Having been a regular at Saint Benedict Center since 1973, I have been blessed with nothing but the Tridentine Latin Mass. I did, however, spend some time in a seminary in California, in the early 70s, which had the Latin Mass twice a week, the rest of the time it was the Novus Ordo in English. I remember a heated discussion that took place at breakfast between a visiting priest and one of the novices over the use of “for all” instead of “for many” in the consecration of the wine. The priest insisted that the “pope” approved of “for all” and he, as a priest, must obey the pope. The novice stood his ground and simply said that “pro multis” means “for many,” not “for all.”
I bring this issue up because Pope Benedict has mandated in the new liturgical translations of the Mass that “for many” replace “for all” in all vernacular missals. There is a fairly good article on the Zenit website here concerning this.
I remember how indignant Brother Francis was when he read one liberal “scholar’s” ridiculous argument that Aramaic had no word for “all.” I don’t know if it was the late Father Frederick McManus, one time head of the ICEL (International Commisssion for English in the Liturgy), who made that claim, but some linguistic “expert” did, and McManus and the ICEL followed suit; as did practically every other vernacular commission in the world. Not so with the French, however, who translated pro multis, “pour la multitude.” Brother Francis, being from Lebanon, spoke Arabic, but he knew something of Hebrew and more of Syriac, and could read Greek fluently. (The Syriac language, actually Old Syriac, is closer to the Aramaic spoken by Our Lord than Hebrew. Aramaic, as spoken in first century Palestine, may have even been a dialect of Syriac.) I remember Brother saying, “How is it that Aramaic had no word for ‘all’ when in the very same words of consecration, Jesus said, ‘Drink this all of you’”? The gospels, three of which have the account of the Eucharist’s institution, were inspired in Greek. The two words, inspired by God for use in the Last Supper accounts of Saints Matthew and Mark, were pantes, “all,” and pollon, “many.”
This mistranslation always troubled me for another reason, a most important one. Before the words of consecration are uttered by the priest, he says over the host: “And [Jesus] said . . .” This is how the account reads of the consecration of the wine in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “Jesus . . . took the chalice, giving thanks, and gave to them saying: Drink this all of you . . .”
Do you see how grave is this mistranslation? In Persona Christi, the priest is saying that Jesus is saying something He did not say, namely, that this Blood of the “New Testament” is to be shed for “all.” I do not want to raise the issue of the universal sufficiency of Christ’s Blood to save all men, which all Catholics affirm. I do not even raise the contrasting issue of efficacious saving grace here, which benefits only the elect (“the many”), which so many brilliant theologians have done who objected to the mistranslation. Nor am I questioning the validity of the consecration with the vernacular Novus Ordo’s use of the term “all.” I accept its validity. I must accept it.
No! What I am highlighting here with these comments is very simple, and disturbing, perhaps more disturbing on account the New Mass’s validity. It is this: At the most solemn moment of the vernacular Mass, the priest, in the Name of Christ, is saying that Jesus said something that He did not say.
Thank you, Pope Benedict, for mandating this correction.
