J
JReducation
Guest
I should being by saying that I have no problem with Latin in liturgy. Having said that I believe that there are several currents involved here that have to be given special attention.
Cardinal Arinze is correct, but I think that he is being quoted incorrectly. The poor man is quoted incorrectly on TC Forum than anyone one else I know. OK, maybe not as much as poor Aquinas.
There is something to be said about human beings aspiring to toward the transcendent and language helps. I believe this is what the Cardinal is saying. His statement is not against the use of the vernacular in liturgy. It’s an explanation of why the use of Latin works for so many people. We have to be very careful not to take a statement and turn it around to say what it was not meant to say. That’s one current that we see in this forum. There are many who quote whatever they can find to support their position. That’s not fair. One has to use these statements as they are and in the context that they were made.
The other current is a little more challenging. Unlike the other examples given: Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Catholics, the Roman Church has a great challenge. It’s no longer Roman. It’s not the Church of a particular group of people from a particular culture. The other examples that have been given: Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others are small groups compared to the Roman Church. Their composition is generally people who share a particular culture, not just the same religious belief. Roman Catholics no longer share one culture. With the expansion of the Roman Church beyond the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and later to other continents, other peoples were brought into the Church. This is good. I’m glad they came. However, we have to admit that they don’t all have the Roman background. For many of them, Latin is not only a foreign language, but often the language of their enemies and their oppressors.
I was a missionary in South America, in the Amazon region. Those people are very skittish about anything that is too European. They have very long memories. They’re still fighting acculturation from the outside. The approach to introducing Latin to those communities has to be very tactful and it has to be made very clear that this is not the language of the European Conquistadores. I know that one thing that made Evangelization of the indigenous people of the Amazon easier was that both Dominicans and Franciscans used the local languages in liturgy as much as possible as early as the 16th century. The Church allowed the missionaries some room to accommodate Guarani, Quechua and Tahino into the liturgical life of the community, even if it was just something as simple as using music and hymns in the local language. The point is that people are oriented toward the sacred, but in a Church that includes as many cultures and language groups as the Roman Catholic Church, there are some very real cultural challenges that cannot be ignored. For the Catholic of European ancestry, the idea of Latin as a sacred language is much easier to accept than it is to the Catholic who has no connections to Europe.
The third current has to do with the secular world. Unfortunately, classical studies are no longer prominent in today’s western education system. People don’t have the same appreciation for Latin or ancient Greek as they once had. Among Muslims and Jews, especially, education is still very grounded in their history and culture. They don’t just pray in their mother tongue. They study other things in their mother tongue as well. How many students today read Cicero in Europe and American schools? In the more developed nations we seem to have lost our appreciation for the historical. Instead of thinking of something as part of history, we think of it as old. That does not help. I’m not sure how to turn that tide around.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
Cardinal Arinze is correct, but I think that he is being quoted incorrectly. The poor man is quoted incorrectly on TC Forum than anyone one else I know. OK, maybe not as much as poor Aquinas.
There is something to be said about human beings aspiring to toward the transcendent and language helps. I believe this is what the Cardinal is saying. His statement is not against the use of the vernacular in liturgy. It’s an explanation of why the use of Latin works for so many people. We have to be very careful not to take a statement and turn it around to say what it was not meant to say. That’s one current that we see in this forum. There are many who quote whatever they can find to support their position. That’s not fair. One has to use these statements as they are and in the context that they were made.
The other current is a little more challenging. Unlike the other examples given: Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Catholics, the Roman Church has a great challenge. It’s no longer Roman. It’s not the Church of a particular group of people from a particular culture. The other examples that have been given: Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others are small groups compared to the Roman Church. Their composition is generally people who share a particular culture, not just the same religious belief. Roman Catholics no longer share one culture. With the expansion of the Roman Church beyond the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and later to other continents, other peoples were brought into the Church. This is good. I’m glad they came. However, we have to admit that they don’t all have the Roman background. For many of them, Latin is not only a foreign language, but often the language of their enemies and their oppressors.
I was a missionary in South America, in the Amazon region. Those people are very skittish about anything that is too European. They have very long memories. They’re still fighting acculturation from the outside. The approach to introducing Latin to those communities has to be very tactful and it has to be made very clear that this is not the language of the European Conquistadores. I know that one thing that made Evangelization of the indigenous people of the Amazon easier was that both Dominicans and Franciscans used the local languages in liturgy as much as possible as early as the 16th century. The Church allowed the missionaries some room to accommodate Guarani, Quechua and Tahino into the liturgical life of the community, even if it was just something as simple as using music and hymns in the local language. The point is that people are oriented toward the sacred, but in a Church that includes as many cultures and language groups as the Roman Catholic Church, there are some very real cultural challenges that cannot be ignored. For the Catholic of European ancestry, the idea of Latin as a sacred language is much easier to accept than it is to the Catholic who has no connections to Europe.
The third current has to do with the secular world. Unfortunately, classical studies are no longer prominent in today’s western education system. People don’t have the same appreciation for Latin or ancient Greek as they once had. Among Muslims and Jews, especially, education is still very grounded in their history and culture. They don’t just pray in their mother tongue. They study other things in their mother tongue as well. How many students today read Cicero in Europe and American schools? In the more developed nations we seem to have lost our appreciation for the historical. Instead of thinking of something as part of history, we think of it as old. That does not help. I’m not sure how to turn that tide around.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
