Latin and You. Wherein Fr. Z Rants

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Latin and You. Wherein Fr. Z rants.

Each year - in fact more than once each year - a serious problem for our enervated Catholic identity rises to the surface to demand our attention. The lack of Latin in the Latin Church. I am sure that there are those who would just as soon jettison every Latin aspect of our lives as Latin Chur
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If we are going to call ourselves Roman Catholics, Catholics of the Latin Church, then we need Latin.

The chorus of clerical lament rises now around my toes, moving upward, ever upward in a swirl of complaints and excuses. “It’s toooo haaard… I have too much to dooooo… People aren’t asking fooooor it…. I’m too ooooold to change… I’d don’t liiiiike it….”

B as in B. S as in S.

This is important. If you are without Latin, you are someone else’s puppet when it comes to all the Church’s liturgical texts and the Church’s law and the Church’s doctrine. For your Cult, Code and Creed, you are enslaved to translations, which do not provide the riches of the original content.

This is particularly important in the realm of our sacred liturgical worship. Change how we pray and we change what we believe, and, hence, how we live.
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yankeesouth said:
If you are without Latin, you are someone else’s puppet when it comes to all the Church’s liturgical texts and the Church’s law and the Church’s doctrine. For your Cult, Code and Creed, you are enslaved to translations, which do not provide the riches of the original content.
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That part is true - you’re relying on someone elses’ translation - which may or may not be accurate. So unless you yourself are fluent in the language, you have to trust that the translation is accurate. Assuming one isn’t fluent, then in that sense you are at the mercy of the translation, which as Fr Z points out do not always correspond accurately in all the nuances of the orginal text .
 
CRV said:
That part is true - you’re relying on someone elses’ translation - which may or may not be accurate. So unless you yourself are fluent in the language, you have to trust that the translation is accurate. Assuming one isn’t fluent, then in that sense you are at the mercy of the translation, which as Fr Z points out do not always correspond accurately in all the nuances of the orginal text .
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Of course lost on Fr. Z is the fact that Latin is itself a translation from texts in their original languages, with respect to sacred texts, i.e. the Bible. So even in Latin, the propers of the Mass are translations. As is the Divine Office in Latin.

It’s never going to be perfect. Nor does it need to be to transmit the gist of the Gospel message necessary for our salvation.
 
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It’s the Church translating Latin to whatever language, so she is responsible for it’s accuracy.

The idea that you can only have Mass in Latin, is something out of the Middle Ages.

Jim
 
Agree with you translations from one language to another to another is not always accurate, and concerning the Bible the message of the Good News is what’s necessary.
 
JimR-OCDS said:
It’s the Church translating Latin to whatever language, so she is responsible for it’s accuracy.
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That’s true. And that’s where errors come in - in the translations, or rather mis-translations.
 
Then using your logic, the Church can’t be trusted to translate and interpret Sacred Scripture.

Jim
 
My issue when it comes to using the vernacular is not in translations themselves, as I have faith in the Church that those translations are accurate, but the licenses it gives priests to “customize” the liturgy to their liking, which is more of a criticism of the New Rite than the language it’s presented in (not to mention the number of prayers in the TLM vs the NO).

I get the importance of using Latin to ensure parity within the liturgy performed on a parish-to-parish basis, but given the alternative liturgies offered in the Eastern rite in the vernacular, I don’t think returning solely to Latin is going to fix all of the issues in the Church.

Edit: I honestly wish the Anglican Use liturgy was more widespread. The beauty of the EO in the English language.
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Then using your logic, the Church can’t be trusted to translate and interpret Sacred Scripture.
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Not at all. Just that as translations are made by humans, and humans are frail beings/not perfect, mistakes are made.
Personally I trust the translations the Church makes, until such time as there is evidence there has been an error made. If this were to happen, it would be made known and a clarification on the translation published.
 
CRV said:
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po18guy:
Popcorn ready.
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Thankyou. That made me laugh. We can tend to get caught up in the seriousness of things …
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Fr. Z is entitled to his opinion. I cannot understand the mania for Latin, unless it is some misplaced notion of nostalgia for a time that is gone and can never return. Granted it is the language of the Church (which sets things in concrete), but it is not magic. And we have the G.I.R.M. as some level of reassurance for those paranoics who fear a modernist takover.

None other than Fr. Mitch Pacwa states that he prefers the Aramaic mass. Aside from him, I think only Jim Caviezel can recite it verbatim.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Fr. Z should start just writing his columns in Latin. I bet a lot of his followers can already read it, and it would motivate more people to learn.
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I doubt it’ll ever catch on as a norm though. The only reason that Latin was chosen was that it was the most universal communication of the day. It was used by all the disciplines - medicine, science, mathmatics, literature so that even the lay person had some grasp of it. There is just no organic necessity for it in communicating these days.
 
But his point is that we are the Latin Rite, not Hebrew or Greek Rite. And the Latin goes all the back to Cicero.
 
I don’t think that Fr. Z is unaware that many prayers and texts were translated into Latin from other languages. The fact that not all Catholic writings were originally in Latin does not mean that the language does not have high value though. Fr. Z’s arguments tend to be better thought out than that, and he is quite familiar with the multiple counterarguments (most of which, by the way, tend to be built on absurd assumptions that Latin enthusiasts believe the Last Supper was conducted in Latin, or other assorted nonsense-I’m not saying that’s your argument, but it gets thrown out there pretty often).
 
The words of the Mass are drawn primarily from scripture. Fr Z’s claim that the 'original language’s Latin is false. The ‘original language’ of the new testament was Greek. Of the old, Hebrew. The original spoken language from which the Greek scriptures were drawn, was Aramaic.
 
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