Ecclesiastical Latin - What's the Big Deal?

[I_Believe]

What’s the alternative? For the Church to switch to the current most widely-spoken language every hundred years? Seriously, lay out an alternative for us.

BTW, one of the great benefits of the long Latin legacy is the musical tradition of the universal Church. You had stable, universal texts for 1500 or more years that composers could work with. Compare the results with the vernacular fragmentation we now have, coupled with bad and/or changing translations (“shifting sands”) and decide under which situation the music which is pars integrans of the liturgy fares better.

There is no alternative IMO. I was just trying to bring out some thoughts such as your own

 

[I_Believe]

The church retains Latin as a matter of not only tradition but also of control of purity of information. While the rest of the world has taken the Bible into various translations, interpretations, amplifications, simplifications on and on ad nauseum - the church has insured that the original information stays as close as possible to its intended meaning. Douay-Rheims is so accurate because it remains the closest translation from the Latin Vulgate and compared exhaustively to the Greek etc etc. Jerusalem Bible I feel follows closely and there is a Spanish version which also ranks with the D-R and Jerusalem, that is the Nacar-Colunga. The base for these outstanding and time honored translations is Latin. Now, as far as Latin being a dead language, I believe that this is a vicious attack which began I don’t know when, to undermine its use by the Catholic church world-wide. I firmly believe that it is the “regulatory language” of the catholic church. I’ll give an example which may or may not have any meaning to you all: An american priest officiating a Spanish mass, was using the prayer, “Lord wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin”. When he said it in Spanish it came out, " …and cleanse my sin" abluere meum peccatto (I’m not an expert). Where “from my” would be “de meum”. Like I said, I’m no expert but I see the importance to have recourse to the original intent of the prayer. And that is where Latin comes into play and needs to remain in saecula saeculorum.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.

Good example of the problem with venacular. Thanks.

 

[brotherhrolf]

The Latin is much richer than English and therefore there is less errors in exegeting.

English is pretty much derived from Latin. Latin is cooler anyways.

English is not derived from Latin. It is a branch of the Germanic family of languages. All of our Latinate words were added during the Elizabethan period and beyond because educated people of the period could speak, write, and read Latin.

I grew up with the TLM. By the time I got to high school and took Spanish, the cognates (words that have a common origin) fairly jumped off the page. Here’s cognate you should recognise:

Pater (Latin), vater (German), father (English) Thus, if you read along in English with the TLM, it wouldn’t be strange. You’ld see all sorts of cognates.