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Sunday, August 11, 2013

PEOPLE ARE INSPIRED EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T KNOW THE WORDS PLUS A SMALL LESSON IN THE DISASTER OF EQUIVALENT TRANSLATION OF LATIN INTO ENGLISH

This video proves that the Latin Tridentine Mass and its eternal beauty inspired people for more than 1600 years even though participants may not have understood every word and this Holy Mass continues to inspire today thanks in large part to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

The point of the video below, as Michael Voris indicates, is that people of America's popular culture at Radio City Music Hall on the popular program America's Got Talent go wild for the beauty of the voices and the melody of the song and the gracefulness of the words. They don't understand any of what is sung. It is not intellectual. It is of the heart. Merciful Lord is intellectual, O Sweet Jesus is of the heart!

And yes folks, our pop culture on America's Got Talent teaches us what we gave up in the Latin Mass (only to recover six years ago)and what we gave up was beauty and mystery for banality and sterility. When we experience from the heart the pristine sung Latin Mass in Gregorian Chant and its derivatives, the Extraordinary Form Mass touches the heart even when the mind does not comprehend the words. The Mystery is the beauty which is of God not the intellectual comprehension of the mind only but of the heart primarily!

Now, look at the Latin words, which the people more than likely did not know and more so did not know that this song is a funeral song! It is sung at Requiem Masses (although I had a bride who asked for it to be sung at her Nuptial Mass! She was clueless that this is not to be sung at a Nuptial Mass (although comedians could have a blast with that) but only at a Requiem Mass (Mass of the Dead).

Pie Jesu

Pie Jesu, Pie Jesu
Pie, Jesu, Pie Jesu
Qio tolis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem
Dona eis requiem

Agnus Dei, agnus Dei
Angus Dei, angus Dei
Qui tolis peccata mundi
Dona Eis requiem
Dona eis requiem

Sempiternam, sempiternam, requiem


Now look at the quivalant English translation (which was a disaster for the Latin Mass when translated into Enlgish but now rectified by the literal translation God has graced us with for almost two years now)of the Pie Jesus:

Merciful Lord

Merciful Lord, merciful Lord
merciful Lord, merciful Lord
who lifted the world’s sins
grant them peace,
grant them peace
Merciful Lord, merciful Lord
merciful Lord, merciful Lord
who lifted the world’s sins
grant them peace,
grant them peace
God’s Lamb, God’s Lamb,
God’s Lamb, God’s Lamb
who lifted the world’s sins
grant them peace,
grant them peace
Everlasting
Everlasting
Peace


A literal translation of Pie Jesu shows how important it is to translate from the original language using the literal method! Pie Jesus is, Oh, Sweet Jesus, not Merciful Lord. There's a difference and it is primarily one of affection of the heart verses sterile theology.

The last line is actually "Everlasting, everlasting peace" of course. By the way, the translation of "requiem" as "peace" is, religiously speaking, not really correct: it is better to use "rest", as in the first translation.

The translation of the Latin phrase, "Pie Jesu" as "Lord, have mercy" is incorrect. A better translation would be "Devoted Jesus", "Faithful Jesus", "O Sweet Jesus", or perhaps even "Merciful Jesus".The writer might have had the phrase "Kyrie eleison" in mind, which is actually Greek. Another translation of "sempiternam requiem"is "Grant them eternal rest".

It translates as Blessed Jesus, or Sanctified Jesus.

In the translation of Pie Jesus in English above, you see what was removed in our first English translation of the 1970 missal, devotion. Sweet Jesus has a devotional quality which Merciful Lord does not have to the same extent. Sweet Jesus is popular devotion of the heart, merciful Lord is more esoteric and sterile, although not completely.

8 comments:

Rood Screen said...

First, a nod to those Catholics of the Latin Rite who kept the Old Ways alive in the decades just before Summorum Pontificum.

Second, you're quite right, Father. When I decided to seek communion with the Catholic Church as a teenager, I depended upon my single mother for transportation to Mass, and the only Catholic church was in the next county over. The only Mass she could get me to was in Spanish. It was the piety of Mexican Catholics, whose language I didn't speak, that accompanied my conversion. Had the Mass been in Latin and according to the Old Order, I would have absorbed not just Mexican piety, but the reverence of centuries of multi-cultural Catholicism.

ytc said...

Yes, but that is an awful settING!

John Nolan said...

I've got to wade in here. 'Pie Jesu' is the last verse of the Dies Irae and is "Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem". Faure (an agnostic) set it in his Requiem, and did not include the rest of the Sequence. But, unlike Lloyd Webber, he stuck to the text.

The LW 'Pie Jesu', set for a female soprano and a boy treble, has a certain saccharine charm, but belted out by a Pavarotti wannabe in an awful arrangement would surely have him on the phone to his lawyers, were it not for the fact that he is not overly litigious.

Carol H. said...

Thank you, Father, for this beautiful post. Those 3 young men provide a good example of what can happen if we live our faith instead of conforming to the world.

I did not see a single person complaining that the music was old-fashioned or outdated. What that crowd witnessed was not something stagnant or backward, but rather was an example of the timeless beauty of the Church.

MHT Dissenter said...

Three cheers for Michael Voris and ChurchMilitant.tv for including this on the Vortex (Where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed!). Thank God for his and St. Michael's Media's defense of the truth and beauty of the Holy Catholic Church and Her Magisterium, but also for their courage to proclaim the Truth unequivocally.

Anonymous 2 said...

Watching this and the panel/audience reaction brought tears to my eyes.

Perhaps the setting is awful, perhaps one of them is a Pavarotti wannabe, but who cares? Jesus went into some pretty mucky places. The theater/studio probably smelled a lot like sheep.

qwikness said...

The Gregorian Chant at the noon Mass yesterday was fantastic.

John Nolan said...

The text of this song, as far as I am aware, is Lloyd Webber's own, and conflates the Pie Jesu from the Dies Irae with the Agnus Dei of the Requiem Mass. It was not the first time this composer had mangled a Latin text - remember the Salve Regina from Evita? - and in 1992 he incurred the wrath of Malcolm Williamson, then Master of the Queen's Musick and a convert to Catholicism. In excoriating LW's music in general, Williamson was not entirely fair but his remark that even the liturgy of the Catholic Church was not safe from his depredations was not inapposite.

LW's textual meddlings are not felicitous. In the liturgy "qui tollis peccata mundi" has an antecedent "Agnus Dei" - see, for example, the Gloria in Excelsis. This connection has a theological significance which appears to be lost on LW.

The music also betrays its popular origins. LW can write a tune, but having done so he is content merely to repeat it. There is no attempt to develop the material, unlike in Faure's setting which lasts about the same time.

This is the second time in a month that this piece has been trotted out as 'traditional' Catholic music. It isn't.