New liturgical translations… revival of old heresies… Nothing new for the Novus Ordo…

When in the year of Our Lord 2010, the Catholic Conference of Bishops in Spain, published a new version of the Bible, La Sagrada Biblia, gradually, this new version is being implemented for use in liturgical books, according to the Novus Ordo rites.

The first of these are for the current Sunday Cycle C. The Lectionary for ferial Masses in Advent includes a reading from the Gospel according to St. Luke for Monday of the second week (Lk 5: 17-26). The former version read (Lk 5: 17): Y el poder del Señor lo impulsaba a curar / And the power of the Lord urged him to heal.

A bit ambiguous but a better translation than the new, current version, which reads thus: Y el poder del Señor estaba con él para realizar curaciones / And the power of the Lord was with him in order to do healings.

Comment: the newer version has a strong Arian-Adoptionist feel to it, for it implies that Jesus Christ has been given by the Lord (i.e., God, the Father) the power to heal, insofar as if the Father hadn’t done so, Jesus would not have been able to heal by himself, by his own virtue.

This of course therefore implies that Jesus is not God himself, as the Father and the Holy Ghost.

That certainly sounds like something that the Adoptionists or Arius himself would approve.

Though to be fair, Arius may have been a pernicious heretic of the IV century, but he was a pious soul: he at least believed in Christ’s miracles!

The Arians of today—and there many of them, to be sure—are just as heretical as Arius… but are not so pious as he was, for these do not believe in Christ’s miracles.

Pope Francis, alas, is apparently among the Arians of today. He sure gave that impression when he commented in his homily in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, on 9 July 2015.

Insinuating that the multiplication of bread and fish by the Lord is actually the “miracle” of people… “sharing,” he said in his original Spanish (quote from the Vatican website):

Las manos que Jesús levanta para bendecir al Dios del cielo son las mismas que distribuyen el pan a la multitud que tiene hambre. Y podemos imaginarnos, podemos imaginar ahora cómo iban pasando de mano en mano los panes y los peces hasta llegar a los más alejados. Jesús logra generar una corriente entre los suyos, todos iban compartiendo lo propio, convirtiéndolo en don para los demás y así fue como comieron hasta saciarse, increíblemente sobró: lo recogieron en siete canastas…

And in English (Vatican website): The hands which Jesus lifts to bless God in heaven are the same hands which gave bread to the hungry crowd. We can imagine how those people passed the loaves of bread and the fish from hand to hand, until they came to those farthest away. Jesus generated a kind of electrical current among His followers, as they shared what they had, made it a gift for others, and so ate their fill. Unbelievably, there were even leftovers: enough to fill seven baskets…

The meaning is fairly clear: Francis certainly implies, though not openly, that the “miracle” is, basically, people sharing what they have, due to some “current” or force coming to them from Jesus.

Maybe it’s inspired from the Star Wars saga: May the Force be with you! And also with you! Ah, that’s a former English liturgical translation. Recently it’s been corrected: And with your spirit! Somehow, this works better in that galaxy far, far away…

Yes, a bit muddled, as is his style, but the idea gets across. Clarity of expression is something that Pope Francis does not seem to care for… or is that perhaps exactly what he wants?

Certainly, if we mere human beings, who are egotistical, can bring ourselves to “share,” it may be considered as some kind of “miracle,” but not in the proper sense.

In any case, people “sharing” is NOT the miracle recounted in the Holy Gospels when Our Lord multiplies the bread and the fish.

Far from the modernist mind is the thought that these historically authentic miracles by Jesus Christ, recounted faithfully by Apostolic Tradition, may have something to do—not so much with the Last Supper—but rather with the Eucharistic Sacrifice…

To imply any other mere human explanations for what ultimate are not miracles—devoid of any supernatural nature, like Pope Francis does and so many other theologians and pastors do—is classic, textbook modernist heretical nonsense. Nothing new here…

By contrast, the excellent English-language version of the Douay-Rheims reads (Lk 5: 17): … and the power of the Lord was to heal them. A literal Castilian-Spanish translation would read: … y el poder del Señor era el sanarles.

A traditional—aka Catholic—translation!

Curiously enough, for decades now, vernacular language translations of Holy Scripture have often followed a principle called “dynamic-equivalence” whereby mere, literal translations of the original Hebrew and Greek, were avoided in order to render the same meaning or impact of the original biblical languages in today’s vernacular.

In and of itself, the principle of “dynamic-equivalence” is acceptable, since it is true that sometimes literal translations actually obscure or make meaningless the idea being conveyed from one language to another. This happens in everyday language translations.

But, more importantly, a vernacular biblical translation has to faithfully convey the Catholic meaning of Holy Scripture, be it a literal translation or be it a dynamic-equivalent translation. Any other meaning that is not in accord with the Catholic meaning, is erroneous and therefore useless.

Why? Because God has revealed himself first in the oral and written Traditions of the Old Testament to his first chosen people, the Israelites. Then with Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself fully in the oral and written Traditions of the New Testament, to the New Israel, aka the Holy Catholic Church.

Thus, oral and written biblical Traditions, are divine Revelation belonging to either Ancient Israel or the New Israel, that is, the Catholic Church.

The Church therefore is the legitimate heir of the Old Testament, and the divinely inspired apostolic author of the New Testament. Thus, by divine will, all of Holy Scripture, and all of oral divine Revelation, belong to the Church as its faithful custodian throughout the centuries.

Besides, Holy Mother Church during the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had established that the St. Jerome Latin Vulgata version as being the authoritative biblical text for the Catholic Church.

Later, in 1590, Pope Sixtus V (+1592) published what would be the Vulgata Sixtina. A little afterwards, in 1592, Pope Clement VIII (+1605) would order the publishing of a better textual rendition henceforth known as the Sixto-Clementina Vulgata Latina, the official biblical text of the Catholic Church… until the years following Vatican II.

The postconciliar Neo-Vulgate versions (1979, 1986) are a sort of hybrid, claiming to be even more faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek. The Vatican issued in 2001 the John Paul II Instruction, Liturgiam Authenticam (hmmm?), establishing that the second edition of the Nova Vulgata was to be considered the official edition from which liturgical vernacular translations were to be inspired.

But the Nova Vulgata has been criticized by those who see it as being in some verses of the Old Testament, a new translation rather than a revision of St. Jerome’s fine work. Also, some of its readings sound unfamiliar to those who are accustomed to the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate text.

Such modern scholarship fails to take into account that St. Jerome (+430), commissioned by a saintly Pontiff from Roman Hispania, Pope St. Damasus I (+384), lived in Bethlehem: in a place, in a time, and in a culture which spoke Hebrew, Greek, and Latin contemporarily.

Surely he, a sainted Doctor of the Church, should know better how to translate into Latin, than modern-day translators, oftentimes with unreliable, Protestant-Liberal modern-day (i.e., modern-ist) historical and critical-textual criteria!

This Douay-Rheims English translation—and corresponding accurate Spanish translation—maintains the indivisible unity of the Lordship—and divine will—of the Three Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, by which it also presupposes the ability of Our Lord Jesus Christ to heal on his own virtue.

Jesus Christ is God himself, the Eternal Word made Man, after all…

Alas, new Novus Ordo liturgical translations, with the same old heresies. Nothing new for the Novus Ordo. Paraphrasing the Book of Ecclesiastes (again): There really is no new heresy under the sun, after all, alas… 🙂