Vatican to run all documents through the National Catholic Reporter first

Rome (Roto Reuter) The Vox Clara Committee that is chaired by Archbishop George Pell recently came to an impasse in the English translation of liturgical documents. The Committee discussed and offered its comments and advice to the Congregation regarding developments in arrangements made at various levels for the drafting of English-language translations of liturgical texts. In particular, the Committee was pleased to hear of recent initiatives by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy to assure the effective application of the principles of Liturgiam authenticam to the processes and principles underlying the timely translation of the Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia into the English language. Archbishop Pell believed that they were truly following the principles contained in Liturgiam authenticam and that they were on the right track and wanted to be sure. “We looked at the new texts and we thought that they were faithful to the original Latin, but to make sure one of us decided to send a copy to the National Catholic Reporter. Well they didn’t like it at all and had many criticisms that our translations were too close to the Latin text and were to hard to pray. Well that was the confirmation we needed, if they didn’t like it then we were certainly doing a good jobs.”

Archbishop Pell went on to talk to several other curial officials at the Vatican about this idea to help to both shorten the editing process and to ensure the orthodoxy of the resulting documents. “By submitting all Vatican documents to the National Catholic Reporter and then gauging their reaction we can know where we are in the process. If they have little or no comments then we know that we need to start from scratch and do a total rewrite. If we have reams of negative comments then we know it’s ready to publish.”