It is assumed that Catholic worship is primarily a pedagogical device. This view effectively argues that public prayers addressed to God are in fact messages addressed to us, designed for our instruction, improvement, and edification. That misunderstanding has had a devastating effect on the very structure of the Roman Mass. At not a few celebrations of Mass, the Eucharistic liturgy becomes merely an extension of the liturgy of the Word, not its culmination as the divine mystery and gift evoking a human response.

Most Catholics would not be aware that a Calvinist theology of worship embodies this didactic approach. When I was a young Anglican theological student, I recall hearing an Evangelical Anglican theologian explain that all prayer in public worship is really a prolonged form of sermon. According to this theological perspective, God seems to be too majestic for us fallen creatures to dare to address Him directly, so when the godly ones pray, they are really edifying one another. Every dimension of worship becomes the proclaimed Word. This also explains the style and tone of much Evangelical extempore prayer, which, to the outside observer, sounds like people telling God what is on CNN tonight.

I am not arguing that liturgical language should be incomprehensible. But once we try to make a vernacular liturgical text an exercise in instructing people, we are caught in a destructive illusion. We imagine that we are conveying everything — nothing is concealed, no mysteries here — when in fact very little is being conveyed at all. When this happens, the Mass becomes boring, especially for the young. They are in front of a liturgical television set, and its patter and style sound little different from what they can hear at any time through the various forms of electronic media.

--Bishop Peter J. Elliot, "Liturgical Translation: A Question of Truth" (via Amy Welborn)

The issue of translation of a liturgical text brings up a lot more than one might at first imagine. Indeed, language is always a very sensitive issue. However, I love Bishop Elliot's point here. I would like to connect it to another quote:

And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise—that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride—they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. [Rom. 1, 21-25] But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, that God may be all in all. - St. Augustine

It is so easy to bend things to our ends, to change them to suit our feelings, wishes, whims, or even legitimate desires. The ICEL translations are just one in a score of examples of this--it is the Fall lived again and again. I know I do the same in my daily life, seeking for some comfort or some rest or some little thing I think will make me happy. Also, I easily become puffed up with imagined human wisdom. The shame of it is that in the liturgy we are supposed to have a foretaste of the heavenly glory, we are supposed to offer "due worship to the true God", while instead we have "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man." To sum up, our lives, the universe, everything is not about us. A lady at work described Paris Hilton as repulsive not because of her physical characteristics but because her actions have shown that she thinks the world revolves around her. God doesn't just see the things we do that make headline news--He sees it all, He is everywhere. That's why it's all about Him.