Archbishop Sample - All priest's should learn Traditional Latin Mass

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I love the TLM. Fortunately, we have one here in the Diocese Of Atlanta- Unfortunately, it’s 24 miles away from me, so I can’t always attend due to work.
 
He is quite correct and, indeed, all priests can and should celebrate the TLM. First, all priests are required to be fluent in Latin in order to be ordained. Saying a TLM every week, or even every couple of weeks, helps keep that fluency that one is required to learn in seminary. In many culturally diverse parishes, having the priest be able to do the TLM would enable people from several linguistic backgrounds to be able to follow along in their missals. Don’t forget, this is the 21st century. There are plenty of on-line helps available so even the poorest person would be able to have a copy of, say, the Korean/Latin TLM mass guide as a handout in the church (or any other language).

What always puzzles me is how often so many white English-speaking “Americans” clamor for diversity, love to appropriate attractive cultural symbols, etc., insist on Feng Shui’ing their homes and celebrating Diwali, etc., yet when it comes to having themselves or their children learn a language that isn’t English, react as if they’ve been asked to climb Mount Everest barefoot. It’s soooooo hardddddd. Why don’t those ‘others’ just learn ENGLISH?

If Catholics want diversity, why chase pachamamas and play enneagrams and labyrinths etc when we have this incredible cool heritage of our own? It’s as ‘new’ as the above; few people have ever experienced it, certainly not regularly. It has a special sacred language (and a Missal for a ‘decoder ring’). It has all kinds of special music and clothing; we don’t have to ‘culturally appropriate’ and say wear a kimono if we aren’t Japanese, or give our 15 year old daughters quinceaneras when the only thing Spanish the family engages in is eating Spanish rice from the microwave. We have a heritage that goes back 2000 years! Let’s rejoice in it!!!
 
Straight from the Vatican Website:
The Code of Canon Law

Priestly formation
Canon 249 The program of priestly formation is to provide that students not only are carefully taught their native language but also understand Latin well and have a suitable understanding of those foreign languages which seem necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of pastoral ministry
 
Understand and be fluent are two entirely different things.

I can assure you I have met many priests who are not fluent in Latin.
 
I love Latin. I wish more Latin was incorporated in the Ordinary Form.
 
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I’ll accept that and rephrase. . .according to the Vatican and the code of canon law all priests should understand Latin well.

That being said, if all priests through their formation should be able to understand Latin well, all priests should be able to learn and to do the TLM just as all priests have a suitable understanding of any other foreign language which is deemed necessary or useful for formation or exercise of pastoral ministry.

Quite a few non-native Spanish speakers routinely say a Spanish Mass. A fair number of non-native French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Polish, Croatian, Korean, Laotian, Japanese, Swahili, etc. speakers manage to routinely say Masses in those languages.

Even 100 years ago in this country, a huge number of college students (and priests would fall under this category as well in seminary formation schools) took Latin as a required course along with usually one other foreign language. How come those students (and by the end of the 1920s, women made up 47% of college students, so it wasn’t just a ‘male thing’) could learn these languages then, but can’t seem to do it now???
 
I am not saying that it can’t be done, or that a Priest should not be able to say or learn the TLM.

I am just sharing my observations of what I have seen.

Being able to say a Mass in a language other than one’s native language is quite a good thing. But I am not certain that translates to being fluent in the language, as in one could function, speak or write without pause or complete accuracy.
 
I agree that all priests should learn the TLM. Our seminary offers it as an elective. Even if a guy never actually says the Extraordinary Form, simply learning it will teach him so much about the OF and the Mass in general.
 
I disagree.

Per Summorum Pontificum, priests should offer the EF where there is a stable group of parishioners asking for it, not where there are activists priests promoting it.

The Church does not need more liturgy wars, nor do we need more time spent on the tinkering with liturgical practice.

Instead our priests should be focused on evangelization, the poor, delivering sacraments, service and personal holiness
 
" We now, in the full consciousness of Our Office and in virtue of Our authority, decree and command the following:
Responsibility for enforcement**
  1. Bishops and superiors-general of religious orders shall take pains to ensure that in their seminaries and in their schools where adolescents are trained for the priesthood, all shall studiously observe the Apostolic See’s decision in this matter and obey these Our prescriptions most carefully.
  2. In the exercise of their paternal care they shall be on their guard lest anyone under their jurisdiction, eager for revolutionary changes, writes against the use of Latin in the teaching of the higher sacred studies or in the Liturgy, or through prejudice makes light of the Holy See’s will in this regard or interprets it falsely."
    Veterum Sapientia

Apostolic Constitutions are solemn forms of legislation.

Has any other Apostolic Constitution been sidestepped as VS has been ? I can’t find one.
 
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TheBomb.Com said:
No one suggested a Liturgy war. More artificial controversy
Click to expand...
Not true… the Archbishop mentions the conflict over the liturgy explicitly in his talk and he refers to it as unfortunate. I agree with him… if you were to visit one of many aggressive traditionalist websites, you will see an open liturgy war already in progress. I would argue that there is far more anti OF out there than ill will toward the EF.
 
I agree there are those who would seek to sow discord and confusion. Still, the Church remains undivided.
 
There is one parish in my former diocese which offers every Sunday a Mass in English, a Mass in Latin, and a Mass in Vietnamese. No liturgy wars.

I don’t think that actual fluency in Latin need be required, just an ability to speak the Latin of the Mass. I took Latin in high school but was never fluent in it. Still, when the Latin Mass was predominant, I could easily recite all the major prayers of the Mass in Latin–the Creed, the Gloria, the responses, and could sing all the usual Latin hymns.

I don’t normally attend a Latin Mass, but I think that if it were offered once weekly at each parish, it is quite likely that the EF and the OF could mutually benefit and enrich each other.
 
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