28 January 2009

You read it first here

A splendid meeting tonight, arranged by some canny people who are not a million miles from the auntie of the man who sells the fish to the grandfather of the housemaid of the proprietors of England's premier blog, Massinformation. They had Mgr Bruce Harbert, i/c of ICEL, to talk about the progress of the New ICEL translation of the Mass into English. It would be unbloggish to scoop their scoops; but I think I have a right to blurt out just one teensie weensie detail.

Devoted readers of this blog [thank you for getting it into its second 100,000] may recall that a couple of days ago, on the 26th of January, under the heading Fifty Years Since The Council Was Called, I said, among other things, that the form of Divine Office brought out after the Council was looking very tired and could do with being rethought; I mentioned in particular the preces. This in fact followed on from Routers and Breviaries of January 7, in which I spoke in more detail about the problems of both the Liturgia Horarum and the 1962 Breviary respectively.

Mgr Harbert said tonight that ICEL had in fact done some work on a new English version of the Lityrgy of the Hours, but had then put the brakes on when a very senior person in Rome intimated that perhaps the Latin base text, the Editio typica altera Liturgiae horarum, might find itself returned to the melting pot. Just as ICEL had waited until it had the definitive Editio typica tertia Missalis Romani to hand before doing its English draft of the Missal, so it did not want to do a lot of work on a new Breviary when the Latin base-text might be about to metamorphose.

Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes has a telepathic relationship with the thinking of top people in Rome.

1 comment:

Steve Cavanaugh said...

This is fine news, and I'm glad you scooped the scoop, Father. When I do use the LotH, I generally use the preces from the appendix as they are much more straightforward.

Typically, however, I use the daily offices from the Book of Divine Worship which I appreciate both for the wonderful translation of the collects, the lectionary and the musical accompaniments possible via either Anglican Chant or the St. Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter.