to the CDW’s claim that the Holy See alone had the right to create mixed commissions. This
was spelled out in Liturgiam
Authenticam but it was also a direct contra- diction of the Vatican II constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. Not a single bishop raised his voice in protest. “At least they could have had the decency to change its name,” said Mgr Fred McManus, one of Icel pioneers, before dying in 2005. The 2003 statutes meant that, for all prac- tical purposes, Icel would now answer directly to Rome and Vox Clara, not to the bishops’ conferences. The restructured body began its appointed task of producing a brand new translation of the Roman Missal in great secrecy under the strict control of Vox Clara. Whereas the former commission prided itself on being transparent – through the publica- tion of consultation books, progress reports, newsletters and the biennial report (including an audited financial statement) – the Vatican obliged the new Icel to impose oaths of loyalty, confidentiality and anonymity. Between 2003 and 2008 it guardedly began
translating the order of Mass and the rest of the prayers and blessings in the Missal. As each successive draft went before the various English-speaking conferences, heated dis- cussions emerged. Nowhere were these more intense than in the US, the largest of the Icel member-conferences. But Chicago’s Cardinal George, a Vox Clara member and the confer-
ence president, made sure Icel’s literalist trans- lations garnered enough votes for approval. At one point in the long process, he and some other conservative members of the conference warned the US bishops to approve the trans- lations or Rome would impose its own. Apparently, there was similar friction in other conferences. The first item to be approved was the order of the Mass. The CDW gave it its recognitio in June 2008. By early 2010 it appears that all of the 11 Icel member-conferences had given final approval to the entire English Missal, although the process has been so lack- ing in transparency that the exact timeline is not completely clear. One thing is for sure, the Americans approved the Missal texts in November 2009 and that seems to have been the clincher for Vox Clara and the CDW. The Holy See granted the recognitioon 25 March 2010.
But the story does not end there. The trans- lators and officials of the revamped Icel, mostly under the direction of Mgr Harbert (replaced by Mgr Andrew Wadsworth of Westminster in 2009), were pleased with their efforts. Some of them indiscreetly boasted that their texts were superior to those of the old Icel. However, they, too, would soon feel the same bitter sting of rejection. In January 2010, Vox Clara announced that it had made undisclosed changes to the Icel text, even though the con- ferences had already canonically approved it.
This was not a first. In November 2009 Cardinal George caused a stir among his US colleagues when he admitted to giving Rome permission to translate a set of antiphons without first asking the conference’s approval. Bishop Donald Trautman, former head of the US bishops’ office for liturgy and one of the few bishops publicly to criticise the new trans- lation, said the cardinal had violated Sacrosanctum Concilium and had not acted in a “collegial way”. Canon lawyers agreed. But in the end, the US bishops voted 194-20 to endorse Cardinal George’s decision to cede approval of the translation to the Vatican office.
But the real shock came in November 2010 when a scathing report, written anonymously, produced extensive evidence that last-minute changes had been made to the English Missal without the knowledge or approval of the competent conferences and in violation of the Vatican’s own translation rules. This was six months after Pope Benedict XVI had received the CDW-approved final version of the Missal.
So it was a bitter irony that the officials of
the revamped Icel should also be fed a poison similar to the one they had dished out to their predecessors. They believed their Missal, which had been given the Vatican’s recognitio, was a done deal, only to discover that Vox Clara and/or the CDW had revised it. Some estimate that 10,000 changes were made.
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