Latin Prayers vs English

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ConnorMM

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I don’t speak or know latin. I’m currently trying to learn some through basic prayers, but I’m not sure how to pronounce them. It often feels wrong, awkward and almost like I’m putting on a show as I don’t truly understand what I am saying. Is it okay to just pray in english or could that be seen as me just being lazy.
 
Sure. Pray however you feel comfortable. Latin is a beautiful language, and learning a little bit can help you appreciate a lot of Church history, but it’s not “magic.” It’s not like your prayers are more effective just because they’re in Latin.
 
that’s what’s confusing me because according to the Church it is. I can’t remember his name but a priest who has performed over 700,000 exorcisms in his career stated that latin prayers are far more effective and it has been said that the devil hates latin
 
People say all sorts of things on the internet. Unless you can point to an actual official Church teaching saying that Latin somehow supercharges your prayers, ignore all these “I heard a priest say once…” type stories on the internet.
 
Why on earth would it not be OK to pray in English or any language?! Latin is the traditional language of the Church (and only the western ‘lung’ at that) - we sometimes consider it set aside for worship, but we also risk idolizing the language that way; otherwise, there’s nothing particularly special about it.
 
Of course it is fine to pray in English, or to pray silently. The devil hates prayer of any sort. To follow the logic of that Priest, the devil would hate Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew Script, Palaeoscript, Biblical Hebrew. etc.
 
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Your post raises a number of points:
  1. It makes no difference what language you use for prayer. It may be that what you are getting confused by is the fact that Latin is the official language used for the original versions of many Church documents and liturgies. However, you should also note that in reality many of these texts will have undergone transmission through a number of languages at different stages. The writings of Pope John Paul II, for example, may have been originally conceived in Polish, then drafted in Italian, translated into an official Latin version, and finally translated into the English version that you will read. The original written form of the Lord’s Prayer is of course in Greek, but that may be a translation from Aramaic. Similarly, the archangel Gabriel presumably did not address Mary in Latin.
  2. I would encourage anybody to try learning some Latin. It’s fun and not actually very difficult. If you work hard at it you can easily go from complete beginner’s level to reading Cicero in a year.
  3. Don’t worry too much about the pronunciation of Latin. Pronunciation has evolved over time and has always varied across different parts of the world. The kind of Latin Cicero would have spoken would have sounded very different to the kind of Latin you hear in church, which in turn sounds very different to the Latin taught to Victorian schoolboys. For example, the letter ‘v’ (sometimes written as a ‘u’ in classical texts) can be pronounced as a ‘v’ or a ‘w’. The letter ‘c’ can sound like an ‘s’, a ‘k’, or a ‘ch’. I sometimes as a joke confuse a friend of mine who is an excellent classical Latinist by pronouncing something in ecclesiastical Latin and equally I sometimes catch myself reading religious texts in classical pronunciation.
 
ConnorMM said:
I can’t remember his name but a priest who has performed over 700,000 exorcisms in his career stated that latin prayers are far more effective and it has been said that the devil hates latin
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That would be Fr. Amorth, and I would note that while I enjoy his books, some commentators have noted that it would have been physically impossible for him to perform that many exorcisms during the time he was active. He was also prone in his later years to saying a number of rather odd and questionable things, if indeed he was being quoted correctly.

In any event, there is nothing magic about praying in Latin. Some traditionalists prefer it because Latin was used as a universal prayer language for the Church prior to Vatican II. Some modern priests also think we should know Latin so that we can pray along with people from many nations when necessary, such as at the Vatican, at Lourdes, at Fatima etc. However, the Church permits and encourages people to pray in their own language, and God does not care what language you pray in, he only cares if your prayer is sincere regardless of whether it’s in Latin, English, French, Swahili, sign language, whatever.

I happen to know some Latin because I studied it in high school. But I have prayed most prayer in my life in English. My parents and everybody else I know prayed in English too, unless they were someone’s old ethnic grandma who prayed in Polish or Italian. Please feel free to pray in English. God will accept those prayers just fine.
 
Having said all that, if you truly would like to learn Latin prayers, just find a recording on Youtube of people saying them with subtitles, and learn from that.

You can also go to some Latin Masses and learn the basic responses, e.g. the priest says “Dominus vobiscum” (The Lord be with you) and you respond, “Et cum spirituo tuo” (And with your spirit), that sort of thing.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Some modern priests also think we should know Latin so that we can pray along with people from many nations when necessary,
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It would have helped at the funeral I attended last week which was held in Polish but attended by a few non-Polish relatives and friends. I had to explain to them the various prayers recited.
 
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Like Bill Murray once said the Latin Mass gives off different vibrations so it does make a difference.
 
It may make a difference in the feelings of the person at prayer.

As we have said many times on this forum, one cannot go by human “feelings” in gauging things like the effectiveness of a prayer or one’s relationship to the Almighty.

The Catholic Church has said that it is fine to pray in the vernacular, and has not said anything indicating that Latin is the preferred form of prayer or is a stronger or more effective form of prayer than praying in English, Chinese, Navajo or any other language on earth. So anyone’s opinion that Latin prayer is somehow “better” or “stronger” is just that - their opinion, not Church teaching.
 
Londoner said:
The kind of Latin Cicero would have spoken would have sounded very different to the kind of Latin you hear
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We can only guess. But what we do have are countless writings of this Greek scholar and statesman who wrote law and moral code among other things in Latin. And in those days you had no spaces and lower case letters which would have been more of a barrier than how v was pronounced.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
The Catholic Church has said that it is fine to pray in the vernacular,
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With all due respect, Pope John XXIII didn’t quite put it that way in his Veterum Sapientia, written only months before he convened Vatican II.
 
Thus the “knowledge and use of this language,” so intimately bound up with the Church’s life, “is important not so much on cultural or literary grounds, as for religious reasons.”6 These are the words of Our Predecessor Pius XI, who conducted a scientific inquiry into this whole subject, and indicated three qualities of the Latin language which harmonize to a remarkable degree with the Church’s nature. “For the Church, precisely because it embraces all nations and is destined to endure to the end of time … of its very nature requires a language which is universal, immutable, and non-vernacular.”7

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If you read the book “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber” you would read that the vernacular was pushed by the progressive arm of the Church at Vatican II and became very powerful. Even attempts at reintroducing the Latin prayers by Pope Paul VI with Jubilate Deo at every Church parish became for the most part ineffective.
 
Yes, I understand Pope John XXIII wished to preserve Latin for various reasons important to the Church and the liturgy, etc. I have read the encyclical. Nowhere does it say that ordinary people cannot pray in the vernacular or that it is somehow wrong or a weaker form of prayer to do so.

In fact, pretty much every person going back 3 generations that I know has prayed in his or her own language. If they were from USA, England etc they prayed in English, if they were from Poland they prayed in Polish, if they were from Italy they prayed in Italian. This includes before Vatican II. My Irish Catholic grands and great-grands did not sit around reciting the Rosary in Latin at home. They said it in the language they used daily, English. They also talked to God and made requests and thanksgivings in their normal language of English.

I do not wish to read any books bashing on Vatican II and I feel it is inappropriate to “go there” in a thread concerning a new Catholic who is seeking correct Church teaching on prayer. I suppose it is inevitable that the thread would go in such a direction and I am sorry that people do not stop to think about the confusion they cause.

Muting this thread now as this is not a productive discussion.

Once again: It is fine to pray in the vernacular. The Church says it’s fine.
Pope John XXIII said nothing to the contrary.
 
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Learning Latin would be beautiful, but I’m having trouble remembering English words when I need them! 🥺
 
The Catholic Church is an international, polyglot organisation. It is therefore important for us to use a universal language for certain important texts that must be produced in a definitive, objective, normative version from which accurate translations can be made independently. All polyglot organisations and societies, such as the UN, Nato, the EU, Switzerland, Canada, and New Zealand, have to address the problem that there is rarely an exact way of translating complex ideas from one language to another, which can of course lead to ambiguity and disagreement. Indeed, speakers of international languages such as English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese often cannot agree among themselves the precise meaning of their native language.

This was recently demonstrated by the controversy surrounding a new English translation of the Mass. But what that controversy also demonstrated was the ongoing usefulness of preserving an authoritative Latin text from which to make the most faithful possible translation into the vernacular, and also the value in reviewing from time to time that translation in case of error or change of meaning. Take the particularly difficult clause ‘consubstantialem Patri’. In English this is now rendered ‘consubstantial with the Father’ (Catholic Church current version) or ‘Being of one substance with the Father’ (Church of England Book of Common Prayer 1662 version), although a number of other translations are also used. In French it is ‘de même nature que le Père’, which to my mind means, ‘of the same nature as the Father’, and in German it is ‘eines Wesens mit dem Vater’, which is closer to the alternative English translation, ‘of one Being with the Father’ (obsolete Catholic version and also currently used by Anglicans, who have at least two equally authoritative translations in current use). Interestingly, despite the very close relationship between Polish and Czech, the Polish ‘współistotnego Ojcu’ is more like ‘consubstantial …’ (współ is simply the prefix co-), whereas the Czech ‘jedné podstaty s Otcem’ is more like ‘of one …’ It is therefore important that we have the Latin ‘consubstantialem Patri’ so that we all know what we are trying to say.

But this takes us a long way from individual prayer. Unless we are aiming to become expert theologians, canon lawyers, or linguists, it is perfectly good to pray in the language in which we are most comfortable.
ProVobis said:
I don’t see a problem praying in your language at home.
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Only at home? Most people these days also use the vernacular in church.
 
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