Magnum principium

Pope Francis issued the document Magnum principium ("The Great Principle") dated 3 September 2017 on his own authority. It modified the Code of Canon Law to shift responsibility and authority for translations of liturgical texts into modern languages to national and regional conferences of bishops and restrict the role of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW). It was made public on 9 September and its effective date is 1 October.

While directly concerned only with liturgical texts, it represented a significant initiative in the program long advocated by Francis of changing the role of the Roman curia in the Catholic Church and fostering "shared decision-making between local churches and Rome." That he used Canon Law to achieve his aims demonstrated, in the view of liturgist Rita Ferrone, the intensity of his commitmment to this project.

For several decades the Catholic Church has increased the use of the vernacular in place of Latin in its liturgies. The Sacred Congregation of Rites, predecessor of the CDW, granted permission for the use of local languages in several countries with expanding missionary activity, including Mandarin Chinese in Mass except for the Canon in 1949 and Hindi in India in 1950. For rituals other than Mass, it gave permission for the use of a French translation in 1948 and a German one in 1951.

The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium, issued by Pope Paul VI on 4 December 1963, discussed the use of the vernacular in the context of the need to enhance lay participation in liturgies. It suggested an increased use of the "mother tongue" of the congregation and instructed local groups of bishops to consider the role of the vernacular. It "opened up the possibility of linguistic change but did not make it mandatory".

As local groups of bishops and Vatican authorities disputed the quality and nature of translations, the CDW's instruction Liturgiam Authenticam, issued on 28 March 2001 with the approval of Pope John Paul II, ruled that texts "insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses. Any adaptation to the characteristics or the nature of the various vernacular languages is to be sober and discreet." One side in the ongoing debate promoted the philosophy of translation called dynamic equivalence, roughly "sense-for-sense" translation, rather than the more literal word-for-word translation that John Paul said was required.

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