You know, the Irish Times really can be a bad egg in Ireland at times. It is constantly stirring things up when it comes to the Church. It is Ireland's paper of record, and yet when you look behind some of their stories, you tend to find things are a little bit different than they reported. One example is personal to me. When I preached on the Civil Partnership Bill about a year ago, the Irish Times mentioned me in an article giving the impression that they had spoken to me: they hadn't. The journalist never spoke with me - made no contact. Not only had they the incident backwards, they never bothered to check their facts and if they had they would had a very different, and indeed less sensationalist, article.
Well, they are off again
stirring things up with regard to the new translation of the Missal - again (more appropriately, as one commenter in the combox said, the "corrected translation"). As expected, with the Missal on course for Advent, the old guard is still furiously dribbling over their
complan and the Irish Times are spoonfeeding them to keep bashing the Church.
It seems our bishops have met them and the priests have expressed their concerns, or if the Times' tone is anything to go on, they ranted and raved at their Lordships. In respose the bishops are due to come out with a statement. For one thing these priests are members of the dissident Association of Catholic Priests (sic), a minority group of aging liberals that does not represent the majority of priests in the country, so the bishops need to bear that in mind. This issue may be the last sting of dying wasp for the ACP generation, but we have to bear in mind that that sting can be dangerous and highly toxic.
In discussion with brother priests, I think many, if not most, are willing to accept the corrected translation, their main concern being how to help the laity adjust. Having spoken with many members of the laity (many of whom are women), they have no problem. As some women (please note ACP) have indicated to me, they have no issue at all, some have said: "It'll be easier than the change from the Latin". The corrected translation is going down very well with younger priests and the seminarians - in fact they are waiting with baited breaths to get into it - there is excitement among many of them. Our seminarians are the future priests of the Church, the ones who will be ministering when all the members of the ACP are gone - we should be listening to them.
Ironically, in their rejection of the Church's new official translation, one of ACP's number, Fr Sean McDonagh, an ecologist, said:
'the excuse for using sexist language in the new translation smacked of Humpty Dumpty in Alice through the Looking Glass, where he said “when I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”'
Isn't that what these priests have been doing to Church teaching for decades - reinventing it, distorting it and manipulating it according to their own opinion so they can choose what it means, more or less?
Interestingly, related to this, the dissidents in the US have given up the ghost, and have assented to the corrected translation.
