One of the most striking features of the Western
Mass is the use of the Latin tongue. This usage, as it
need not be said, is derived from the Church of Rome,
the mistress, and, to a large extent, the founder of the
Churches of the West…
To any one who looks calmly at this question, it will
appear evident that the use of one unchanging and uni-
versal language in the Liturgy was a moral necessity, if
there was such a thing as one universal Church.
The forms and prayers of the Liturgy are intimately con-
nected with the Faith. Just as the Church’s canons
and definitions must be expressed in an official language
that must remain the same through all the alterations of
written and spoken tongues that time may bring about
or diversity of nationality develop, so her liturgy, which
embodies great dogmatic truths that every age and
country must acknowledge and make use of day by
day, must be expressed in an idiom which will not be
exposed to the danger and inconveniences of perpetual
change.
Had the Church from the beginning adopted
the principle of a vernacular Liturgy for each nation or
people, one of two things would, by this time, have
happened in eveiy case; either the original liturgical
forms would be as obsolete and as difficult for the
people to follow as the English of Alfred or the French
of the early Normans, or else there would have had to
be alterations and adaptations in every century. Now
it would have been morally impossible thus to keep the
liturgical prayers on a level with the changing and de-
veloping language of the peoples of Europe. The task
would have been too vast, and too hard to organise.
Misunderstanding, heterodoxy, heresy, arising from the
incompetence or the wilfulness of translators and adap-
tors, would have taxed the vigilance of the Church’s
pastors to such an extent that disaster would only have
been averted by a standing miracle.
The spirit of nationalism, which must always be one of the dangers
against which the one universal Church has to contend,
would have found in the manipulation of a vernacular
liturgy endless opportunities for loosening the bonds of
unity. As it is, the Latin unites the Western Church
together in one Catholic body with a union which is
that of a family or a household. Every Catholic is at
home in every Catholic Church of the world. More-
over, the Latin keeps the whole Church in union with the
See of Rome, the source and principle of Catholic unity.
The grand dogmas on which the Liturgy rests, and
which are interwoven in its very substance, remain for
all generations in that form of sacred words which the
teaching Church has authorised. Unity of belief and
fixity of expression must always be found together.
