Most people, after discovering I am an adherent to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, complain, "Why would I want a liturgy in a language I can't understand?" or "Why would I want to speak a dead language?" Below are some of my responses, some of which are quite snarky & others I just say quietly in my head...11. That's surprising, since your obvious mastery of the English language led me to believe you were quite the language scholar! While English descends most directly from German, over half of the words in English are derived from Latin. Learn one & you learn something of the other.
10. I'm sorry, I didn't know about your learning disability. After you've prayed & sung them a thousand times, you do know them, even if you can't converse with your friends in Latin on street corners (though wouldn't that be fun!). I teach my 6th grade catechism students a few standard prayers & sayings in Latin each year, & it only takes a few classes before they don't really need their guide sheets anymore.
9. Where exactly did you go to school? America is one of the most affluent & educated countries in the world. I hold it to be a failure of the educational system - along with a big dose of cultivated personal laziness - that Latin isn't better known by anyone with a high school diploma & especially a college degree.
8. You're right - all that Cicero, Caesar, Augustine stuff is probably just a load of crap anyway. In a day when people are supposedly smarter than ever before, why in the world would we consign all the foundational writings of western civilization to the pyre! At work just last week I was asked by a whole group of engineers & technicians what "E Pluribus Unum" on our coinage means!
7. I don't like to pray together with those "other" people either! Why don't we all just fragment into our own little social-racial-linguistic factions, which I'm sure is what the Lord & his Church intends. I hear all the time that this was a big problem in the Old Days - Irish, Germans, Italians, & Polish all had their own ethnic parishes & ne'er shall they meet. This kind of Euro-factionalism isn't so common today, but often Spanish or Philippino speakers get the shaft on Mass times & run the risk of becoming a parish-within-a-parish. Can't we just pray Mass together? Plus, why would we want to lose a connection with Catholics around the world?
6. Latin is a fun to speak. It's true! The vowels are all very rich & deep. A's are always "ahhhh" as in father. O's are always "ohhhh" as in boat. U's are always "oooo", like in moose. Give your R's a little roll or flip. See how often you actually make your H's silent (nearly impossible for English speakers). All very My Fair Lady-like, if you ask me. My 6th graders eat it up, for the most part.
5. Latin is easy to sing. It is very metrical & very easy to rhyme because of the standard endings on the various noun & adjective declensions & verb conjugations, such as "Resurrexit sicut dixit..." from the Regina Caeli hymn. Which brings me to another point - there is a vast & deep ocean of beautiful liturgical chants & hymns that have lain untouched for decades now, some of which go back to antiquity. And they are soooo beautiful & prayerful!
4. Latin ain't dead; it ain't even sick. There is a rediscovery of this most beautiful tongue underway. Many students are finding themselves woefully ignorant compared to their predecessors, sensing that they are missing out on something very valuable. Here's an interesting article on the situation in Ol' Blighty (England) from our friends at the Daily Telegraph. I was very surprised at the depth of study into Greek & Latin at my son's Protestant high school!
3. Yes, the Church's ancient liturgical traditions are soooo cumbersome! Yes, tradition with a little T, but some of those point to big T's. We don't manufacture our Catholic Faith. It's not a product of our times. It's been handed on from the Apostles who received it directly from the hands of Christ. I hold strongly that the Ordinaries (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus et Benedictus, Credo & Agnus Dei) should always be sung in the ancient languages to reinforce this. There still seems to be a lot of confusion about this & plenty of people eager to cast off the lines from the Rock & set sail into the abyss of "what's happenin' now!" Latin helps to keep us grounded in the ancient Faith.
2. The Church asked us to. Throughout the conciliar documents, esp. on the liturgy & the formation of priests, there are statements reaffirming the primacy of Latin as the liturgical & theological language of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Why? Probably because the Church's theology, liturgy, & laws were hammered out in Latin; it says what the Church wants to say in exactly the way she wants to say it. However, every translation, even the best, runs the danger of losing the fine shades of meaning of the original. Others may be outright wrong or corrupted - witness the need for our upcoming revised Missal. The Church requires clergy to know Latin. The Church encourages the preservation & cultivation of sacred music, especially Gregorian Chant & polyphonic music, which are in Latin by definition. Shall I go on? As I see it, at some point, it is actually a question of obedience rather than style or preference.
And now, the No. 1 response to those who can't stand Latin...
1. You're right - now that Mass is in English, I sooooo get the Mysteries of God! News flash! YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND. Thank you Father Christian for pointing this out! (see here) People these days seemed trained to be so shallow & impatient in their search for knowledge that things that aren't immediately apparent at face-value are simply bypassed for something more "accessible" or "relevant" or "inculturated" or whatever. Sorry, Amica, that simply isn't possible when approaching God. You have to let go of what you need, to receive instead of do, to learn to dwell in God's time, to be content with God's Mystery. We will never understand; but we are invited in nevertheless, because this is the only way we can be truly happy. And God wants us to be happy.
Now, I could go on & on with all kinds of things I hear all the time... "I didn't understand it then, why would I want it now?" Uh, I think you were 15 years old then. Mostly, Latin is a kind of symbol that people of a certain age & hair color used to rage against in their rebellion against all things ancient, steady, & authoritative - dare I say, things bigger than they were? Or at least their ideas. Well, the Age of Aquarius is glady over, Starflower. And while younger folks may be saddled with a lot of bad catechesis, fortunately they aren't really burdened with the radical baggage of that generation. Many are looking for stability in a rapidly changing world (some might say a world their elders send rolling downhill with a whoop & a kick). Ultimately, whether they know if or not, people are looking for God. The Church has seen age after age dawn, rage, & fade; she knows what people are looking for & how to lead them to it. In the liturgy of the Roman Church, a little Latin does nicely.
1 comment:
My good friend is a Latin minor! She would enjoy this.
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