Q: The latest issue of Pastoral Liturgy has just arrived down under, this one with your article. I was shocked to see you saying that the principles of translation are not affected.
Magnum Principium paraphrases the provisions of Comme le Prevoit. It orders the Congregation on Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to modify its own ‘Regulations’ (presumably Liturgiam authenticam?) And in his reply to Cardinal Sarah, Pope Francis makes it quite clear:
It is no longer true, he said, that translations must conform on all points with Liturgiam Authenticam,
some parts of which are repealed or rendered out-dated by Magnum Principium. The word fideliter (‘faithfully’) mentioned in relation to the bishops’ work of liturgical translation is not just understood as a literal word-for-word rendering of the Latin (Liturgiam Authenticam), but implies a threefold fidelity: to the original Latin text, to the target language into which the texts are translated, and to the intelligibility of the text for its recipients.
I personally don’t think there is much left of Liturgiam authenticam at all!
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A: Thanks for writing. I apologize for not nuancing that article better. I wrote it shortly after Magnum principium came out, then saw other commentaries, and realized that there was much more to the translation issue than I had indicated. Upon reading Magnum principium, I was immediately struck by the shift in authority, and thought it was helpful to focus remarks on that. But I should have said more.