How Does Vernacular Help Understanding?
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    I've been thinking on this recently, and this is a legitimate question. I want to hear everyone's ideas and takes on this. We've all heard the following or similar: "No Latin because people can't understand it." My question is this: what is it that they are supposed to understand that they cannot because of the Latin? What increased understanding does the vernacular bring? Why is it so impossible that the people can't learn to understand Latin?
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,064
    Could you please ask the question in Latin?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    what is it that they are supposed to understand that they cannot because of the Latin?


    the words
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    I get the idea I'm not being taken seriously.
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    Isn't it possible, counter-intuitive though it may be, that use of the vernacular thwarts understanding?
    In much the same way that the use of microphones allows the listener to not "try so hard" to hear, listening to something in ones native tongue might lead to not needing to "focus" to know where you are, not needing to "follow along."
    By putting things in a language one understand very well, the listener is also allowed to infer that the mysteries being enacted are completely open to human understanding, (which they are not.)
    Just some thoughts...

    Save the Liturgy, Save the World!
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  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    Isn't it possible, counter-intuitive though it may be, that use of the vernacular thwarts understanding?


    I don't care how many times I hear this argument --- and it is made a lot 'round the section of the internet I inhabit --- I still find it extraordinary.*



    ---
    *cf. Lawyer's definition
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    If everything was in Latin all the time, one could just as easily come to the conclusion "I don't understand these thing because they are in Latin," rather than "I don't understand these things because they are incomprehensible."
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,064
    I was being quite serious, although at a meta level, as it were.

    I would say that the introduction of the vernacular into regular usage in the liturgy is precisely what can support the use of Latin in the people's parts of the Ordo. Because they are familiar with the vernacular renderings from frequent exposure, the issue of lack of understanding of the Latin when they encounter it is diminished in salience.

    (Btw, if one thinks the answer to this is simply to have hand missals, one is in that answer conceding that understanding the vernacular meaning of the Latin retains salience...)
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  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,449
    Our vernacular liturgy contains words in other languages already. Amen, Alleluia most obviously. I would like to see/hear the Greek of Kyrie eleison, because I don't think we have an adequate translation into English. Why were these never translated into Latin?
    I doubt the people would struggle too much to understand the Sanctus (which itself includes the Hebrew Sabaoth) or others of the Ordinary chants. At least half of our congregation can cope with singing the Salve Regina and Regina Coeli. (in England and Wales we are permitted an invocation of Our Lady in the Prayer of the Faithful)
    But as I recall, Aquinas thought the people could not understand the generality of the words (I agree) and that it did not matter (I disagree).
  • ViolaViola
    Posts: 405
    A couple of years ago we were on holiday in Germany. My husband speaks the language, I don't. When we went to Mass I felt completely out of things; there was an opening hymn that I couldn't join in with, the priest's chatty remarks, appreciated by all the congregation also passed me by. Then they struck up with Missa de Angelis, and it was ok, I felt included. For the Ordinary anyhow.
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  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    I would say that the introduction of the vernacular into regular usage in the liturgy is precisely what can support the use of Latin in the people's parts of the Ordo.
    This
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  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    The disciples approached Jesus and said,
    Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”
    He said to them in reply,
    “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
    has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.

    To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
    from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
    This is why I speak to them in parables, because
    they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
    Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:

    You shall indeed hear but not understand,
    you shall indeed look but never see.
    Gross is the heart of this people,
    they will hardly hear with their ears,
    they have closed their eyes,
    lest they see with their eyes
    and hear with their ears
    and understand with their hearts and be converted
    and I heal them.

    “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
    and your ears, because they hear.
    Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
    longed to see what you see but did not see it,
    and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”


    From today's Gospel lesson.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    Everything should be in Latin and spoken quietly so as to not disturb the people reciting the rosary, just as God intended.
    Thanked by 2ryand Gavin
  • johnmann
    Posts: 175
    Most in the pews don't know what Alleluia or Hosanna means, possibly not even Amen. These we keep because they're entrenched.

    I can probably sing Cantonese with enough practice. But I'll never be able to sing it while being simultaneously conscious of the meaning of the words I'm singing. At least for English-speakers and more so for Romance-speakers, Latin bears some resembles to the respective vernacular. For the Chinese, it might as well be in German.

    Are we really going to structure the Mass for the benefit of the occasional foreign visitor? This is really just a tangential benefit of Latin. We could make English the language of the Mass worldwide. That would accomplish the same feeling of inclusion with the added benefit of better comprehension.

    In the end, I think to defend the use of Latin, comprehension has to take a backseat to fidelity to tradition. That's a defensible position. After all, why do we recite any part of the Ordinary at all? We can construct new more readily comprehensible prayers.
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  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I still find it extraordinary.*

    Hence, Extraordinary Form...
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    Are you familiar with the lawyer's definition of "extraordinary"?
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    I blush to admit that I am not, though I am sure I ought to be. (I just couldn't resist such a bad joke in the context of a discussion about Latin in the Mass.) Do enlighten me, please.
  • mahrt
    Posts: 517
    I am surprised that no one has mentioned a reason for using Latin is the music. We have had a number of essays in the adaptation of Gregorian chant to English, and some good progress has been made. Still, these pale beside the authentic chants sung in Latin. The Latin chants convey a beauty and solemnity that the others do not yet achieve. There is another point. The comprehension of the texts is not insignificant, but more important is the sacredness and beauty of the liturgy itself, which necessarily includes the music, the vestments, the actions, as well as the texts, in a synthesis. There has been a kind of rationalistic iconoclasm that places such an emphasis upon the words rules out the synthesis that a beautifully celebrated liturgy offers. The role of beauty in the liturgy was eloquently described by Fr. Jonathan Robinson at the Colloquium this Summer; his address will soon appear in Sacred Music.
  • The vernacular shouldn't be used in the liturgy for the same reason that Shakespeare shouldn't be translated into English: the beauty is lost. Read any of the sequences. Knowing the linguistic similarity between the Latin for "apple" and the Latin for "evil" explains why many works of art show Eve holding an apple.

    The vernacular shouldn't be used in the liturgy for the same reason that the Bible shouldn't be rendered in modern "accessible" language: Something is lost in translation, often important meaning. "I am he", instead of "ego sum". (One is a simple statement, while the other is the claim that Jesus is God.)

    The vernacular shouldn't be used in the liturgy because it gives the impression of rendering something within our powers of comprehension which isn't. We don't see a change in the sacred species, and so nothing must have happened to them. Hence, the loss of the sense of the sacred and the belief in Christ's transubstantiated presence in the Host and within the Chalice.

  • Liam
    Posts: 5,064
    That's pretty thin gruel for a foundational argument against the use of the vernacular.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    Are you familiar with the lawyer's definition of "extraordinary"?

    I blush to admit that I am not, though I am sure I ought to be. (I just couldn't resist such a bad joke in the context of a discussion about Latin in the Mass.) Do enlighten me, please.


    "Stupid."
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  • Dr Mahrt's argument is cogent, and, perhaps, the most sensible of those offered thus far. It is sensible in several senses, namely, relating to the aesthetic senses, which is the beauty of which he speaks; and relating to the intellectually sensible, namely apprehensive to the mental senses.

    I also like that he has not shut the door on vernacular, and, perhaps, recognises that the vernacular, when raised to an hieratic category, can also be beautiful - and sensible. We certainly know this in the Anglican tradition, which has been affirmed, inherently commended, by Good Pope Benedict. One notices that Dr Mahrt says '...a solemnity and beauty that {vernaculars] do not yet achieve'. Here is an open mind. There is chant in English that is quite beautiful. There is a great body of motets and anthems in English that are as beautiful as any from the Latin repertory. The essence of Dr Mahrt's argument is the expression of beauty, solemnity, a sacral ethos. To deny that English is capable of this is extremely myopic and deliberately blind to things other than preconceived biases.

    All the above arguers for the unique sacral nature of Latin rather blithely overlook that when the mass was put into Latin from Greek (which first happened in North Africa, not Italy) it was not uniformly well received because of the historic aura of Greek, which people were coming less and less to understand. Educated and 'sensitive' people were horrified at the use of the vulgar tongue in the sacred rites. And, of course, this very same Latin which we yet use had, at that time, no mystical, uniquely sacral ethos about it. It was adopted because it was the language people spoke in Italy, just as the mass elsewhere in the world was celebrated in the local vernacular, be it Syriac, Greek, Slovanic, or whatever. Only in the west have we elevated a language, fourth century Latin, to iconic, uniquely sacral status. It has been part and parcel of the extreme clericalism whereby the mass became almost the sole act of a clerical caste which the people just observed and were duly in awe of whilst doing private 'devotions'. (The utter absence of liturgia.)

    This is not, really, an argument against Latin. I hope that people learn the mass in Latin, as the recent council intended for them to. I am the very last person who would want to see our treasury of sacred music in jeopardy. There is every reason that we can have both/and. This was the intent of the council. There is not a whit less (possibly more) beauty, solemnity, awe, and sacrality in solemn high mass at Walsingham than there is in a mass, Latin or English, elsewhere. Let us treasure our Latin heritage, but not attribute to it a unique spritual essence that, objectively, does not exist.

    (It is not too widely appreciated that, at the time of the Reformation, at Trent, there were numerous catholic bishops and theologians who favoured putting the mass into the vernaculars of the day. This was dis-allowed solely on the grounds that the Protestants had done it, not that Latin had, sui generis, a unique holiness about it. Perhaps if this had been done at that time we would have had some far superior vernaculars than what we got in the late XXth century. It was a far more literary age!)

    (And, while I'm at it: it doesn't really matter whether the mass is in hieratic Latin, Greek, English, or Urdu - but, please, pick just one. Multilingual masses (yes, even English-Latin ones) are an aesthetical pastiche; they are, in a word and with a nod to Adam, extraordinary!)

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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,218
    MJO, Old Church Slavonic is not always used in the Slavic Byzantine liturgy, but to exclude it in the way we largely exclude Latin would lead to a revolt within the church. Also, Fr. Hunwicke’s view is that the liturgical Latin has always been set apart from vulgar Latin, for what it is worth.

  • For what it's worth 'liturgical Latin' was once 'vulgar Latin'. That was one of my points.
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  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    @AdamWood: How extraordinary of me not to have known that!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    I think the people should learn the mass in both Latin and English. Unfortunately, they often don't know either.
  • Ted
    Posts: 204
    There is another issue which some have touched with the idea of sacredness. Until the second Vatican council, there were only 3 languages used in the Roman Mass, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The reason for this was stated in the Council of Trent. These are the languages that the Church considers sacred, because they were the ones used on the Cross of our Lord and King. All other languages are considered vulgar.

    Trent actually had something to say about the use of Latin in the Liturgy, viz., that anyone who claims that the liturgy of the Church should be only in a vulgar tongue (such as the so-called Reformers), let him be anathema. Vatican II wisely did not command the liturgy to be in the vulgar tongues, but simply allowed some vernacular, for instance in the readings.

    I take issue with those that think the Latin of the Old Mass was originally vulgar. I think this claim has been shown to be inaccurate. The Latin of the Church was from time immemorial a special hieratic Latin. Even the Roman Canon uses a form of legal Latin to address God.

    Perhaps some food for thought is that Jesus used Hebrew, not Aramaic, for liturgical purposes. Even at that time Hebrew was a dying language. I find it interesting that Hebrew was resurrected in the 19th century so that most Jews today know it, even though it is continues to be used mainly for the Jewish liturgy. Why is it so difficult for Roman Catholics to learn some Latin?
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  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    All other languages are considered vulgar.


    image
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,198
    Decrevit Sacrosanctum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II:

    steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.


  • Vernacular language liturgies lead to national churches. What were the first steps of Luther and Henry VIII?
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,064
    Trent kept the door open for the rites in the vernacular.* For example, there was Urban VIII who confirmed the Glagolitc-Slavonic version of the Tridentine Missal in 1631.....

    * Trent also opened the door for frequent reception of Holy Communion, though it took until Pius X to actually implement what Trent envisioned.
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  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    Politics led to national churches. In the east, it was often rivalries between patriarchs. In Germany, it was princes who wanted to be free of the Emperor in Austria. Luther supported them and the princes supported Luther. Henry VIII was led by greed and lust to break with Rome so he could loot the monasteries and marry soon-to-be headless Anne.
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  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,466
    I take issue with those that think the Latin of the Old Mass was originally vulgar. I think this claim has been shown to be inaccurate. The Latin of the Church was from time immemorial a special hieratic Latin.


    image
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  • francis
    Posts: 10,774
    Cranmer wanted an all vernacular liturgy... it took a few centuries but he got his wish... are we the better for it? We have hundreds of years of our heritage in music (which is in Latin). What is wrong with that music?
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  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    We have hundreds of years of our heritage in music (which is in Latin). What is wrong with that music?


    Nothing is wrong with it. However, we also have other music that is also good.
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  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,218
    Adam, classicist Christine Morhmann argued this right before Vatican II.
  • Vulgar Latin is a generic term for the nonstandard (as opposed to classical) sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. The word vulgar in this case refers to its original meaning of common or vernacular, and not the more pejorative usage, tasteless or indecent. WIKI


    Scary.
  • Ted
    Posts: 204
    I was also starting to wonder how serious this post was. So thank you, Mr Jones. I was using vulgar in the sense of vernacular, and specifically for common languages that most of us are acquainted with, such as English. That does not answer the question of whether English is a better liturgical language than Latin, however, or whether English can ever be a sacred language.

    Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Refers to the edition of the Bible, not the language. That is to say, the Vulgate is the commonly used Bible as opposed to, for instance the Vetus Latina which fell into disuse.

    From my understanding, the Glagolitc-Slavonic version of the Tridentine Missal in 1631 was not in a vernacular/vulgar tongue. It was in Old Slavonic, a liturgical language for the Slavs.

    Citation: I refer you to the classic on this subject, Christine Mohrmann's Liturgical Latin: It Origins and Its Character.

    I think I have better things to do than to hunt for snazzy images.
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    Adam, it doesn't seem fair to demand a cite for "The Latin of the Church was from time immemorial a special hierarchic Latin," but not for, " 'liturgical Latin' was once 'vulgar Latin'".
    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,161
    Actually, Ted, Vulgata indicates that it is written in the vulgar form of Latin, not Classical Latin. Any first year Latin student knows that.
  • Ted
    Posts: 204
    vulgata: 1. common, ordinary; 2. conventional, well-known

    versio vulgata: the commonly used translation
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  • ClemensRomanusClemensRomanus
    Posts: 1,023
    Exactly. Liturgical Latin differs from Vulgar Latin.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Vernacular language liturgies lead to national churches. What were the first steps of Luther and Henry VIII?

    This syllogism may be faulty on a couple of grounds, Chris.
    *Besides theological differences, would you declare that the Orthodox hung their albs upon their vernacular. Some deem them "The first protestants." Not for language.
    *Henry VIII remained extremely reluctant to break with Rome until his hand was forced by many circumstances, some beyond succession. As francis noted, by the time Henry had to find the rationale that all monarchs were de facto ordained by God to rule, ergo meaning the "national" church as well, his efforts to create "The Church of England" did not exclude the hybrid use of Latin as well as English until Cranmer's BCP.
    *Henry, in point of fact, despised Luther's movement once the monk was excommunicated. So, an intent to create a nationalist church was hardly Henry's issue. It is likely that when Luther let his discontent become public, he didn't have a "nationalistic" goal. There was no German nation, and the vernaculars of the region were legion. But once his stone got rolling, his monumental translation was a major pivot point in Christian history, not "German history."
    *We also have to then account for counter-reformation indulgences from Rome that allowed 17/18th century composers to set the Psalter and create national office hymns in their vernaculars, particularly in "Germany" and "Poland." Allegiance to Rome never was at stake with such actions.
  • I'm pretty sure that we all are and have been aware of the correct intimations of 'vulgar' and 'vulgate'. One is rather certain that the Latin first introduced into the Roman church after The Church was already into it's fourth century was, if not the 'king's Latin', certainly not 'street Latin'. The point is still germane: educated Romans were not at all pleased with the change from the venerable Greek that all literate Romans spoke. It is not, in fact, fully appreciated that the entire south of Italy was still very predominantly Greek colonised, and retains much of that heritage to this day. Whatever the motives of the Roman Church's change from Greek to Latin in the fourth century they were most assuredly not that Latin was more sacral, holier, more hieratic, of more ancient use, etc., etc. It was because that was the language that people spoke. That's all! In fact, one might point out that this change was, um, in a word,..... 'inorganic'....... a rupture from centuries old usage.
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  • dad29
    Posts: 2,228
    "I don't understand these things because they are incomprehensible."


    That would be the precise phrasing. TA couldn't explain transubstantiation, and he was reportedly pretty handy with Latin. And Hebrew. And Greek. And Italian. And French.
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  • Charles,

    I take your point, so let me be more precise.

    One goal of the Church universal has been to create an indigenous clergy, so that the faith is not imposed from without, and so that the content of the faith can be explained to natives by natives, and furthermore so that the indigenous culture can have its own flowering of the faith.

    A second goal of the Church universal has been to guarantee the purity of the faith. For this reason the definitions are in a language which is not the property of one country.

    The Church hasn't objected to vernacular translation of Holy Writ per se, but because of the heretical notes, mistranslations, omissions and such. Her liturgy she has allowed to be varied by bishops (which I know because I'm reading a book about the medieval missals in various dioceses) but does not allow this anymore (no one on his own authority may add, remove, or alter the texts or instructions), in part because of doctrinal worries.

    Nevertheless, (he said, doing his best impersonation of Paul Scofield) the "reformers" require vernacularizations, and since Rome opposes heresy, or used to, she denies the necessity of vernacular liturgies and such similar things.

    Is that better?
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  • dad29
    Posts: 2,228
    Only in the west have we elevated a language, fourth century Latin, to iconic, uniquely sacral status.


    So what?

    It has been part and parcel of the extreme clericalism whereby the mass became almost the sole act of a clerical caste which the people just observed and were duly in awe of whilst doing private 'devotions'. (The utter absence of liturgia.)


    In whose opinion? That of the "antiquarians"--of which John XXIII and Paul VI both warned?

    Further, the fact that SOME people rattled their rosaries during Mass is not evidence that ALL people did, except in the minds of that Intellectualoid Bunch which also found it necessary to demolish graphic and plastic arts in churches.

    IOW, the New Puritans. From them you take lessons?

    Please.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,198
    For Adam Wood:

    Christine Mohrmann's 1957 lectures, presented in Liturgical Latin: its origins and character, answer the myth that the Church's language of prayer was particularly taken from common speech.

    She distinguishes between language for the purpose of interpersonal communication -- which tends over time toward simplification -- and language for the purpose of self-expression -- which tends over time toward elaboration.

    Early Christian Latin, she writes, is "a strongly stylized, more or less artificial language, of which many elements -- for instance the Orations -- were not easily understood even by the average Christian of the fifth century or later. This language was far removed from that of everyday life, a fact which was certainly appreciated, since, at the time, people still retained the sens du sacré."
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    I see a great benefit in retaining Latin for the common people's parts, primarily the ordinary of the mass: Kyrie (okay, that's Greek), Gloria, Sanctus, Pater Noster and Agnus Dei. I see benefit in the use of vernacular language for the proclamation of the readings and the Common Prayer or "Prayers of the Faithful."

    For other parts such as the propers or hymns, Latin would be preferable for propers, vernacular would be preferable for hymns, but it could work well either way.

    The question of people understanding the words isn't a precise point. People love to hear the "Ave Maria" despite not knowing Latin, but they know that it is the words to the "Hail Mary" and don't mind. I don't think anyone in the average congregation knows the words or translation of "Panis Angelicus" but either way they don't mind.

    First and foremost I would promote the use of Latin Ordinaries. The benefit of this is that it helps unite the entire church in a common language, particularly for travellers and pilgrims.

    In 2011 I went on Pilgrimmage to World Youth Day in Madrid. The only place which used Latin was Westminster Cathedral in London! The Cathedrals in Lyon and Avila used their respective vernacular tongues, and made it virtually impossible to participate in prayers at each mass, though I did always know what part of the mass we were up to.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,968
    I have no idea what the future of Latin in the U.S. church will be. Both proponents and opponents of it too easily put forward emotional, sometimes hysterical, arguments for or against it. Locally, I see a small group endorsing Latin, and a much larger group with little or no interest in it. Elsewhere? I don't know.