Keeping an Eye on the Insidious Increase in the Use of Latin in the... er, Roman Catholic Church
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    I thought some of us could use a laugh, via this letter to the Editor in the newsletter of a catholic organization.
    For about two years or so, quite a number of churches have started using Latin for the "Holy, Holy" and "The Lamb of God" in their Sunday liturgies. Why?

    Even the election of Pope Francis has not stopped this trend. Is any group watching the liturgy and addressing apparent attempt to bring back Latin?

    [name redacted to protect the innocent]
    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Indeed, such a claim is laughable.

  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    I am afraid Latin is not nearly as prevalent as some seem to fear. LOL.
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    attempt to bring back Latin


    Just returning what never should have been removed.
    Thanked by 1StimsonInRehab
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    Curious, isn't it? how il-liberal liberals are!
    They are poster specimens of il-liberality and intolerance.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen MichaelDickson
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    Voice of the faithful.

    Ha ha ha ha ha
    Hahaha hahaha ha
    Ha ha ha ha ha
    Thanked by 3Jani Gavin ClergetKubisz
  • stulte
    Posts: 355
    Vox populi, vox Dei?
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,942
    they...
  • johnmann
    Posts: 175
    I too have noticed more parishes following the example of Pope Francis and using Latin during Mass. The election of Pope Francis has not stopped this trend.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,150
    haiku, too, Ben.
    Thanked by 1Kathy
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Apparently not a VOT(haha)F footsoldier, but a community organizer: http://votf.org/content/voice-faithful-2009-national-conference
    Thanked by 1IanW
  • kevinfkevinf
    Posts: 1,183
    I thought this was a joke, but after following the link, I am horrified. In the words of a dear priest friend,"wake me up when the hippies are dead."
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    That bunch of old "ho's" would do anything to get their names and faces in the media. They will never change. Any publicity is good as far as they are concerned. I take it you haven't been around many millennials or nones? There are differences, but they are like the above mentioned hippies in that they don't believe much of anything.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Frankly, sometimes I can't tell who more enjoys posting their pub and tavern gathering selfies, the NPM or CMAA intelligentia.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,704
    For some people the return of Latin in just one Mass, in one parish is a disaster... These people still believe that their idea of liturgy is the ideal, and is the only type of liturgy that can be tolerated. I am sure such people do not really notice the churches gradually emptying, but they do notice each TLM or N.O. in Latin that starts up, each one of them a defeat for their world view.

    They are certainly going to have a depressing few years!
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Scott_WScott_W
    Posts: 468
    My irony meter breaks because they will say that no one but a handful of old fogeys are interested in Latin liturgy and yet somehow Latin threatens to destroy the whole Church. I remember overhearing a lady leave a classroom saying "If more if this language I can't understand keeps coming, I'm going to have to leave!" What was it that was so offensive? The gloria in excelsis deo in "Angels We Have Heard On High". What can men do against such reckless hate?
    Thanked by 2ClergetKubisz SarahJ
  • G
    Posts: 1,397
    That bunch of old "xxs" would do anything to get their names and faces in the media.
    Charity?
    For some people the return of Latin in just one Mass, in one parish is a disaster... These people still believe that their idea of liturgy is the ideal, and is the only type of liturgy that can be tolerated. I am sure such people do not really notice the churches gradually emptying, but they do notice each TLM or N.O. in Latin that starts up, each one of them a defeat for their world view.
    I told more than once that what initially drew me to the RotR and interested me in the EF was the outright vitriol they inspired in certain people, and curiousity about what could possibly be so powerful that it evoked hated and terror in them.
    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen JL
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    What can men do against such reckless hate?

    Now we're talking, Scott! I'm in my 24th year of tenure at our mother parish (and three others when merged.) We have no ties to FSSP, Una Voce or even the folks who do celebrate a Sunday afternoon TLM in Fresno (north) and Bakersfield (south.) We're smack dab in the middle.
    Now under the third pastorate of that tenure we have a late vocation priest who, on his own, has learned and celebrated the "Lecta" EF in Fresno. At the same time, he's working very diligently with success to literally chant all orations and responses in the OF. His next goal, of course is "Cantata."
    Anyway, after a 2.5 hr. liturgy meeting (3 priests/me/liturgy coordinator) that pleasantly tackles real stuff, not bunnies and banners, I reiterated something to the priests like "By not trying to offer, if only on an appointed occasional basis, a "Lecta" in our mother parish, we will never know what sort of constituency there could be were it offered. And our associate is just the guy I've needed to push this forward. As is oft lamented, it does come down to priestly preference. But the solid foundation of a reverently prepared and executed schola Mass in the last two decades plus, with nary even one complaint about either Latin or chant from any PIP, seems to indicate a sort of openness that needs to be, ahem, market-tested. You and I know the demographics will not skew to the Lawrence Welk folks. I'm convinced young families, kids in parochial, public or home-schools, will find, even in a four hymn Lecta, the fullness of both liturgy and mystery that is the TLM.
    Pray for us out here in CenCA.
    Thanked by 1gregp
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    what initially drew me to the RotR and interested me in the EF was the outright vitriol they inspired in certain people, and curiousity about what could possibly be so powerful that it evoked hated and terror in them


    I've also encountered that same raw antipathy towards the Latin Mass from the preconciliar generation of Catholics--- so much so that I'm inclined to wonder if it was the silent Low Mass culture in particular which engendered such animosity----although that animosity was mostly latent until after the Second Vatican Council when American Catholics realized that being compelled to make no audible sounds during Mass was a rather peculiar liturgical praxis---perfectly valid of course---but strange nonetheless.

    I'm always struck by then-Cardinal Ratzinger saying the Mass ought to be a "rite of brotherhood in responsory dialogue" and not the act of "a lonely hierarchy facing a group of laymen each one of whom is shut off in his own missal or other devotional book."
    Thanked by 1hilluminar
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    Ben thanks for haiku.
    It is Latin, right ?
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    The fierce reaction against Latin and the Latin Mass is primarily, I believe, a visceral reaction against the 100% silent Low Mass, a liturgical model which is actually an anomaly in Catholic liturgical experience and inconsistent with nearly all of Catholic worship.

    Anyone should be able to see how inconsistent it is to tell people that they can sing all of the responses at the Sung High Mass, but at the Low Mass, they're supposed to be completely and totally silent, with "no audible responses coming from the pews during Mass."

    If one thinks of the Divine Office which is primarily a sung choral office, and antiphonal in its very nature, it is easy to see that it is in fact, a "responsory dialogue". The fact that a priest is allowed to say the Office privately does not take away the ideal that the Office should primarily be sung in community.

    When one looks at the Eastern rite of the Church, and the other rites of the Catholic Church, we see that they are also primarily sung and the faithful participate in a vocal and vibrant manner.

    So, if someone is used only to the Novus Ordo, the Eastern rite, the Sung Mass, or the Divine Office, it is quite understandable and almost to be expected that they would find the silent Low Mass "foreign" and find it hard to reconcile with the Church's liturgical tradition and experience. After all, Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which Cardinal Sarah called "the magna carta of all liturgical celebrations" in the Church (and signed quite willingly even by the arch-traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebrve) says the baptized participate in the liturgy because of the very nature of their baptism and their share in the royal priesthood of Christ, a sharing which is very real, although different in essence from the ministerial priesthood.

    The reason SC was passed first at Vatican II with very little debate was because there was an almost universal consensus among the bishops that something had to be done to bring the laity back to a more active participation in the Sacred Liturgy. We know from Vatican II that one of the chief ways they intended to do this initially was to teach the people "to say or sing in Latin those parts of the Mass that pertain to them"--a relatively small adjustment that could have resulted in huge dividends and averted decades of liturgical upheaval.
    Thanked by 3M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen hilluminar
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,152
    Do you think the guy in the editorial was talking about us? I mean, aren't we watching the Liturgy and addressing the attempt to bring Latin back into the Church?
  • MichaelDickson
    Posts: 419
    Do you think the guy in the editorial was talking about us? I mean, aren't we watching the Liturgy and addressing the attempt to bring Latin back into the Church?


    It was a lady.

    Perhaps somebody here should offer to answer her questions? It should be one of those charismatic people (as so aptly described in another thread recently), which rules me out. (I fear, in this case, that even the most persuasive and charming person would put the 'charisma theory' to a severe test...)
  • Scott_WScott_W
    Posts: 468
    P.S. If you complain about Latin because the people don't understand it, but bounce around the pews to Pescador de los Hombres, you deserve a swirlie.
    Thanked by 1SarahJ
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    It should be one of those charismatic people (as so aptly described in another thread recently), which rules me out.


    Me, too, I'm afraid. I am too academic.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 966
    Reminds me of the time someone complained about not understanding Latin when the only three things we sang (or said) in Latin were the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. I figure if you've been going to a completely vernacular Mass for decades (and she had been) then you better know what the Gloria is!
    Thanked by 1hilluminar
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    Yes, that perplexes me, too.
  • Scott_WScott_W
    Posts: 468
    Yes, that perplexes me, too


    It might be that they think Latin is snobby or high-falutin' which is funny considering many classicists turn their nose up at medieval Latin. I even recall an article by a young Catholic snot-nose directing some ugly chortling at Latin-Mass goers for listening to what was basically gutter-Latin in his view.

    But in the end the EF means making an effort, and in this age of sentimentality and excessive comfort there just isn't going to be many takers. This might be a stretch, but it reminds of a comment in a review of Gosford Park:

    For decades Hollywood lived by the philosophy that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. Savage red men bit the dust in their thousands for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, so that anyone who ventured into a Western could be sure of what he would see. Why did it take people so long to get bored knowing that every Indian would be nothing but an Aunt Sally for soldiers’ or settlers’ bullets? I don’t know, but eventually they did get bored — and Hollywood promptly flip-flopped. For the last thirty-five years, you could be equally certain going into a movie that any cinematic redskins would invariably be the good guys: decent, honorable and, as sure as shooting, victimized by the white man.

    And we are still not bored with it. Maybe in another 30 years we will be. In the same way, I reckon that it has been at least 40 years since an aristocrat of the silver screen has been anything but a thorough rotter and a cad. You have only to call a character Lord something- or-other and your audience knows immediately what to think of him. Why don’t we get bored with this? Once again, it is a mystery. But one possible explanation is that we need the myth of the wicked upper classes to confirm us in our taste for vulgarity and sloppiness. If we thought that manners and what they used to call “breeding” were anything but a cover for the basest kind of behavior, we might have to cultivate them ourselves once again instead of letting it all hang out.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    It's amazing how many people are fighting against Vatican II, even at this late date. ;-)
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,942
    The problem with that comment about Gosford Park is that it's demonstrably wrong. Even Dances with Wolves doesn't avoid the issue of nasty Injuns, and The Last of the Mohicans didn't either, just to cite two easy-to-remember counterexamples. And just in the past decade we've have The Queen and The King's Speech and all manner of films on the noble-nobility front.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    It's amazing how many people are fighting against Vatican II, even at this late date. ;-)

    "I'm gonna lay down ma sword and shield, down by Bugninicide....."
    http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/a-cnn/item/1667-the-vernal-equinox-of-beatifications


  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    Bugninicide...hmm...Is that what's been happening during the last 50 years....
    Thanked by 2melofluent CHGiffen
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    It's already trademarked, S.
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