The International Commission on English in the Liturgy is a commission set up by a number of episcopal conferences of English-speaking countries for the purpose of providing English translations of the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, the originals of which are in Latin.[1]
Decisions to adopt these translations are made by the episcopal conference of the country concerned,[2] and these decisions are reviewed by the Holy See before being put into effect.[3]
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Bishops from English-speaking countries who were in Rome for the Second Vatican Council set up the Commission in 1963 in view of their intention to implement the Council's authorization to use more extensively[4] the vernacular language, instead of Latin, in the liturgy.[1] On 15 September 2003, it was formally established as a mixed commission of several bishops conferences in accordance with the Instruction Liturgiam authenticam[1]
As of 2010, eleven bishops conferences are full members of ICEL, each of them represented by a bishop: those of Australia, Canada, England and Wales, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Scotland, South Africa, and the United States of America.[1] Another 15 are associate members: those of the Antilles, Bangladesh, CEPAC (Pacific islands), Gambia - Liberia - Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia - Singapore, Malawi, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.[1] The eleven member bishops are assisted by the ICEL secretariat in Washington, which coordinates the work of specialists throughout the world who work on preparing translations.[1]
Liturgical books that ICEL has translated include:
Of all the books that ICEL translated, the Roman Missal is the one that Catholics in general are most familiar with. The first translation that ICEL produced appeared in 1973, less than four years after the Latin original had appeared. It sought less a literal correspondence with the original as a dynamic equivalence and avoided technical terms. The result was criticized as unfaithful to the original and as banal.
By 1998, ICEL completed a new version in English of the Roman Missal, departing even further from the Latin not only in text (some parts were original compositions by ICEL) but also in rubrics. The bishops conferences that were members of ICEL approved it and sent it to the Congregation of Divine Worship for review, as required by canon law.[6] The Congregation, whose work on a new edition of the Roman Missal in Latin was already well advanced – part of it was published in 2000 and the entire volume in 2002 – refused its consent for adoption of the proposed new English version based on the earlier edition.
On 28 March 2001, the Holy See issued the Instruction Liturgiam authenticam, which included the requirement that, in translations of the liturgical texts from the official Latin originals, "the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet." In the following year, the third typical edition[7] of the revised Roman Missal in Latin was released. These two texts made clear the need for a new official English translation of the Roman Missal, particularly because even the 1973 ICEL version was at some points an adaptation rather than a translation. An example was the rendering of the response "Et cum spiritu tuo" ("And with your spirit") as "And also with you". Accordingly, ICEL prepared a new English translation of the Roman Missal, the completed form of which received the approval of the Holy See in April 2010.[8]
In most English-speaking countries, the national episcopal conference decided to put the new translation into use from the first Sunday of Advent (27 November) 2011. In some, the changes in the people's parts of the Order of Mass were introduced from the preceding 11 September. The Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland) put these changes in the people's parts into effect from 28 November 2008,[9] when some other sections of the Missal had not yet been translated. Protests were voiced on grounds of content[10][11][12] and because it meant that Southern Africa was thus out of line with other English-speaking countries.[13] One bishop claimed that the English-speaking conferences should have withstood the Holy See's insistence on a more literal translation.[14] However, when in February 2009 the Holy See declared that the change should have awaited completion of work on the Missal, the bishops conference appealed, with the result that those parishes that had adopted the new translation were directed to continue using it, while those that had not were told to await further instructions before doing so.[15]
| List of Chairmen of the ICEL | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Chairman | Dates | Notes |
| 1 | Francis Joseph Grimshaw | Archbishop of Birmingham, UK | |
| 2 | Paul John Hallinan | Archbishop of Atlanta, USA | |
| 3 | Gordon Gray | Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland | |
| 4 | Emmett Carter | Archbishop of Toronto, Canada | |
| 5 | Denis Hurley | 1975–1991 | Archbishop of Durban, South Africa |
| 6 | Daniel Edward Pilarczyk | 1991–1997 | Archbishop of Cincinnati, USA |
| 7 | Maurice Taylor | 1997–2002 | Bishop of Galloway, Scotland |
| 8 | Arthur Roche | 2002–present | Bishop of Leeds, UK |