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                                                                                RELIGION, Page 72

A Somewhat Less Fatherly God


Catholic bishops are ready to raise a ruckus over pending
revisions in the Mass

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- With reporting by Ann Blackman/
Washington and Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles


    While popes and priests come and go, for ordinary
Catholics the Mass remains the heart of spiritual stability. To
many, the Second Vatican Council's 1963 decision to allow the
Mass in common languages instead of Latin only rattled the
foundations of the faith. Now an aftershock is about to hit
Catholics in English-speaking countries. As a revision of the
English Mass makes the rounds of bishops, a conservative group
led by Roger Cardinal Mahony, 56, of Los Angeles, is already
shooting down the proposed changes. Their complaint: the
translation diminishes the Fatherhood of God, as well as the
role of Mary and the priesthood, and makes needless alterations
in the Lord's Prayer and other familiar texts.

    The most contentious issue is the use of gender-neutral
language. The translators render the Latin fratres as "brothers
and sisters" and drop "man" when referring to the human race.
(Already, the Vatican is allowing Masses in the U.S. to proclaim
that Christ died "for all" rather than "all men.") They also
stretch to avoid male pronouns referring to God, and sometimes
delete "Son of God" as a designation for Jesus Christ. Mahony
is especially adamant that all references to God as Father be
retained. The problem is that the 1974 English translation often
uses Father even where Pater does not occur in the Latin text.
Cincinnati's Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, who chairs the
bishops' board supervising the translation, contends that in the
standard new Mass there are only four cases where Pater is not
translated as Father.

    Mahony also argues that the Lord's Prayer should not be
altered lightly. "Ever since Vatican II, we have heard, `Please,
please don't start tampering with our prayers again.' We
certainly should not do it without very wide consultation." One
apparent concern is that the faithful will be upset by shifting
to "sins" rather than "trespasses," and "save us from the time
of trial" instead of "lead us not into temptation." Mahony says
that when deeply ingrained liturgical phrases are dropped, "you
have not just made a translation change -- you have now made it
impossible for generations to pray together." The Cardinal also
demands that Mary's Latin title, "Mother of God" be added in a
Eucharistic prayer where it had been removed in the 1974 Mass,
and believes the priesthood is undermined by changing a prayer
for "all the clergy" to "all whom you call to your service."

    The new translation is the work of experts on the
International Commission on English in the Liturgy, which was
established by the bishops of 11 English-speaking nations.
Sister Kathleen Hughes, acting dean of Chicago's Catholic
Theological Union, says that when she chaired a commission
subcommittee, "we never told the authors they could not use
Father, because that was Jesus' privileged name for God. But we
said, Try to use a variety of metaphors for God to capture a
broader and broader understanding." John Page, the commission's
executive secretary, says that "our hope was not to eliminate
words like Father and Son but to use them a little less, to find
other titles and new ways of praying to God."

    Jesuit Joseph Fessio, publisher of Ignatius Press and
Catholic World Report, remarks that fellow conservatives have
worried for years about "revisionist pressure groups operating
on the new English translation for their own ends." When the
Vatican first gave permission in 1963, parishes clamored for
rituals in English. Its pedestrian style aside, the current
English Mass was prepared before liturgists began to champion
gender-inclusive language.

    After working on the new translation since 1982, the
liturgical commission sent bishops a 154-page booklet of
proposals last April, asking them to respond by June 1. Mahony
missed that snap deadline, but in July he sent eight pages of
complaints to Archbishop Pilarczyk. Mahony dispatched copies of
his broadside to Vatican officials and several dozen like-minded
bishops.

    In the letter, which TIME has obtained from church sources
in the western U.S., Mahony stated that he was "quite alarmed"
over the prospect of a "seriously flawed" Mass. The occasional
improvements, he said, are overshadowed by "many questionable
poor translations and outright changes in meaning." He charged
that the anonymous revisers were supposed to simply
re-translate the Latin but strayed "far beyond" their mandate
by altering rubrics and even theology.

    Mahony wants a special conference where 30 to 40 bishops
can review what he calls "problem sections." Without such
surgery, opponents imply, the new Mass may fail to win the
necessary approval from the bishops conferences in
English-speaking nations -- and the Vatican, which must also
give its blessing. Mahony's conservatism is in tune with
headquarters, and Rome would doubtless be relieved if he and his
allies succeed in their resistance. "These gender-sensitive
issues always seem to start in the U.S., but the U.S. does not
represent the entire church," says a Vatican official -- a view
that may say more about the masculine insularity of the Holy See
than about the merits of the proposed changes.