By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
“Yahweh, I know you are near . . .” is the opening verse in one of America’s most popular hymns, but the Vatican has directed that when referring to God in liturgical texts or hymns, the name Yahweh should not be used out of respect for Catholic tradition as well as Jewish sensitivities about pronouncing the name of God.
In an August 8 letter, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship, announced the new Vatican directives on the use of the name of God in the sacred liturgy.
Bishop Serratelli said the directives would not “force any changes to official liturgical texts” or to the bishops’ current missal translation project but would likely have “some impact on the use of particular pieces of liturgical music in our country as well as in the composition of variable texts such as the general intercessions for the celebration of the Mass and the other sacraments.”
John Limb, publisher of OCP in Portland, Oregon, told the Catholic News Service (CNS) that the most popular hymn in the OCP repertoire that would be affected was Dan Schutte’s “You Are Near,” which begins, “Yahweh, I know you are near.”
However, GIA publications, another major Catholic publisher of hymnals, said no major revisions will be necessary because of the company’s longtime editorial policy against use of the word “Yahweh.”
Kelly Dobbs-Mickus, senior editor at GIA Publications, told CNS that the policy, which dates to 1986, was based not on Vatican directives but on sensitivity to concerns among observant Jews about pronouncing the name of God. As an example, she cited Heinrich Schutz’s “Thanks Be to Yahweh,” which appears in a GIA hymnal under the title “Thanks Be to God.”
Bishop Serratelli said the Vatican decision also would provide “an opportunity to offer catechesis for the faithful as an encouragement to show reverence for the name of God in daily life, emphasizing the power of language as an act of devotion and worship.”
Accompanying his letter to the bishops was the two page directive from the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, dated June 29 and addressed to episcopal conferences around the world.
“By directive of the Holy Father, in accord with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this congregation … deems it convenient to communicate to the bishops’ conferences … as regards the translation and the pronunciation, in a liturgical setting, of the divine name signified in the sacred Tetragrammaton,” said the letter signed by Cardinal Francis Arinze and Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, congregation prefect and secretary, respectively.
The Tetragrammaton is YHWH, the four consonants of the ancient Hebrew name for God.
The two Vatican officials note that these directives already existed in “Liturgiam Authenticam,” the congregation’s 2001 document on liturgical translations. This document states that “the name of almighty God expressed by the Hebrew Tetragrammaton and rendered in Latin by the word ‘Dominus,’ is to be rendered into any given vernacular by a word equivalent in meaning.”
However, the Vatican letter goes on to explain: “Notwithstanding such a clear norm, in recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel’s proper name. The practice of vocalizing it is met with both in the reading of biblical texts taken from the Lectionary as well as in prayers and hymns, and it occurs in diverse written and spoken forms,” including Yahweh, Jahweh and Yehovah.
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