I don’t know where you live in Oregon. But you yourself told me there is a TLM Mass in Portland or Eugene. Salem has a Latin NO Mass once a month. Why they don’t have more at that parish I don’t know…maybe because they have Spanish Masses and Vietnamese Masses.
Yup.
Ok–but doesnt that make the hostility towards being unable to find a Latin Mass a little different in a sparsly populated area then in a metropolitan area? I’m just asking
The hostility toward the Latin Liturgy is not entirely dependent on size of the community.Ok–but doesnt that make the hostility towards being unable to find a Latin Mass a little different in a sparsly populated area then in a metropolitan area? I’m just asking
This trend seems to have followed the secular world:
I’m not saying that there isn’t a hostility…although it might be a preference without being hostile.
Good article. I would imagine right now with the economy…they are struggling to teach the basis…let alone Latin.
That hostility isn’t regional by any means. There were clergy and religious sisters elsewhere who said the exact same thing. I can personally attest to three Archdioceses and several more Dioceses (North East, Midwest, South East) where that happened. While those people certainly were mistaken, they weren’t exactly lying: I think that in their misguided zeal to push their post-conciliar agenda down everyone’s throat they actually believed what they were spouting.
Yup. It was rammed down my throat and I haven’t stopped gagging on it for the last forty five years.
This may be true. But Fr. Foster, the Pope’s own Latinist, translates the important documents into Latin for preservation, if nothing else. Since Vatican II, according to that article I presented earlier, where everyone thought in Latin, there has been a trend to use languages like Italian and French to write one’s thoughts into that language first. Comes with disuse of Latin, I would imagine. Of course languages as the ones you’ve mentioned, Italian, Spanish, and other Romance languages are vulgarized forms of Latin to begin with so translations between them and the Latin wouldn’t be as difficult, I’m almost sure, as English and Latin, for example.
English to Latin is more difficult than Spanish to Latin. This is true. But it’s done. Yes, everything is filed away in Latin. Notice that I said that the first draft of the constitutions are alwasy in Latin. That’s not for the sake of communication. It’s for the sake of culture. I have never had to read our constitutions in Latin, always in the language of the country where I was stationed. When I was in the Amazon, we had a General Chapter. Because we are an international order, the General Chapter is always held in Assisi. The discussions are never in Latin. They have never been, even when St. Francis was alive. When he was alive, they were always in French, because Italy did not have a unified Italian language.
I had asked my Catholic priest if he would ever be able to celebrate a Latin Mass at our parish even if it was just a one time event thing and he told me that he would have nothing to do with it. Instead he gave me a name of a Church thats close by to where I live that says the Latin Mass. So I now go to the Latin Mass on Sundays and on Saturdays I go to the new Mass. One of his reasons for not wanting to say a Latin Mass is because he said nobody in the parish will no what hes saying and the parishoners wouldn’t be participating in the Latin Mass as much as the do in the new Mass.Yesterday was my parish’s annual picnic. I was having a conversation with my pastor and the topic of Latin in the new mass came up. He said that he would like to use Latin in parts of the mass at our parish but he just is not able to do it. He referenced to an occasion when he used one line of Latin during the mass and a woman stood up and shouted at him.This worries me because we are a relatively orthodox parish with many women who still where lace head coverings and practice devotions before mass. I did not know how to respond to this. This upset me because he mentioned that he would like to restore more traditions (chant, incense, ect.) but it just would not be possible with the attitude of our parishioners. Is this a problem most parishes are faced with? What could our parish overcome these types of problems?
Father has a legitimate concern in this sense. There are many parishioners who do not want to attend a mass in Latin. I have a very good friend who is the pastor of a parish with about 3,000 families, not people. He has seven masses every weekend: two on Sat and five on Sun. The Church is full. It holds about 800. We had this conversation and he said something that made sense. He told me that his parishioners were there for mass. They are involved in over 37 ministries. They have paid off the mortgage for their new school… At this point in time, what would it add to the life of his parish to introduce a mass in Latin unless there was a large enough group for it. He also shared that he has had four requests in one year. If your parishioners are doing well and your parish is spiritually healthy, I say, don’t tamper with it.
But if the Pope writes it in a language other than Latin, wouldn’t translating it into Latin also pose the same dangers as translating Latin into any other language? Shouldn’t we preserve it in its original language written instead?
My understanding is that when a document prepared in the vernacular is translated into Latin, the resulting Latin text is declared to be normative, and occasionally the version in the original language will be revised to accord with it if the translation into Latin has caused changes in meaning.
Good to know. Thanks
What’s usually done in those cases is that you preserve both the original and the Latin translation. The purpose of having it in Latin is for the sake of containing all official writings in the official language of the Church. But you want to preserve the original for its historical value.