This is apt.

I believe that we have on several past threads been blessed with the observations of Mme Mohrman. They are as sage now as they were in her own 'present time'. I don't doubt that she would have had (did have?) some anguished verba in response to what the Anglophone world got for a 'translation' after the council. The translation we now have, being an actual translation with an attempt at 'sacrality', is far better, but, insofar as it lacks grace and, often, formal English idiom, falls short of what we should hope eventually to get. It tries, but fails, to follow Cranmer's path with a 'modern' tongue and often results in what is palpably amusing. I have long thought that a Cranmeresque register in the finest hieratic idiom of the modern era was what we should have been given from the beginning - even if we had had to wait five years for it after the council. But no. There was no waiting. No catechesis. No enlistments of great literary scholars and poets, no commissioning to great musicians, and no efforts to foster the very music and chant which the council admonished should be preserved.

Everything after the council was rushed and imposed hurriedly with no thought at all given to the fundamental liturgical matters of 'sacrality' or hieraticism, and truly ecclesiastical music. And, our seminaries and chanceries to this day (going on fifty years!) continue to be staffed by those who couldn't be bothered with sacrality and hieraticism. It is telling to remember that the council took place when the issue of 'relevancy' was at its feverish height, infecting every echelon of society and targeting not only religion but our entire heritage and culture.

I wonder, seriously, what Mme Mohrman would think of the patrimonial hieratic English of the Anglican church and, now, of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter. I sensed it as profoundly holy from my youth up. If anyone should suggest that this English is 'not sufficiently developed' to be hieratic I should think him, or her, if not addled, rather biased and studiedly insensitive of something so inordinately beautiful and sacrosanct.

Why should not German, French, and others be capable of their own Cranmeresque register? Surely they are not so 'undeveloped' that they are incapable of expressing subtle theological realities and ritual gravitas. They aren't! The problem, as I see it, with most of our modern translations is that they are by men who have not Cranmer's eye for the unutterably sacred and how to express it. There is a certain folksy register of language and behaviour that has been the fashion since the council, one which only in recent years has been seen to be the inadequate and unworthy offering that it is. I said 'seen to be...'. In truth, there are even yet far too few who 'see', whilst far too many remain blind, often obstinately so.

I have often thought that the IInd Vatican Council should have taken place about seventy-five years before it did, and rather think that had it been we would have been spared the liturgical nonsense and the grievous music which was heaped so discourteously upon us, would have been blessed with the language and ritual sensitivity of a more civilised, more educated age. The council, having happened when it did, resulted in what can only be understood as a purposefully orchestrated liturgical reign of terror - heads, of course, weren't loosened from their owners by the guillotine's swift blade; but, swiftly, little else was spared. We are just now beginning to draw the reins and veer toward a more religiously sane and mature course, whilst the terror's vieille garde resists to the last man and woman in seminary, monastery, parish, chancery, school, and yes, even the Vatican.

About the Latin: as I understand Mme Mohrman's thought, the Latin that replaced Greek in Romanitas lands in the IIIrd and IVth centuries was deliberately archaic and was borrowed from Rome's own patrimony of hieratic and learned Latin. It has been pointed out that this elevated Church Latin may have been perceived by ordinary Romans as antiquated and was understood only with difficulty. This suggests to me that it was, perhaps, not unlike Cranmerian English in that regard. Some people say (and I don't believe them) that they can't understand Cranmer (or Coverdale), that he is as difficult to apprehend as Shakespeare, if not Chaucer. I believe that these persons are inherently disingenuous and facetious. The very fact that it is sacred, hieratic, otherworldly, is the very thing to which they actually object. Further, those who heaped scorn upon the new translation did so for the same reasons as those who don't like Cranmer and Coverdale - it's too 'churchy'. It isn't, then, that an hieratic register cannot be fashioned from the English tongue, which is, indeed, quite fully developed for such endeavours. No, it isn't that. It is, simply, that some don't want it, whilst others sneer at it because it isn't Latin.

There is naught but sacrality in the language of the Ordinariate and its cathedral. At our masses there is a penumbra and vesture of holiness, aided and evoked by a language quite fully 'developed' for converse with the All Holy.

One (at least possibly perceived) problem with the hieratic register of vernaculars might be that usually protestants had made extensive use of the same. Cranmer's English has been in use by the Anglicans, Luther's German has been used by the Lutherans, for about half a millenium in both cases, and surely there are other examples.

Cranmer's English, so well and universally understood and appreciated as a 'vernacular' sacred and hieratic language, has been borrowed freely by American Lutherans, Methodists, and even Presbyterians, not to mention that Catholic translations in the pre-Vatican II era sounded awfully much like Cranmer. This has all changed quite a bit in recent decades, but the near universal understanding of the Cranmerian register as a sacred tongue remains strong. Long may it remain! Almost always anyone wishing to convey what will be universally apprehended as a religious or sacred aura will speak either in Latin or Cranmerian English.

When I first (long ago) began my years at a prominent Houston Lutheran church they were astonished that I could play a 'Lutheran service'. And why should I not? The language was Cranmerian. The canticles and parts of the communion service were all to Anglican chant. At a liturgical conference in St Louis I once heard a Lutheran scholar, a proponent of more 'modern' and 'relevant' language, lament how that Cranmer had led them 'down the primrose path'.

The words of the BCP are to this day not under copyright. This is fitting. Not so with our mendacious Catholic bishops who copyright every last word of every Catholic rite.

I think, Pax, that it does indeed so form Christians - and even non-Christians and those of no religion. It is interesting that they really do, on some level, apprehend holiness even if they do not consciously live 'holily' or formally 'believe' - even if they see through a glass yet more darkly than do we believers. Perhaps I did not altogether get your point. Could you elablorate? Is your point that our 'worship language' should inform our language outside of public worship? I believe that it does and should. Our 'worship language' should and does, like music, art, architecture, and such (indeed, language, too, is an art) have the potential of being a sacramental. To the degree it falls short of this it is objectively, ontologically, a failure.

Pax lost me, too. If he's suggesting that we speak Cranmerian while at the office....well....

OTOH if he's suggesting that the language used during Mass will make us more (or less) Catholic during 'the rest of the week,' .....

Agreed, MJO, that the language (and the music) in their context project 'holiness'. Witness the bazillion Hollywood products which use stained glass and chant whenever 'churchy' is in the stage directions.

I would not be so bold as to say what God needs. He may or may not need our praise. I should think that on some level our praise is valued by him as evidence of our convenant with him - a covenant which he bought dearly and, therefore, quite obviously cares deeply about. Those who are wont to assert that God doesn't need this or that, or that he doesn't care about this or that, are, I think engaging in highly speculative and unverifiable judgments - judgments which are, actually, glaring barometers of what they themselves think that they need or don't need, what they care or don't care about.

Further, whether God needs our praise or not, we do certainly need, for our very own good, to give it!

And what's this? Those of us who value sacral language are 'Sunday Catholics' and those who don't are 'seven-day Christians'. Really? Ipso facto? I think not.

Trolling, Trolling, over the Sacral Sea....

I don't think Pax is just trying to start a fight. She merely disagrees with what she thinks is the high-handed approach of those of us who, in her opinion,.......

God has no need of our praise.

At this point in the history of Catholicism, liturgy is the only formation that the vast majority of adults receive. Sad, but true. Therefore our liturgy needs to grow the knowledge and love of Jesus in people. Using language which is other-wordly puts God on a different plane, for sure, but it tends to form Sunday Catholics rather than seven-day Christians.

God has no need of our praise in an absolute sense. Nevertheless, if we believe that the liturgy is received, rather than created anew in each generation for its own purposes, we do not have the right or duty to adapt the liturgy, that is, the public worship of God by the Church. We have the obligation to worship God as He has made known to His Church.

If Sunday Mass in most parishes is the only formation that the vast majority of Catholic adults receive, this formation must -- on strict moral obligation -- be the best formation it can possibly be, not the most accessible.

What do you mean, precisely, by "our liturgy needs to grow the knowledge and love of Jesus in people"? I have proposed before that the primary purpose of the liturgy is NOT didactic, by its nature, although much teaching can (and, indeed, does) take place there. On the other hand, if we learn that God is not just a man, and that since we are His creatures, we have an obligation to worship Him, and that this worship is not merely by means of the tongue, but rather our whole being, the liturgy has taught a good lesson. It has taught us, as you put it, the knowledge and love of Jesus, by allowing us to grasp in a small way WHO Jesus is, and WHY we should love Him.

Have you evidence that the sacral vocabulary proposed hereabouts forms Sunday Catholics instead of seven-day Christians?