What hurts here are the legal fees as well. It’s gotten to the point the Church is losing money even when someone wills something to the Church. I have no idea as to the extent of business experience anyone had 50 years ago, but an enormous amount of money was spent on razing communion rails, high altars, confessionals, statues, etc. Cash flow took a heavy hit. Yes, and even translations into the several hundreds of vernaculars was costly, which the richer countries (U.S., Germany, and others) basically subsidized. Had they stayed with the Latin (or at least Jubilate Deo) a lot of money could have been saved. Parishes dish out a lot of money for those disposable missalettes which most people don’t even use. As to the study of Latin in the seminaries, I think much of it can be studied in high schools, or even in K-8 as I see one of the local parishes doing.
The traditional Catholic school (K-12th grade) that I volunteer with requires Latin from K-12th grade.
They get away with it because they’re small and private.
It is quite a thrill to hear the smallest children singing hymns and songs all in Latin, by memory, and to pray the Rosary with them in Latin (I stumble through it, since I don’t get Latin very well). As the students get older, they become quite proficient in Latin.
The private prep school that my daughters attended offers Latin from 6th -12th grade, and they produce some of the top Latin scholars in the world. These kids can write papers all in Latin, without using any kind of dictionary. They can translate Latin literary works.
Unfortunately for the Church, almost all of the scholars from that school profess no religion at all or a New Age “spirituality” rather than a religion. Or they are Muslim. Not too many Catholics send their kids to that prep school in our city not only because it’s darned expensive, but also because they prefer to send their kids to the excellent Catholic schools in the city, which don’t offer Latin until high school, but by then, most kids prefer to take Spanish as their foreign language because of its obvious usefulness in modern society.
The problem with schools requiring Latin is that something else has to go, then, and sadly, the schools are under such societal and accreditation pressure to make sure the kids are up to snuff when it comes to math, science, and all the other courses that they will need to be prepared for advanced high school work that will prepare them to score well on the SAT/ACT. That’s how the schools advertise themselves–“98% of our students score 25 or above on the ACT!”
And parents are definitely more interested in schools with good science and math curricula rather than Latin, because science and math means getting into a good college or trade school and eventually getting a good job that pays above a living wage and allows the person to live independently of the parents and even support families.
And as if kids don’t have enough to do with all the courses they have to take in school, there are the extracurricular activities. Many children take some kind of music lessons, and to be honest, ProVobis, if I had to choose for my children between music and Latin–music would win hands down. It’s so incredibly enriching for an entire lifetime, and so useful, too.
But to be seriously taking music lessons means putting in lots of hours practicing. Even little kids should be practicing at least a half hour a day, and that’s one more thing to do along with chores, family time, playing outside, and homework.
And then there are the sports, and before everyone starts clicking their tongue and shaking their finger, we have to keep in mind that many kids earn full ride scholarships to college kicking that soccer ball around. There are a lot of sports scholarships available at public and private colleges, big and small, but very few academic scholarships. These academic scholarships are very hard to earn unless the student is truly a prodigy. Otherwise, there is such competition for the few academic scholarships, and often, colleges and universities reserve the right to give these scholarships to students that will help them to have a more diverse student body, even if those students did not have the highest scores on the SAT/ACT, or the highest GPA. I don’t blame the colleges–it’ s good to have diversity in the student population. But it’s discouraging for students who are merely intelligent, not brilliant.
But in sports, you don’t have to be brilliant or headed for the NFL/NHL/NBA, etc. to win a scholarship. The sport that has the most college scholarships available is…believe it or not…bowling. Cheap for families, indoors, doesn’t require a body of steel…it’s doable.
We’ve had lots of kids from our city go to college on volleyball or basketball scholarships. None of these kids end up in sports careers, but they do earn their Bachelor’s degree with that basketball or volleyball.
So we mustn’t scoff at parents who choose to get their kids involved in sports instead of Latin. It’s good financial sense.
Anyway, I think that selling Latin to the schools is probably not going to happen, especially since even though those devoted to the TLM are very enthusiastic, they are still a very small minority compared to Catholics who prefer the OF in their own language. Sorry, friend.
