Learning Latin

[JakeWI]

Not that this is “learning Latin” 100% per-say, but over the weekend at Mass… our children’s choir (I think grade school kids… sounded quite young) sang a couple songs during Communion in Latin… Panis Angelicus and another that wasn’t listed. It gave me this special feeling inside, and teared me up to hear youth, even if just at our Parish, being exposed to Latin and sacred Latin music. They did an exceptional job at the pronunciations, too.

 

[anonymous1995]

If only more Latin would be heard in Ordinary Form Masses…

People nowadays forget everything about Latin. As if the Church was founded in the 60’s.

N.B. I speak as a youth who was not bred up in the pre-VII days and so this isn’t nostalgia

 

[Thomas_White]

I would note that while attending a Catholic elementary school for eight years during the pre-Vatican II era, we were required to attend daily the Latin Mass, prior to the beginning of the school day. In the upper grades I became what was known as a patent Boy and then an altar boy. We learned the Latin responses for the Mass by rote learning The Latin responses were spoken only by the altar boys while the congregation in the nave remained silent.

There were of course English translations available, and the Missals of the day included an English translation on the page opposite the Latin. These Missals remain available. But we had not yet studied Latin. The point is that it is not at all necessary to have a literal understanding of Latin to appreciate the spirituality and beauty of the Latin Mass. If necessary, a quick glance to the well-known English translation on the page opposite will usually suffice.

 

[ProVobis]

There were of course English translations available, and the Missals of the day included an English translation on the page opposite the Latin. These Missals remain available. But we had not yet studied Latin. The point is that it is not at all necessary to have a literal understanding of Latin to appreciate the spirituality and beauty of the Latin Mass. If necessary, a quick glance to the well-known English translation on the page opposite will usually suffice.

I often thought of those English (or Polish in the case of my mother’s prayerbook) translations as “training wheels” in following the Mass. Sooner or later, one would think the training wheels come off. Instead we’ve become IMO too dependent on those training wheels.