Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin
Well and clearly put.
–C.B., who lived through the turmoil and can hardly wait until Advent.
I believe there’s a bigger elephant that you missed Jimmy…
Many oppose the new translation beause it is emphasizing beliefs that are more Catholic!
There indeed is a subset of people and even clergy within the Church that wanted the Catholic-ness of the mass de-emphasized to be more vague and therefore they thought more acceptable to Protestantism. By watering down dogmatic content, they felt this would encourage Protestants to join the Church, or more insidiously, that the Church would ‘progress’ to become more Protestant and therefore it might be a sign of other ‘progress’ to come with regards to morality where the Church would become more ‘modern.’
De-emphasizing Catholic doctrine in the mass also has had the ill effect of contributing to the horrible state of Catholics knowing next to nothing about their faith or what differentiates Catholics from Protestants. It also led to apostasy with regards to believing in the Eucharist and proper reverence for it. God was demphasized and more emphasis was placed on the human community. Granted many of these things were never intended by the decisions made by Vatican II, but the turmoil following the council was hijacked by modernists and heretics to sow confusion amongst the faithful. The council and the Church Magisterium highly underestimated how ill the world had become and the problems festering within itself.
In my mind, the implementation of Vatican II was an abysmal failure. Only now is Pope Benedict as was John Paul II towards the end of his papacy actually getting things together to properly implement the decisions of the council and teach them. But the problem was always the apostasy within the Church laity and clergy that Our Lady of Fatima warned about, that would make the road ahead difficult. The Queen of Heaven was right! Hopefully now things are getting better, but it’ll take a lot more than the new translation to fix the root of the problems.
Many oppose the new translation beause it is emphasizing beliefs that are more Catholic!
I would be grateful for any specific examples which show how the old translation was less catholic regarding beliefs.
The new translation is more Latinate, but that is not the same as ‘Catholic’ (Byzantine, Ukranian and other Catholics are in full communion with the Pope).
The new translation emphasizes more Catholic beliefs that otherwise people aren’t fully aware of. “With thy Spirit” for example emphasizing the Priest who is there persona Christie for example. A lot was lost from an inaccurate and hasty translation of the Latin. And this is why many Catholics today don’t realize the role of the priesthood. For them it was as if he was just like any other Protestant minister. Also there’s more Emphasis on the Nicene Creed which is more specific than the Apostle’s Creed on various things though this isn’t a translation thing. And also restrictions on the Priest to avoid liturgical abuses which is also not a translation thing. Anyway you have only to read the issues dissenters point out, and they pretty much say the new Mass is bad because it’s too Catholic now and that makes ecumenism harder for our Protestant brethren… lol! Also the more accurate the translation from the Latin, the less the more liberal minded can twist the Mass to be open to other interpretations. This doesn’t mean the old Mass translation was a valid Catholic Mass. Just that the more accurate translations of the Latin will make various Catholic beliefs more emphasized. Though most of it has more to do with what the priests say and do rather than the laity.