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In an effort
to promote knowledge about the Blessed Óscar Romero following his
beatification, this blog will feature a
series of book reviews in the month of June, which highlight some aspect
of the Blessed’s ministry or work. We
begin this series with an urgent new book, A
Prophetic Bishop Speaks to His People: The Complete Homilies of Oscar Arnulfo
Romero, Volume 1
(Cycle C - 14 March to 25 November 1977), a new set of English translations of Blessed Romero’s
homilies by Fr. Joseph V. Owens, SJ, edited by Rafael Luciani, Felix Palazzi,
and Julian Filochowski. Convivium Press;
1st edition (April 24, 2015). Paperback, 495 pages (including indices).
Volume 1 is
available now from Amazon and also directly from the
publisher. Volumes 2 & 3 should be
available in July and volumes 4-6 in the latter part of the year. Volume 1 covers the preaching at the
beginning of Blessed Romero’s ministry as Archbishop of San Salvador in
March-November 1977 (46 homilies, whose selection corresponds to the “C”
liturgical cycle of mass readings). This
set of Romero homilies is crucial to understanding the import of Romero’s
ministry and of his recent beatification.
As Cardinal Amato preached during the beatification homily, “A
change in his life from gentle and almost shy pastor came with the murder of Fr.
Rutilio Grande,” at the very beginning of Romero’s time as archbishop—during
the period covered by this book.
“Since that day,” Card. Amato explained,
Romero’s “language became more explicit
in defending his oppressed people and persecuted priests, without worrying
about the threats he received on a daily basis.” Volume 1 takes up this drama in medias res, with those events already
in motion, as the first sermon captures for posterity Romero’s funeral mass for
Grande in Aguilares, followed by the historic “Single Mass” Romero preached in
the Cathedral as the dramatic entrée to his San Salvador ministry. In short order, another priest was
assassinated and a rightwing death squad “ordered” all Jesuits to leave the
country on pain of death, leaving flyers with the ominous message “Be a
patriot, killed a priest.” In the subsequent
45 sermons after Grande’s death, Romero calibrated his message and established
the pastoral line that he would follow through his short, but brilliant, three
year ministry as Archbishop of San Salvador.
Through this
new set of translations, English language readers will be able to encounter
Romero the way ordinary Salvadorans did—through his sermons, which are brought
to a startling new level of clarity and precision in Fr. Owens’
translations. There is a new freshness
here, which aims to strike a balance between a reference set suitable for every
seminary and college library, and one that preserves the nuisances and
eccentricities of Romero’s personal style, given that we are dealing with
sermons that were preached extemporaneously without a “script.” Romero preached
loosely based on notes, but he often departed from his outline, abandoned
sentences midstream, and otherwise took creative license with language that
made his sermons thrilling to hear live (as his famously captive national radio
audiences would attest to), but challenging to translate accurately.
Oftentimes,
the qualitative improvements Fr. Owens makes over previously existing English translations are very subtle, but appreciable
nonetheless. Consider and compare the
improvements in the translation of this famous phrase from a September 25, 1977
sermon, which some of us heard at the beatification.
Spanish Original
Me
glorío de estar en medio de mi pueblo y sentir el cariño de toda esa gente que
mira en la Iglesia, a través de su Obispo, la esperanza.
Modified Google Translation (i.e., the
Literal Translation)
I
glory in being in the midst of my people and feeling the affection of all those
people who see in the Church through its bishop, hope.
Former Translation from the Romero Trust
I
am glad to be in the midst of my people and feel the kindness of all these
people who see the Church, through their bishop, as a sign of hope.
New Owens Translation (which was also
sponsored in part by the Romero Trust)
I
delight to be in the midst of my people and to feel the kindness of all these
folks who through their bishop see the church as a sign of hope.
Fr. Owens has
meticulously captured subtle aspects of Romero’s expression that make his
translation a refreshing improvement. For example,
the expression “to glory” in, which Romero uses, means to “take great pride or pleasure in” something, and Fr.
Owens’ translation captures the intensity of the sentiment better than the other ones, and better than the literal translation, which is not a typical
English expression. Additionally, Romero
uses “pueblo” and “gente,” which both may be translated as “people,”
but Fr. Owens does the phrasing justice by differentiating the terms. A similar attention to detail pervades every
line of all 46 sermons brought to life by Fr. Owens’ dynamic translations. Also, if I may say, Fr. Owens’ translations
are simply more elegant and mellifluous.
One final
consideration which commends this collection is its organizational style: for
example, Volume 1 encompasses all the 1977 sermons preached by Romero which
fall under the “C” cycle of liturgical readings. Blessed Romero said he wished the faithful to relate his
preaching to the liturgical cycles: “I
ask you to center your attention on the main focus of my preaching,” he
said on April 23, 1978. “I want my preaching to echo the Liturgical
Year,” the life of Christ—reflecting on the national reality so that the
reality would be illuminated by the life of Christ, but never shifting the
focus from Christ. In this regard, the
new collection of translations has several useful tools, including helpful footnotes
(for example, footnote 1 sets forth the circumstances of Fr. Grande’s
assassination for the first sermon), a subject matter index, an index of names,
and—most significant for the aforementioned liturgical consideration—an index
of Biblical citations. Thus, a homilist
looking for a Romero blurb on a particular Biblical passage would be able to
easily find one here.
In short,
this new set of translations is a reference set that no Romero student can do
without.
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