Posted on by Jeffrey Tucker

Should the CMAA (and you) help this survey effort?

Everyone has heard about the results of a new survey on the Roman Missal that showed some surprising dissatisfaction with the new translation. My own thought on this: it is a demographic issue. Older priests don’t like it but younger priests do.

But I’m just speculating. We don’t know for sure. Well, what if we help to do another survey that attempts to break down the results by diocese and age and length of ordination? The CMAA has been asked to help fund this. Our part in this would not a very expensive but I do think I would need a donor of $500 to make this possible.

Such a donation could really be used to good effect. Mainly we will know more than we know now, and it could have strong implications for the future.

If you are interested, could you email me please? jeffrey@chantcafe.com

10 Replies to “Should the CMAA (and you) help this survey effort?”

  1. I'm assuming readers already know the "survey" was completely inaccurate, since it was "self-selecting." See this article: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/05/liberal-survey-of-…
    My understanding is that the "survey" was more or less a student project. Peter Brown dealt a death blow to its reliability.

  2. yes but if it is the only thing out there, the results will be sticky. This is why a new survey could be good

  3. I think a survey across the English-speaking world would be great. Or let CARA do it with American clergy. I'd also be interested to see the results broken down by economic class and facility with the English language.

    Thing is, if you get any official traction for it, it will press Vox Clara, at least morally, to justify their fiddling with what their brother bishops approved. Still, 80% of clergy thinking it needs work: that should hasten the MR4 effort, if nothing else.

    My vote, self-selected as it might be, would be to let MR3 continue to simmer in its own juices. And let the critics continue to rake it over in Z-ish fashion for poor grammar and theology. By 2030, we'll all know that it takes more than a super-cardinal and a college vocabulary to make for an artful translation.

    Todd

  4. Thanks, John. I thought it was interesting that Paul Inwood survey ends a sentence with a preposition:
    "How many Masses have you participated in?"

  5. Because English has a large number of verbs which are followed by prepositions (eg come up with, get down to, come across and many more) it has never been ungrammatical to end a sentence with a preposition. That it is so is a conceit which assumes English syntax must conform to Latin. Contrary to what some critics allege, the corrected translation of the MR does not assume this.

  6. Actually, it is indeed a rule. But it's a rule up with which I do not put.

  7. I had read that somewhere the rules of standard written English ( at least here, stateside) were influenced by Latin grammar. Sort of putting the square peg in the round hole. If I remember correctly, the double-negative was used in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, assuming there's a difference between the two. Now, I'm just happy when students spell words and phrases without resorting to text-talk. C what I mean.

  8. Any survey at this point will just be to strengthen the POV of those who conduct it. Let's live with it (MR3) for a while. I adore the heightened vocabulary. If we can only raise the quality of the music… 😉

  9. Would it be asking too much of Americans to reinstate the adverb, and to distinguish between lie/lay/lain (intransitive) and lay/laid/laid (transitive)?

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