I was at a training workshop for priests in the Extraordinary Form when Fr Calvin Goodwin, professor of theology at the seminary of the Fraternity of St Peter in Nebraska, gave me some food for thought that I have been chewing on for years now. He said that, in the West, the Latin language performed a function similar to how the iconostasis functioned in the East. I had thought of reasons why we should continue to celebrate the Sacred Liturgy in Latin for years. One was to fulfill Church law and the express wish of Vatican II in Sacrosanctum concilium 36, “The Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” Another was to preserve the musical and literary tradition of the Roman rite in its original form. Finally, I thought that having a common language for some of the prayers of the Mass would be useful, to express the unity of the Church across the various linguistic divides brought about by Babel’s aftermath.
All of those reasons are valid ones for the preservation of Latin in the liturgy. But they are all legal, historical or cultural. None of them are theological. At first glance, Fr Goodwin’s thesis, that Latin served to veil the rites as the iconostasis veiled them in the East did not seem to be a particularly winning thesis. On legal grounds, the fact that the vernacular had been admitted by the supreme authority of the Church in circumscribed ways (The Glagolitic Mass comes to mind) indicates that in the West, Latin was not universal and not imposed uniformly by liturgical law. On historical grounds, it must be remembered that the permanent iconostasis is a peculiarly Byzantine tradition whose use is different than the veils used at certain times in the Syrian and Coptic liturgical traditions. On cultural grounds, it also seems that there is nothing in anthropology to suggest that Latin provoked the same phenomenological response in its hearers as the other symbols used to veil in religious ceremonies in the Christian East and beyond.
But is there something else, much deeper, to Fr Goodwin’s thesis? The notion that Latin is a sacred language in and of itself has been widely rejected. Why should Latin be the language of prayer rather than any other language? The notion that Latin has become sacred because of its venerable and historical traditional use raises the question of how something becomes sacred. Does something become sacred merely by antiquity, by historical use, or its association with religious rites? Modern anthropologists may claim that, if something is sacred on those grounds, then Latin could be considered a sacred language. After all, languages associated with religious texts are often held to be sacred because of their use in communicating those texts: Arabic for the Qu’ran, Hebrew for the Torah, Sanskrit for the Rig-Veda. By the same token, Latin should be a sacred language for Catholics.
Yet the Biblical notion of sacred is not the same as that used by sociologists. The Hebrew term qadosh, which is often rendered into English as sacred or holy, in the Old Testament indicates something set apart from other things and associated with God. Here is where Latin does not seem to be a sacred language. Latin was the ordinary day-to-day language of the Romans. Its use in commerce, law, literature and scholarship continued long after it ceased to employed on the streets. So at no time was Latin ever set apart specifically as a sacred language. But it coexisted as a language employed in the service of the sacred alongside secular uses. So it is clear that Latin coexisted as a language both on reference to the sacred and the secular as it coexisted with other languages at the same time.
Yet the association of sacred languages with sacred texts is not univocal in Christianity. Christianity is not a religion “of the Book” or even a religion based on the words of a famous teacher. Christianity is a religion of the Word Made Flesh. The fact that the Word of God became incarnate, that God became man, would forever change the meaning of all words, and of all man’s ability to communicate. The union of God and man was not only with one chosen people to whom were revealed a sacred text read in a sacred language, but with all of humanity by means of a Word which made Flesh sacred.
The fact of the Incarnation means that human nature now has a passageway into the supernatural divine, but in such a way as to not change, but to elevate and perfect, that human nature. And if communication by language is part of human nature, grace also elevates and perfects human language. The fact that man can address prayers to God and that they can be heard, and acted upon by Divine Power, shows that human words, accompanied and transformed by the Word, can bring us into contact with the Word.
Yet, for all of this immanence of the divine in human nature, human nature is not itself divine. The Divinity remains what, or rather Who, it is, without change. “Between the Creator and the creature there cannot be a likeness so great that the unlikeness is not greater,” is how Lateran IV expressed it.
The gift of human language, therefore, expresses this abyss between the Divinity of the Word and the humanity of our words. If words are conventional signs of realities, they are always and everywhere going to pale with the reality behind them. This is never more true than with the Word of Divine Revelation, which is far beyond what we can ever grasp. Our human language will never exhaust the mystery which is celebrated in the Mass.
Yet, does faith not come from hearing, as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 10.17? And did he not also write in 1 Corinthians 14.14, “If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful”? It is true that faith comes from hearing. But hearing is not merely a passive reception of the words of Sacred Scripture or the liturgy. And faith is not merely the response of acting upon those words. Hearing in the scriptural sense indicates the opening of the will of human nature to cooperate with the action of God. Faith in the scriptural sense is the assent of the intellect to the action of God to which we have opened the depths of our being. That gift of faith impels us to enter into communion with the Giver of the gift through prayer. And that prayer, be it liturgical and communal or private and individual, is more than human words. It is the encounter between the Word and our human nature, with its words, deeds and actions.
A faith reduced to mere emotional response to a sacred text needs to have the words of the text intelligible for it to produce understanding. But a faith which is a supernatural gift that is an encounter with the Word is beyond the ability of our intellect to understand. Our LORD Himself indicates the difference between the two conceptions of faith coming from hearing the Word.
In John 8.34, Jesus says, “Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.” There were many people around Him who heard his words, which were Divine Revelation, but they were unintelligible to them. Likewise, there are many people in our churches and society today who can physically hear and understand the words of Scripture and the Mass, but they do not grasp their true meaning, and are not led by them to supernatural faith and the life of the virtues. His language is made clear, not by the words themselves, but by the gift of faith, not because of anything lacking in Him, but by what is lacking in us when we lack faith.
The singular phenomenon in which the Apostles then go out to preach this Word in all of the languages of the earth is also instructive. The Apostles may not have had intelligence of the words which were passing through their mouths, but the Word brought about through them faith in their hearers. Here we see the supernatural action of God over and above the limitations of human speech, working through human language, to bring about faith in those whose wills were open to God.
The point of this brief exegesis is to show that the supernatural action of the Word makes intelligible in the soul that which is not necessary intelligible to the mind. It is the supernatural action of the Word in the life of sanctifying grace in the believer which means someone can live a life in accord with the Truth even if he is not ever capable of knowing all there is to know nor all of the Truth.
The use of Latin in the rites of the Church is an important marker in our Catholic identity. It connects us with other believers from other languages, it gives us a common word for prayer, it links us with the history and tradition of our faith. These are important considerations, but they are human, natural ones. The use of Latin in the Mass also has another function. It reminds the worshipper that, although the Mystery of God is that which is the most intelligible thing in and of itself, it is not always intelligible to us. Even for the classicists in the sanctuaries and pews of Catholic churches around the world, Latin in the liturgy points to the abyss between us and God. It veils insofar as it conceals the human words with which Divine Revelation is expressed, emphasizing the distance between the subject and the object of our worship. It conceals the encounter between His Word and our word with words that are not of our own making as surely as the Word is not of our making. But it also reveals: it opens up the teaching of Christ for those who are willing to learn the language of the Latins, and even more so those who are open to learn the language of the spirit. It is unintelligible in that the meaning behind the words is not readily self-evident, just like the presence of God. But it is intelligible in and of itself, just as God is that which can and should be known, and will be, in the beatific vision. For that language to become intelligible to us, not only do we have to prepare nature by learning the Latin, we must open ourselves up the supernatural life of grace given by the Word.
I have heard variations of this argument before. The problem, as it strikes me, is that this could only have been written by someone who was a product of the 20th and 21st centuries. To have said at the time of Trent or even Vatican I (to speak nothing of, say, the time of St. Jerome) that Latin is important because "conceals the human words with which Divine Revelation is expressed," would have been almost nonsensical. In other words, the entire argument — whatever its independent merits may be — has about it an air of post-hoc rationalization, of casting about to reframe things along the lines of "That's not a bug, it's a feature!" But only an era in which no one knows Latin could breed someone to say, "The importance of Latin is that no one knows it."
That some people do not understand Latin does not mean that the Mass in Latin has no value. The argument is that all should know Latin. But the fact that not all people do know Latin does not mean that it cannot serve, in being a veil of language, also as a sign of the veiling of the mystery. Certainly the author of this piece would never say that the importance of Latin is that no one knows it. Nor would he claim to be anything but a product of his time, being born in 1977, a fact which does not preclude either his understanding of Trent, Vatican I or St Jerome, nor of offering an attempt at an apologia for Latin in an age which is not that of Trent, Vatican I or St Jerome.
Up to a point, Mark. The proportion of the Laity educated in Latin at the time of Trent was small, and the issue of the vernacular was one addressed by the Counter Reformation; as was the issue of participation. Nor was the Latin that became the language of the Church that of the street. In other words, Fr. Christopher's musings are not fundamentally of the later 20th and early 21st centuries, though they are occasioned by the times and to some degree reflect them.
I don't have much knowledge in Latin, but I would much prefer to listen to the beautiful sacred language that is not a street language in liturgy and follow the translation in my hand as much as I can than listening to the not-so-clear translation of the secular language.
Even when I read the Bible at home, I need sacred language right next to it to remind me that I'm reading what it most Holy. I don't get this just from the secular language.
One can say Latin was not at one time a sacred language, but it is now for us by the tradition of our Catholic faith and the Holy Church. Catholics should learn at least simple prayers in Latin. If you know it in English, what is there that you don't know. The language is very important aspect of keeping the identity and unity of our faith.
Catholics schools should teach Latin to students. I don't understand that they teach Spanish, some even from Kindergarden, but not a single word of Latin. What does 'practical' mean to us, the faithful, the earthly success? Look how much Jewish children have to learn to pass Bar Mitzvah. It seems that some converts, (I'm one), never had a chance to appreciate and incorporate the authentic language of Catholic faith as their own. But once you open your heart and accept it as something sacred, you will be lifted into a different spiritual level that you never experience it with a secular language.
One advantage of Latin is that the Devil hates it. Ask any exorcist.
"One advantage of Latin is that the Devil hates it. Ask any exorcist. "
Of course, Latin is the most spiritually powerful language on this earth. It's the language that has been serving the Church of Christ more directly and longer than any other ones. And I'm glad that no one nation can claim as her own. People say it's 'dead language.' Well, it's been resurrected gloriously in Roman Catholic church.
"It's the language that has been serving the Church of Christ more directly and longer than any other ones."
Not true. People still pray in Greek, and likely did so from the very beginning.
Todd, we are speaking of Latin rite here. I think you know that.
If the Catholic Church commanded us all to pray in Greek, by pain of excommunication, I suspect that some here might still refuse.
Actually, Anonymous2, some of us here are happy to pray in Greek near the beginning of the Mass (and in Hebrew at various other places in it).
Great post, many thanks Father.
"Actually, Anonymous2, some of us here are happy to pray in Greek near the beginning of the Mass (and in Hebrew at various other places in it). "
I believe most of us know which parts are Greek and which are Hebrew. Some are too busy piking on little details from other commnents, rather than focusing on the big picture.
Our knowledge and intellects are tools for a better understanding of the Church's instruction. And Fr. Smith is trying to help others to do so in his writing.
It seems that accepting Latin as sacred language for Latin rite comes only from humility, and those who deny it will do so,in spite of the Church's instruction and the tradition we have inherited. And as mentioned above, the holiness flows to one's life when he receives the grace with humility, and a person's knowledge and reasonings can be helpful tools for that if he uses them accordingly.
In case anyone who didn't have a chance to learn about what the Church says about Latin,
"12….Since no Catholics would now deny the lawfulness and efficacy of a sacred rite celebrated in Latin, the council was also able to grant 'the use of the vernacular language …" (From the Preamble in GIRM )
"Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites." (Section 36, the Second Vatican Council, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)
"The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given first place in liturgical services." (Section 116, the Second Vatican Council, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)
"Steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them." (Section 54, the Second Vatican Council, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)
St. Teresa of Avila, "Thus, when in this state of Quiet, I who understand hardly anything that I recite in Latin, particularly in the Psalter, have not only been able to understand the text as though it were in Spanish but have even found to my delight that I can penetrate the meaning of the Spanish" (Complete Works of Saint Teresa, trans. by Peers)
Apostolic Constitutions are the most important and solemn of documents promulgated. Latin needs to start at the top. Veterum Sapientia, issued by Pope John XXIII is on of the most important proclamations on Latin and is still in force. It is aimed at the Priests and Seminary Formation but does well to explain why Latin benefits us all. It was supposedly signed on the ALtar of St. Peter's giving it special dignity. It should be implemented worldwide especially now that the MP, SP has been issued and the EF Mass is becoming more frequent in parishes. Priests need to know Latin. It makes Veterum Sapientia ever more relevant today. Perhpas John XXIII knew well why we would need Latin far into the future. Bishops and Seminaries need to dig deeply into VS and realize its' importance.
It's kind of humorous that liturgical progressives cite Vatican II all the time for some pretty dubious liturgical propositions, but blindly or wilfully ignore it when someone cites Sections 116 and 54 of Sacrosanctum Concilium. God can't resolve a contradiction, according to St. Thomas Aquinus, but liturgical progressives, apparently can.
If God is both transcendent and immanent, as we say we believe him to be, our worship somehow must seek to express both aspects of him. Many might say that the Latin Mass was good at giving an impression of the majesty, otherness, transcendence of God before which we can do little but bow down in awe, but not so good at evoking his immanence. But this is where, humanly speaking, we need to start: the presence of God who is other with us, among us, in us: otherwise God floats from away us in an inaccessible heavenly ether not contacting with our actual humanity, as the creator incarnate God actually does. Worship more recently therefore has moved towards the immanence of God, and some feel there has been a loss of reverence, of mystery, exampled by the transition from Latin (veiling the liturgy with its own "sacredness") to the more immediatate (homely?) vernacular. If our worship is to be true to God it needs surely to move on from where are we now to a new synthesis. Simply going back by reinstating the older forms of the Latin Mass or, even worse, by introducing a unreal Latinate English style, cannot be the way forward.
Since my experience in EF has been much clear that in OF on who God is, and who I truly receive at the communion, I can live as a Catholic more fully in my daily life.