For the record, I didn’t mean that it’s arrogant to desire to have something read or spoken to you in your native tongue. That’s entirely normal and I get that. But when you wish to suppress this privilege for someone who doesn’t speak your native tongue, that sort of national pride is a little too excessive IMO. Besides, it seems to be more of an immigration issue than a Catholic issue.
It’s true that you now have cities like Chicago offering the Mass in 24 some languages, but it wasn’t always that way going back to the 60’s. I know the Poles weren’t getting the Polish translations as quickly as the Anglos got theirs, so many of them were forced to attend Anglo Masses, which they understood less than the Latin Mass at the time. So in these cases, the vernacular wasn’t to everyone’s advantage.
I would say it differently. I would say that there will always be room for mass in Latin, be it OF or EF, because of the large numbers of languages in today’s world.
I’m thinking of the 800th Franciscan anniversary, which we celebrated in 2009. Every Franciscan branch of men was asked to send a delegation to Assisi. Just the men, because Assisi is not big enough to include a delegation from every Franciscan branch. With the Franciscan men alone, there were 2100 delegates and 114 languages.
Since the Indians dominate the scene and the Italians were hosting, the speakers could use English or Italian. Everyone else had to use headsets for simultaneous translations. However, there are languages that are not very popular, Polish is one of them. There is only one country that speaks it. The translations were in Spanish, French, German, Arabic and Latin. There is an example where Latin was very helpful. Those friars that came from the Slavic countries, the African countries, Asian countries and Oceania, don’t always speak one of the other European languages. In which case, they have mandatory Latin in their curriculum. For those of us who speak one of the official Franciscan languages, Latin is an elective. That would be Italian, French, Spanish, German, English and Arabic. Because the Indian friars are the largest number, English is the most spoken. It used to be Italian, because Franciscans are of Italian origin. That’s no longer the case. Franciscans are still of Italian origin. What’s no longer the case is that Italian dominates.
This example helps us understand the next point. Do people prefer to hear in their own language? Of course they do. Can it always happen? No. Is it arrogance, when it cannot happen? No. It would be arrogance if it’s possible and it’s denied. The Church is opposed to that.
For example, in the USA, the Vatican is very insistent that Spanish masses be celebrated in every place where there are Hispanics, because the number of Hispanic Catholics is so large, to the point that the large religious orders are also being told that they have to include Spanish and Hispanic culture in some way in our houses in the USA, if there are Hispanic religious in the house. It makes no difference whether they are American born and speak fluent English. You will always see certain celebrations, holy days, devotions, ministries and masses in Spanish around the country. This is not going away in the USA.
The Vatican has a better view of the USA than we do. We see our neck of the woods. For example a New Yorker sees no further than the Hudson River. A southerner stops looking past New Orleans. People of California don’t know that there are 49 other states and several US colonies.
The Vatican sees that Catholicism in the USA was brought here by Spain and that it never left. It remained localized in the southwest. It came to the East in small numbers until the large immigration from Ireland, Italy and Germany. The Vatican sees the Catholic Church in the USA being predominantly Hispanic and Anglo, because the Spaniards and English dominated the colonization of the Americas. It’s like looking at the USA through the eyes of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. LOL
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
