Sacred Languages besides Latin

[porthos11]

Sigh. Well, we “Latin supremacists” may tend to exalt Latin primarily for two reasons:

1. We are Roman Rite Catholics. Members of the Western Church. Thus, when it comes to our Church, we are entirely entitled to a “narrow, Western-centric view” because we are the Western Church. It is our patrimony, our culture, our liturgy etc., while Greek, Church Slavonic and other languages are in a sense, to the Latin Catholic, their patrimony, culture, liturgy and so on. They of course deserve every ounce of respect and care, being the shared heritage of the whole Catholic Church, but to the Latin, they’re simply not that dear and important.
2. The Roman Rite is the single one not given due care in the last century. While praise was heaped on the Eastern rites and the importance of preserving them was repeatedly underlined, the Roman Rite was changed, occasionally mangled beyond all recognition, its artistic expressions forgotten and often replaced with banal trendyisms and, bafflingly, its language made a point of contempt among many of its adherents. Unlike within any other rite, simply expressing appreciation for the ancient history of your own rite paints you, in the eyes of some, as an enemy, an opponent to Vatican II or some other stupid label. The Roman Rite, even though by far the largest Catholic rite, is the one on the fastest slide to obscurity.

Regarding the first point, I say that not as a Westerner, but as a Slav living in Eastern/Central Europe whose very language and national culture has been influenced by Eastern Christianity. I understand Greek and, purely from the linguistic point of view, like it better than Latin. Same with Church Slavonic. But being a Roman, I just don’t care that much for neither Greek nor CS. Being attached exclusively to Latin is certainly not a problem for a Latin Catholic.

Except this is not how the OP’s question is framed. He has asked specifically what other languages are considered sacred within the Christian spectrum. My jab was at Roman Catholic Latinistas who would exalt Latin as THE sacred language for the whole Christian world, even for the non-Western, non-Roman traditions. Such people also usually exhibit such a woeful ignorance of the other Christian traditions, even those within the Catholic communion.

At the same time, I had to defend Latin against those Roman Catholics who’ve also objected to it: Why Latin? And I’ve had to use the exact same argument you just posted here: Because we’re the Latin church, and Latin is part of our heritage.

There are unfortunately, extremes on both sides of the pendulum.

 

[dochawk]

Similarly, among the Slavic Eastern Catholics, this role is played by Church Slavonic (even though, being an amateur Slavicist, I know that the various national dialects, or recensions, are not really easily mutually intelligible) etc.

That is_why_ SS Cyril & Methodius invented it.

The various tongues had various degrees of mutual intelligibility (ranging from sounding like an accent to “huh?”). Church Slavonic was developed to be intelligible to all of these.

hawk

 

[Medawlinno]

Keep in mind that just because a given language comes to be used as the liturgical language of a particular church, does not make the language itself somehow sacred or divine. Latin is no more ‘sacred’ than Inuit and you can drop the “f-bomb” in Coptic and Koine just as well as Spanish and English.

I prefer to call them liturgical languages; and, as others pointed out, there are several.

Old Church Slavonic is simply a language called Late Common Slavic - a language spoken by all Slavic people (approx. 800 AD to 1000 AD) - the language was committed to writing with the introduction of Christianity by SS Cyril and Methodius (apparently Cyril did more of the work, since the alphabet was named after him - Cyrilic ) It’s most direct ancestor is Bulgarian - interesting as the Bulgars are not ethnic Slavs.

The Slavic languages have not been separate languages for all that long a time (relatively speaking); there is a huge amount of mutual intelligibility between Slavic languages - learn one, and you can learn the rest pretty easily; the grammar is virtually the same.

 

[babochka]

Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire correct? I know the Empire split in half but Latin was still primarily used, right?

Greek was widely used in the Roman Empire. Scripture was written in Greek, the early Ecumenical Councils were in Greek, the precise theological definitions coming from those Councils were in Greek, the Nicene Creed was written in Greek, all of the Greek Fathers taught in Greek.