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But Cardinal Estevez retired and still the cup/chalice debate raged. There is a text in the Gospel (Matthew, xx 22) that says: ‘Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ In the light of a Vatican ruling that liturgical texts should be guided by the Vulgate (Latin) Bible, even the flaccid bishops of the United States prepared to amend their lectionaries so that the word chalice should appear instead of cup.
The history is not simple. There used to be a word in general use in West Germanic languages like English that was borrowed from the Latin calix long ago, before our forebears landed in this island or Christianity was known to them. In Old English this word celic was replaced by another form caelc reborrowed from Latin, under the influence of Christian texts. So in the Lindisfarne Gospels (written in about 950) a cup of cold water is rendered caelc watres caldes. The word had no sacral connotations here, referring to the kitchenware of the time.
To put you out of your misery, the leaked new text has, in the Canon of the Mass: ‘When supper was ended, he took this precious chalice into his holy and venerable hands.’ This translates hunc praeclarum calicem. But at the prayer of consecration, the words are to be: ‘This is the Cup of my Blood.’
What are we to make of this? Well, I wouldn’t smell a conspiracy. My laywoman’s missal from 1950, in Latin and English, has the unofficial translation goodly cup for praeclarum calicem and chalice of my blood at the consecration.
We’ll soon get used to the new English Mass, and since the Tridentine rite is to be more available too, we’ll be able to tell that many ancient Latin phrases have once more been incorporated in the vernacular and not carelessly left untranslated.
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