ix for use as part of Evening Prayer, such as Eph 1:3-10, Phil 2:6-11 and Col 1:11-20. Together the Psalms and canticles are the eternal prayer of Christ and his Body, the Church, to the Father in the Holy Spirit. The Liturgy in the Vernacular For more than a thousand years, the liturgy of the Roman Rite used Psalms and canticles for the most part in their Latin versions. The large-scale introduction of vernacular translations into the Sacred Liturgy following the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) therefore represented a momentous shift in the way most Catholics pray these texts in their worship of Almighty God. Even so, considered against the long backdrop of liturgical history, this change is still quite new in the life of the Church, and it is no surprise that permanence would not be achieved by the first English translations of the words of the liturgy. The Psalms and canticles prayed by Catholics in the United States and in other countries have come from a variety of English translations, with varying degrees of beauty and accuracy. Hoping to achieve a certain stability and consistency in these texts, while preserving technical precision and suitability for singing and recitation, the bishops of the United States began to look for a better solution. The experience gained during the decades following the Council has
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=