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Did Vatican II abolish Latin?

Written by

Rich Leonardi

in

(From my site🙂

The February 9 Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati runs a letter I submitted last month concerning Latin and the liturgy:

In the Jan. 5 Telegraph, Thomas Busemeyer expresses gratitude to Vatican II for ridding Catholic worship of Latin. The problem for Mr. Busemeyer is that the Council did no such thing. Indeed, its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy instructed that the Latin language “shall be preserved” and that Gregorian Chant — in Latin — shall be given “pride of place.”

What accounts for the near-disappearance of Latin in the Mass? A very flawed implementation of the Missal of Pope Paul VI that followed the Council. Pope Paul himself stated that the faithful "should be able to sing together, in Latin, at least the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, especially the Creed and the Our Father.”

So to the extent that Pope Benedict XVI’s forthcoming “reform of the reform” returns some Latin to the liturgy, it will be to right a wrong done during the confusion that followed Vatican II.

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    There are many reasons why we Catholics should love Latin….the Mass being the best.

    For parents of school-aged children, you should have your children learn Latin because it actually improves their grades in other areas.  My daughter is learning Latin now and because of what she's learned from the "dead language", her grammar work in English is a no-brainer for her.  In addition, she's learning how to think through putting together sentence structure in a much more precise way.  

    When she goes to study Spanish, she'll be much further along too because she'll pretty much know the rules of the language (with a few exceptions).  

  2. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Well put. I will add that what has been overlooked or ignored since Vatican II in America, in general, regarding this topic, is that by siniging the limited parts of mass in Latin (as recommended/ instructed by Pope Paul VI) we are uniting ourselves more closly in time and history, and throughout the world with the universal church of Jesus Christ.

     

    Even non-Catholic, Christian schools and highschools are teaching Latin as a regular subject. SAT scores for college entrance are much improved as another result. Note that in England, the study of Latin in K-12 is almost universal for jmill's well illustrated reasons. Look at Cambridge Latin and the many resources for elementary and secondary education, This is not something just recent, either!

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