While in a very interesting bookshop off Cuba Street in Wellington, I found a useful book: Lauds, Vespers and Compline in English (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1965). It advertises itself as being reprinted from (in conformity with Sacrosanctum concilium) "an officially approved edition of the Roman Breviary".
Therefore, I have this week (recovering from my holiday) been using this book for Lauds, Vespers and Compline: it's curious to pray in English again. I find the translation of the psalms used - the Confraternity version adapted to the Breviary - strangely reminiscent of the Grail Version. It is most useful as regards the Office Hymns, which it wisely translates as prose.
Some of the phrases used are a little odd: this morning, for the feast of St Agnes, the Sunday psalms being appointed, I was amazed to read in the Benedicite, "You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord"! I thought cetus meant whale; but perhaps the translators understood it to signify cetaceans in general.
2 comments:
You never cease to amaze me with what you come up with, Josh. Way to much time on your hands, I reckon...
BTW, we still don't know what version of the Psalms will be used in the new Revised Roman Missal in English.
"Way too much time on your hands, I reckon..."
The term is "sacred leisure", as the Dominicans say.
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