After reading the posts - particularly as regards varied Spanish, Colombian or Latin American translations - has anyone gotten the same feeling as myself? It hits you between the eyes. ALL THE MORE REASON why Latin should have just stayed in place to begin with. No matter your country of origin / nationality, we all spoke one language during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We didnât need to be fluent in Latin - just the responses of the Mass in our Missals.
Now, thereâs discussion over how a particular nationality has worded their Mass when speaking in their vernacular.
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. For less than an hour a week - we all spoke one language, prayed one prayer, and it didnât matter where we were born. **For centuries - it was what it was. Now, we have to worry about undoing â40 yearsâ? **
It really makes you think.
You have to face a number of difficulties here. The first one is that the Spanish speaking Catholics make up a much larger number of Catholics than do English speaking Catholics, but they are not as passionate about mass in Latin as are the Europeans and the North Americans.
When I was a missionary in South America one thing that I often heard was their perplexion over the concerns that Americans and Europeans have over the language of the mass. Their focus is on the fidelity to the Latin text, not on the preservation of the Latin mass. They want their mass in Spanish and they do not want the Spanish of their neighbors imposed on them, either in prayer or in daily use. From their perspective, the return to the universal use of Latin is an issue of the Northern Hemisphere which they prefer to stand back and watch to see how it develops.
YOu have to undestand, the Catholic Church in Latin America is not in the same crisis as the Catholic Church in Europe and North America. While it is true that there are many new Protestant communities in Latin America, it has to do with the material resources that the Protestants have brought to the developing nations, not to the liturgical life. When you live in countries where your safety is not guarranteed and your rights are subject to the whim of dictators and corrupt politicians, many of whom are connected with Northern Hemisphere multinational corporations, you canât expect them to feel much sympathy for the same concerns of Catholics in the northern hemisphere.
On the other hand, they have had an increase in vocations to the religious life, new religious congregations being born annually, one of the largest and most active Catholic youth movements in history and a bond between Catholics and Protestants against North American and European Christians.
Catholics of the northern hemisphere are going to have to prove themselves to Catholics of the southern hemisphere, especially in South America and Africa. Their pespective of us is that weâre not interested in their issues, because we do not experience their hardship to live in peace and to make economic and technical progress. To them the Holy Fatherâs recent encyclical is more important than the translation of the preservation of the Latin mass.
The few places where they have the Latin mass it is appreciated, but there is a strong sense of balance that does not exist in the USA regarding this issue. The seem much more comfortable with an EF and OF side by side. Even the issue of a Spanish missal in US Spanish is something that their bishops, scholars and educators welcome, because they appreciate the fact that the USA is a bilingual country with its own Spanish language. They think itâs laughable that the people of the USA still insist that we are an English only society. From their perspective, itâs a silly argument, because the numbers and the facts prove that weâre not an English only nation, but we are really a bilingual nation.
I donât think that the idea of turning all masses back to Latin is going to go over well in Catholic Hispanic America, especially if it comes from the USA or from Europe. The one Christian country that seems to have the trust of the Latin American Catholics is Italy. There is very little love between South America and Spain. Some memories are long lasting.
This is not as simple as eliminating the modern languages from the liturgy. My speculation is that this would be counter productive among this population. This is a population that is very suspicious of quick fixes from the north. It is best that non Hispanic Catholics not meddle in the internal affairs of the Catholic Church in Hispanic America, both Latin and USA, especially when the Protestants offer them freedom from old systems that were once very oppressive. This is not an easy situation. The bishop are right in wanting to give them a missal that is their own.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
