Of course there’s a connection. Hebrew was the prominent language of early Jews, and Latin was the prominent language of the early Church (and I’m talking about the post-Nicene era, when the Church was able to freely function - and communicate - as a public body). But the connection is meaningless - of course these early folks would adopt the vulgar (common) tounge for their purposes. They used the language that the “common” people knew.
Latin is still the “official” language of the Church (and Bulls, etc are first issued in Latin and then translated for various languages). But there’s nothing special about Latin (if the earliest Christians weren’t persecuted, the “official” language of the Church would be Greek instead of Latin). I think it’s nice if some small (and well-understood) portions of the Mass (Kyrie, Agnus Dei, etc) are in Latin (because it brings a historical connection and also a Catholic (ie, universal) element to the Mass), but I don’t believe the whole Mass should be celebrated in a language that is foreign to the vast majority of the Faithful.
Exactly.
David I agree with your comments. Latin was the vulgar language and Greek was spoken and written by the educated. Latin has been handy for Church communication in the babel of modern times, but as the ICEL experience tells us translating from Latin into English has its pitfalls. The Kyrie by the way is Greek.
Whoops! The Kyrie is Greek, not Latin.
when the church switched from greek to latin in the third century, it was switching to a vernacular language at the time. in the balkans (i think croatia) the vernacular mass was permitted back at least back in the 14th century, and in some other places as well. and of course when sts. cyril and methodius evagelized central europe and the slavs, they had permission by the pope to celebrate mass in the vernacular.