As the USCCB continues to discuss the new liturgical translations, perhaps you'd be interested in reading a backgrounder on the controversy, courtesy of John Wilkins, former editor of the Tablet of London.

On December 4, 1963, at the end of the councils second session, the [Constitution on Sacred Liturgy] was passed by a massive majority: there were only four dissenting votes. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who would later lead a schismatic movement against the councils work, is said to have been in favor of it.

The overwhelming consensus was achieved in part because the opening to the vernacular was endorsed in guarded terms. The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites, the document cautioned, before opening up the way ahead: But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, may frequently be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This passage was followed immediately by the commissioning of bishops conferences to put the councils wishes into practice. It was the local bishops who had the responsibility to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used. Their decrees must then be confirmed by Rome, the document said.

So from the first, local bishops were clearly understood to be in control of the liturgical translations. This approach was in line with one of Vatican IIs key achievements, confirmed by a vote of the whole council on October 30, 1963. On that day, by a huge majority, the bishops affirmed that the church must be seen to be governed on the model of Peter and the Eleven. Leadership therefore belongs to the whole college of bishops, with and under the pope. Each bishop is a vicar of Christ in his own diocese. Sharing of authority, within Catholic unity, is proper to the church. As with the liturgy, though, this necessary counterbalance to Vatican Is emphasis on papal and Roman power was a reform easier to approve in principle than to implement in practice.

Before the liturgy constitution was promulgated, the English-speaking bishops, who were the first to see the advantages of pooling their resources, had established the core of ICEL. In a formal meeting at the English College in Rome on October 17, 1963, ten English-speaking conferences agreed to share the translation work: those of Australia, Canada, England and Wales, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa, and the United States. By the time the council ended in 1965, the ICEL secretariat had been opened in Washington, D.C. In 1967 the Philippines became the eleventh ICEL member; there were also fifteen associated conferences of countries that used English in the liturgy without its being the predominant language. A vast task awaited them: the translation of several thousand texts in some thirty distinct liturgical books. And that full, conscious, and active participation desired by the council would turn out to be a far more complicated undertaking than anyone had envisaged.

(...)

In June 1998...ICELs episcopal board was holding its annual meeting in Washington. They were anticipating the arrival of Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago, who was now the American representative on the board. Cardinal George was coming from Rome.

There was as usual a full agenda. The bishops had finished morning prayer and had just started their discussions when George arrived. As soon as the then-ICEL chairman, Bishop Maurice Taylor of Galloway, Scotland, had finished welcoming him, George asked that the order of the agenda be changed. He wanted immediate discussion of the relations between ICEL and the Vatican congregation. The bishops froze.

Bishop Taylor brokered a compromise. The agenda should be adhered to, he said, but provision would be made for the cardinal to address the meeting toward the end of the day. When the time came for Cardinal George to speak, in the late afternoon, he warned the participants that the commission was in danger. They were at a turning point. The principles that had governed ICELs approach to translation had been rethought. Rome wanted a vernacular, he said, that was different from the vernacular of the contemporary marketplace, so as to lead worshipers into the nuances and deepest meanings of the texts.

The project as ICEL understood it was no longer considered legitimate. According to George, the commissions thoroughgoing use of inclusive language in its translation of the Psalter had been one of the reasons for disillusionment among the American bishops. There was a pent-up impatience with the commission. If ICEL gave the impression that it owned the Second Vatican Council or the liturgy, it would make bad matters worse, he said. It had to change both its attitude and, in some cases, its personnel. Otherwise it was finished. If necessary, the American bishops would strike out on their own. George spoke vehemently.

Next morning, Archbishop Hurley made a frank and formal response, speaking from a script that he had written out in longhand. The ICEL board was grateful for the message, said Hurley, but disturbed by it. It appeared from what the cardinal had said that a fundamental change had occurred in the attitude of the Congregation for Divine Worship to translation theory. Instead of conveying an equivalence of meaning between the Latin and English texts, as had been ICELs practice hitherto, the congregation now wanted translations that conveyed an equivalence of individual words.

This is interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is that about an hour ago Bishop Trautman stood at the bishops' meeting to ask Cardinal George why he had signed a letter giving Rome permission to translate the antiphons without consulting the body of bishops. That was "not a collegial way to handle this," Trautman said.

Read the rest of Wilkins's piece right here.