HERE WILL ALWAYS be those who believe the only correct way to translate liturgical texts is the GOOGLE TRANSLATE (“GT”) method. I, too, was firmly in that camp for many years. According to GT, each word in Latin has a mathematical equivalence in English. The GT method does not view translation as an artform. Rather, it’s a machine-like process which is slavishly literal and often ends up producing gibberish. For example, PSALM 39 (“Exspéctans exspectávi Dóminum”) would be rendered as “expecting, I expected the Lord” according to the GT method.1
To adopt the GT method is similar to playing a Chopin ballade note-for-note, but without any expression, nuance, imagination, or feeling. MONSIGNOR RONALD KNOX was too brilliant to accept the GT method; but don’t take my word for it. In 1973, the Archbishop of Westminster said of Knox: “He was perhaps the greatest figure in the Church of the twentieth century.” And Dr. Herbert Finberg declared that “no living writer possesses a greater command over the English language than Monsignor Knox.” This is not to say or imply everyone must agree with every decision or opinion of Knox. For instance, Father Cyril Charles Martindale (d. 1963)—a dear friend of Ronnie and a respected scholar—hated his biblical translations. And there’s no question Knox sometimes enjoyed “pushing the envelope” or stepping outside the box:
* PDF Download • Knox Pushing The Envelope
—Examples like these cause some great distress.
Ronnie Knox • There’s no need for me to describe Knox’s feelings about translation. He does that in this utterly magnificent radio broadcast:
This recording from the “For the
Schools” series was first broadcast
in 1953 for the BBC’s Home Service.
Astonishing Claim • Late in life, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen claimed that “anything he had ever said of significance was taken from either Knox or Chesterton.” What follows is an excerpt from Sheen’s wonderful autobiography. For the record, he was slightly inaccurate regarding where Knox’s father served as an Anglican bishop. When he says “Angelicum” he means the Dominican Pontificia Universitas Sancti Thomae Aquinatis. When he says “Gregorian” he means the Jesuit Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana:
“Being a teacher took up about a quarter century of my life. The career did not begin when I was appointed to the Graduate School of the Catholic University; rather it began in England when I was invited to teach theology at the seminary of the Westminster Archdiocese, ST. EDMUND’S COLLEGE, WARE. At the same time, I was working for my agrégé at the University of Louvain. I was assigned to teach dogmatic theology, though my specialty had been philosophy. Though I did audit many lectures in theology at the University of Louvain and later on at the Angelicum and the Gregorian in Rome, I was a beginner in every sense of the word. One of my friends and distinguished colleagues there was Father Ronald Knox, a convert to Catholicism, whose father was the Anglican Archbishop of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford, he was teaching Scripture and Greek at the seminary. Later on, he translated the entire Bible into English from the Hebrew and the Greek.”
It doesn’t seem possible that Sheen taught alongside Father Adrian Fortescue, who was professor of Church history at ST. EDMUND’S COLLEGE, WARE at the time of his death (11 February 1923). That’s because—from what I can tell—young Father Sheen taught at ST. EDMUND’S COLLEGE, WARE in 1925. Monsignor Knox taught at ST. EDMUND’S COLLEGE, WARE from 1919 to 1926. As a result, Father Knox did know Dr. Adrian Fortescue, saying of him: “Perhaps he had too much sense of humour to be altogether a great man: he lacked pomposity.”
Holiness Of Life • Monsignor Knox was known for his holiness of life and his humility. Though he was utterly brilliant, he realized every good gift comes from God. Specifically, he said:
“The scholar who lives only for his subject is but the fragment of a man; he lives in a shadow-world, mistaking means for ends.”
Final Thoughts • Monsignor Knox is the only person I know who routinely generates more jealousy than Dr. Adrian Fortescue. However, those who ‘knock’ Knox only reveal their own smallness. It isn’t worth responding to a 3rd grader who declares: “Albert Einstein wasn’t a very good physicist.” Nor does a man of Knox’s stature require someone like me to defend him.
Here is a very nice photograph of Monsignor Ronald A. Knox.
1 For the record, it’s possible to go to the other extreme. For example, ICEL in the 1970s created ‘translations’ so woefully off the mark they barely qualified as a paraphrase. Monsignor Richard J. Schuler said of ICEL: “They are the piccoluomini, the ‘little people’ who lack the training and the learning needed to do the important work of creating a beautiful and true liturgical text that will endure.” When it comes to the liturgical translations by ICEL, Schuler said: “One is not only appalled by the banality of that English translation, but what strikes one so forcibly is the damage done to the very content of the Latin prayers in what is supposed to pass as a translation.” Furthermore, Monsignor Schuler decried “the banality, even ineptitude of the ICEL translations that we are forced to use and pay for.”
