Question:
Answer:
Magnum Principium is a document issued by Pope Francis that grants to national episcopal conferences greater authority in determining how to best translate the Latin liturgical texts of the Church into the vernacular.The document establishes several new things:
1. It changed the process that had been established in 2001’s Liturgiam Authenticam. No longer will the Congregation for Divine Worship oversee every aspect of a vernacular translation. There will no longer be a “word by word” review of vernacular translations.
2. The primary responsibility for ensuring a faithful and intelligible translation has shifted from the Congregation to the episcopal conferences.
3. The Congregation’s role going forward is to review the translation for obvious errors but otherwise to give deference to the choices of the episcopal conferences.
4. Liturgiam Authenticam (56) preferred translations that were “as literal as possible,” whereas this new document asks for a “triple fidelity” that incorporates faithfulness to the original Latin text, faithfulness to the structure of the vernacular language, and faithfulness to full comprehension by the laity.