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A Return to Babel? Common Texts in English

We are at a very significant point in time for common liturgical texts in English across the Christian world. The imminent publication of the Roman Missal in English will drastically reduce the usage of common texts in the Roman Catholic Church, and while other Christian communities have altered commonly agreed texts, this will be the greatest move away from what has been a very significant ecumenical and ecclesiological development through the liturgy. Yet can we forget just what it took to achieve common texts. Before the ecumenical movement took huge leaps in the second half of the twentieth century we had the common texts of the Our Father and the Grace ("The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all") which spread across the denominational divide, although even then there were slight differences.As that ecumenical spirit grew in the Englishspeaking world, various national organizations of Christian liturgists were established and began to work together on words they could use to pray together. Sacrosanctum Concilium led to the Roman Catholic International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), responding to a call for a common translation of Paul VI's Missale Romanum. From there grew first the International Consultation for English Texts (ICET [1969]), and later the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC [1983]), which still continues this endeavor. Beyond the work of producing common texts, the move towards a common lectionary, which became the Revised Common Lectionary, has had a very significant impact on the liturgical life of many Christians, English-speaking and now others. The major achievements were, therefore, twofold: the usage of the common texts; and the proclamation of the common word. What was remarkable was that this was achieved across churches that had not changed language or lections for centuries or that had never used a set text or lectionary.