LETTERS
Iraq’s besieged Christians While the massacre at the Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Baghdad (“From cradle to grave”, 6 November) could well destabilise fur- ther the Christian presence in Iraq, it is equally important to highlight that some of the remaining (roughly 500,000) Christians are actually internally displaced – largely in the Kurdish-controlled northern regions. But even such displacement is not a guarantee for safety either, as proved by the regular and vicious attacks against Christians in Mosul. It is very dangerous for Assyrians to seek a separate Christian enclave in the Nineveh Plains. Such a move would expose them to those terrorists who could then locate and tar- get them more easily let alone that it would ghettoise their communities. Most Iraqi Muslims are not rabid anti-Christian terror- ists. In fact, the majority have in the past been – and still are today – peace-loving men and women. They harbour no ill will against Christians – be they Catholics, Orthodox, Armenian or other smaller communities –who have been living in Iraq for centuries and even longer than their Muslim co-citizens. While Anthony O’Mahony focuses on
Islamist terror, it is equally true that the author- ities have been unacceptably lax in providing real security. This is a constant and oft-repeated concern made by many Christians. Besides, whenever an attack results in Muslim deaths, the names of those killed appear in memor - iam on Iraqi TV stations – even on those Iraqi television stations broadcasting from outside the country –whereas the same cannot sadly be said of Christian deaths. Islamists often accuse Iraqi (and Middle Eastern) Christians of being fifth columns who are allied with Western Christianity. That is utterly fallacious: while there are links between Christians worldwide as part of a universal fellowship of the faithful, Arab Christians enjoy indige- nous identities, are steeped in the local culture and fought against the Crusades as much as Arab Muslims. Conversely, Western powers that invaded Iraq have hardly assisted their “brethren in faith” in their predicament. (Dr) Harry Hagopian Middle East adviser, Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales
Nuances of liturgical language In the 1960s and early 1970s, when the cur- rent translation of the Roman Missal was being produced, it was widely believed among scholars that the language of the Bible had hardly influenced the prayers of the Roman Rite. That was why the translators could hold that liturgical English should be “the English we actually speak” (Raymond G. Helmick, “Opaque and clumsy”, 6 November). But I do not hear “Glory to God in the high-
est”, “Holy, holy, holy” or “Lamb of God” as I walk round my local supermarket: these are
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tion. Caxton’s translation of The Golden Legend (1483) ends with a lengthy “Noble History of the Exposition of the Mass”; we should now prepare to teach an updated ver- sion of this in our Catholic schools. William Charlton Hexham, Northumberland
Christians at the Holy Family Church in the West Bank demonstrate solidarity for those killed in the attack on Baghdad’s Syrian Catholic church. Photo: CNS
quotations from Scripture. Recent work has shown that our Latin liturgical texts are per- meated through and through by biblical echoes, many of which are too subtle to have caught the attention of translators in a hurry. A principal aim of liturgical translation now must be to catch these echoes and pass them on to the People of God. That in itself is enough reason to make a new version of the Missal desirable. (Mgr) Bruce Harbert Wednesbury, West Midlands (former executive director, International Commission on English in the Liturgy)
Denunciations of the as yet untried new English Missal by those responsible for the old one are unhelpful. The Mass is not just a commemoration of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection to be cele- brated by groups of Christians scattered through space and time. At Mass, we take part in Christ’s one perfect offering and are united, in no merely figurative sense, in him. That is why we are asked to use translations of a sin- gle text, the Roman Missal, instead of a plurality of local texts and rites. Fr Helmick’s parental attachment to his 1960s text blinds him to the limitations of his argument. He tells us that to address God “in language that is either artificial or archaic” is to assert that the one addressed is unreal. That is a non sequitur into which there is no rea- son to think Christians generally would fall. He wants to translate the Missal’s Latin into “the English we actually speak”, but he is chas- ing a phantom. The English we speak is not the English we write, the English of America is not that of England, and the English of the 1960s is not that of today. And he is worried that the Latin contains words for social roles like “king”, “priest” and “servant” which are differently conceived in different societies. A liturgy which expressed no such concepts would be miserably thin, fit only for pure mathematicians. Any good order of Mass will need explana-
I am probably best described as a “low” Roman Catholic and am devoted to the Mass as it is celebrated now. I appreciate the simplicity of the ritual, with lucid and comprehensible prayers, plain vestments, the celebrant facing the people. At “high” Roman Catholic liturgies, I have
struggled to find God, usually without success. While I know that such liturgical styles are important to some people, I hope that the changes mooted will be left to the discretion of the celebrants to implement or not. However, if mandatory, I ask the hierarchy to seek a waiver for discretion to be exercised, as did Cardinal Heenan with regard to the Latin Mass. This might enable Catholics like myself to follow the maxim, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t!” John Loughran London N8
Admission to Catholic schools Fr Ashley Beck (Letters, 30 October) attrib- utes a “state of grave sin” to unmarried couples who wish to send their children to a Catholic school. As parents, we taught for a number of years in a Catholic school, encour- aged our children to be involved in the practice of their faith, as altar servers, mem- bers of the parish music group and so on until they left home for university. Sadly, through the years, their church affiliation was at odds with the majority of their peer group. Now, as parents themselves, they retain many of the values that were passed on to them and find themselves in the position of considering their own children’s future. However, two of them, living with partners who are not Catholic, are unmarried. Why their resistance to marriage? It seems to me that there are several import - ant areas of influence in their lives that need to be considered before apportioning blame. The first is the model of married life and
prayer given to them by their parents. Another is the model of Christian faith and practice they received from their Catholic school and the Catholic parish they were brought up in. A third is peer-group pressure, while a fourth is their efforts to build family life with a part- ner who is not a Christian. This is an extremely complex issue. Perhaps there is a message in this for all of us, “Let he who is without sin … ” Surely it is important to engage with these couples, listen to what they have to say, pro- vide what understanding we can, help them to grow in faith and overcome the obstacles
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