
one of them decrying the granting of the Tridentine Indult. In the event
we were the only language group that took up the question.
The next day,
when my turn came, I was very nervous. Just into my recital, I looked up
at the dais where the whole phalanx of officials of the Congregation for
Divine Worship was seated. Most of them knew English, and the one who
knew it best, who happened to be the prefect, was staring back at me
with evident dismay. My automatic reaction was to quicken the pace and
get it over with. I was speaking too rapidly and suddenly at ceiling
level a sign kept flashing, rallentando, “slow down.” All
unaware of this electronic plea, I raced on till finally my neighbor
tugged me on the sleeve and said, “There’s pandemonium in the
translator’s booth.”
In addition to
being the reluctant executive secretary, I am also a reluctant traveler.
I never leave Washington or its near suburbs unless ICEL work demands
it. I’m fortunate in that the best place for ICEL meetings
logistically and cost-wise, though understandably not always
diplomatically, is Washington. But every so often I have to go to a
meeting away from home and yes, at times, far from home. My dislike of
travel provides a great source of amusement for my colleagues in the
Secretariat. And without realizing it, I began over time to play right
into their hands. Just as I was leaving to go on a trip I would
invariably say, “I go reluctantly.” After several years of hearing
this lament, my colleague Peter Finn said one day, “We’ve decided on
the perfect epitaph for your tombstone—I go reluctantly.”
Some of you will
know the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s In The Valley of
the Elwy, “I remember a house where all were good to me, God knows
deserving no such thing….” Twenty-five years ago today I showed up
for my first day of work at an office on Thomas Circle in downtown
Washington, just down the street from the old headquarters of the U.S.
bishops’ conference. I had little understanding of what the
organization with the unwieldy name, the International Commission on
English in the Liturgy, was all about. What I did know was that I was to
have a part-time, temporary job as a kind of sub-editor for the four
volumes of The Liturgy of the Hours. It seemed a congenial enough
task—a part-time job would allow me to continue work at Georgetown on
a Ph.D. in history, and since I had been a student in the Augustinians
for eight years—from novitiate through the third year of theology—I
knew enough Latin and I certainly knew the breviary, which we had
chanted in full each day. Cardinal Newman used to say, “But God knows
the end from the beginning.” There are no doubt many ways to unpack
this. Another way of saying this might just be, “life is full of
surprises.” Within a matter of months I was a full-time member of the
staff, then editor for the whole breviary project, associate executive
secretary, and the rest. I did, long years later, finish the Ph.D. And
perhaps after I leave ICEL, which for the good of ICEL and my own
can’t be far off, I’ll attempt a history of ICEL or at least the
remarkable story of the revision of the Sacramentary.
I come from a
large and close family. In ICEL I have found a second family—in its
board of bishops, its Advisory Committee, its subcommittees, and
especially the secretariat staff. Of my five godchildren, two are
children of colleagues at ICEL. I would like to mention so many names,
but I’ll have to save most of them for that history of ICEL.
It has been my
good fortune to work under three chairmen of ICEL’s Episcopal Board.
In July, Bishop Maurice Taylor of Galloway, Scotland was elected
chairman. That’s good news for ICEL and the conferences that it
serves.
From 1991 until
July, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati was chairman. Those who
know these things tell me that Archbishop Pilarczyk is an off the chart
“J” and I an off the chart “P.” But it worked out very well. He
was the best of bosses—accessible, deeply knowledgeable, devoted to
the work, respectful of all who carry it on.
His predecessor
was Archbishop Denis Hurley, chairman from 1974 to 1991. Ordained a
bishop at 31 in 1947, he was one of the great bishops of the pre-conciliar
Church, a leader at the Council, and is today one of the great and most
courageous bishops of the post-conciliar Church. He was present at the
founding meeting of ICEL, which took place in Rome on October 17, 1963
during the second session of the Council. Though now emeritus archbishop
of Durban, Archbishop Hurley continues at the request of the Southern
African Catholic Bishops’ Conference on the ICEL Episcopal Board. He
is a man of the Council, committed unflinchingly to its spirit-filled
vision.
Fred McManus and
Godfrey Diekmann were heroes to me long before I came to ICEL. Since,
they have become even greater heroes and cherished friends.
I wish to name
now proudly and affectionately my ICEL colleagues back home who deserve
this recognition at least as much as I do. Peter Finn, associate
executive secretary, came to ICEL in 1974; Larry Willett, productions
manager, 1974; Arline Fay, finance office manager, 1976; Jim Schellman,
associate executive secretary, 1976; Edmund Yates, office manager, 1977;
Arnitta Thurston, receptionist and secretary, 1985. To complete this
list two other names: Mary Fowler who joined the staff in 1969 and from
1980 until her retirement in 1993 was administrative assistant to the
executive secretary. Tom O’Brien, who came in 1979, was the translator
and editor of the first volume of Documents on the Liturgy and
was research specialist for the revision of the Sacramentary. Tom died
of cancer in 1991, leaving a rich legacy for succeeding generations in
ICEL and historians of its work.
How fortunate
the English-speaking bishops are to have such a team. The best
headhunters in the world could not assemble such a group. These people
are there because they love the work and believe in it. “I remember a
house where all were good to me....”
Recently I had
the good fortune of seeing the small but very rich Tyndale exhibit at
the Library of Congress. This sixteenth-century English priest was one
of the first translators of the Bible into English, the whole of the New
Testament and a large portion of the Hebrew Scriptures. He had several
forerunners but was the first to translate from Greek and Hebrew rather
than from the Vulgate. Tyndale was concerned to avoid a vocabulary and
syntax that was recondite and ornamental. Rather, he aimed to provide an
English translation that was rich, living, literate and accessible to
the people of his time. He would have the ploughboy, he said, know the
Scriptures as well or better than the English clergy of his day. One of
the devices he was keen to exploit was the use of words of Anglo-Saxon
origin. “Let there be light and light was made.” “In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth.” “Ask and it shall be given
you, seek and ye shall find: knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
His influence, so strong in the King James or Authorized Version, is
still with us in the major contemporary English translations of
Scripture.
The exhibition
at the Library of Congress was fascinating but ultimately deeply
disturbing. Among the many items displayed were the only two known
copies of Tyndale’s New Testament. Careless handling did not account
for the loss of thousands of the other copies printed. They were
publicly burned at the direction of civil and ecclesiastical authority.
Imprisoned in
1535, Tyndale asked his jailors for some candles and his Hebrew grammar
so that he could continue his work on the Hebrew Scriptures. These
requests were denied, and in the following year Tyndale was cruelly
executed for the subversive act of translating the word of God into
English.
Now I do not
want in any way to overdraw this sad, dramatic story. Its chief lessons
belong in another reflection and context. I do not speak of parallels
but of implications. We have had a debate in this country over
liturgical language. Parts of it were needed and helpful. I speak rather
of those elements of the debate that astonished and indeed scandalized
so many people. I speak of what one popular religious journal, proudly I
think, has referred to as the “translation wars.” I guess in warfare
all civilized conventions are suspended. Still, why in some quarters did
the faith of so many good people have to be so recklessly called into
question? Where does this get us? How was it so easy to set aside the
third member of the age-old maxim, attributed to Augustine, in
omnibus caritas. We heard earlier this week the words, cessent
iurgia maligna, cessent lites. Let all mean-spirited bickering stop!
May we pledge ourselves to this, not just in questions related to the
language of the liturgy but to so many other liturgical issues as well
that have become the subject of destructive contention, and invite all
in the household of faith to join us in this commitment.
By January or
February the Sacramentary will be submitted for the Roman review by most
of the English-speaking conferences of bishops. I acknowledge my bias,
but I strongly believe that once the Sacramentary is in use in the
parishes all over the world, it will be its own defense, it will be a
landmark in the Roman Church’s new vernacular experience, it will be a
work that will last to the praise and glory of God’s name and for the
good of all the Church.
Thank you for
your own part in this work in so many ways—those who participated in
the 1982 and 1986 consultations, those who worked with their bishops in
reviewing the eight segments that were submitted to them for their
canonical vote, for your encouragement in public statements, and in so
many quiet words of support.
Newman lived
through the First Vatican Council and its aftermath. No easy time for
him. He used to say often to his troubled correspondents that nearly
every Council in the Church had been followed by a period of upset. So
characteristically, he urged them to take the long view. Perhaps for
those of us who lived through the Second Vatican Council the period of
trial has been postponed until now. In these still early stages of the
renewal, let us take to heart Bishop Donald Trautman’s call to
revitalize confidently the reform and let us take our stand
firmly in that living, all-embracing center where the Church has ever
proclaimed the death and resurrection of the Lord until he comes in
glory.
I close with an
excerpt from a sermon of St. Augustine that is found in The Liturgy
of the Hours on Saturday in the Thirty-Fourth Week of Ordinary Time.
Let us sing
alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety, so that we may
sing it one day in heaven in full security. ... ... ...
O the happiness
of the heavenly alleluia, sung in security, in fear of no adversity! We
shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. God’s
praises are sung both there and here, but here they are sung in anxiety,
there, in security; here they are sung by those destined to die, there,
by those destined to live for ever; here they are sung in hope, there,
in hope’s fulfillment; here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by
those living in their own country.
So, then, my
brothers and sisters, let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of
leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as
wayfarers do…sing, but continue your journey. Do not grow slack, but
sing to make your journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going. What do
I mean by keep going? Keep on making progress.….If you make progress,
you will be continuing your journey, but be sure that your progress is
in virtue, true faith, and right living. Sing then, but keep going.
May the Lord
bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
