I will grant you the symbolism. I think that is a flaw in Protestant worship; too often we reject too much liturgy in my opinion and make things too simple, which destroys the mystery of worship and communion with God.
But, even so, the Christian should be able to understand EVERYTHING, every little minute detail, every little word said by the man leading the service.
Latin is not essential to the mass. You can say it in English and it would mean the same. I think the awe-inspiring atmosphere is enough to keep people centered. You don't need a language that could be a stumbling block.
You know what--you're right. :)
But suppose some of us *choose* to worship in Latin? Do you think that people who prefer a non-vernacular liturgical language should be excluded from worshiping that way?
The average Catholic Mass in the U.S. has had just about all of the "awe-inspiring atmosphere" drained out of it, unfortunately.
You don't need a language that could be a stumbling block.
Believe it or not, English is the language that has become the stumbling block for many of us, because the prayers of the Mass in their official English translations do not say what they are supposed to say.
(There's a priest who runs a column in a certain weekly Catholic newspapers called "What Does the Prayer Really Say," where he takes the Latin original, translates it exactly and literally, and then compares it against the officially approved translation. Sometimes the differences are so great it's actually humorous, in a dark sort of way. As I joke to my wife, "And suddenly, there were with the angels, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying ..." becomes "And the they saw some angels, who said nice stuff to God ...".)
The problem is being fixed, albeit slowly. In the meantime (and maybe for good), I'd much rather hear Mass said with the correct prayers in Latin, and follow along in a book, than with distorted and dumbed-down prayers in English.
Most major religions use dead languages.
Catholicism uses Ecclesiastical Latin, Roman Greek, Chuch Slavonic, Coptic, and Aramaic (among others)
Eastern Orthodoxy uses Roman Greek and Church Slavonic (not today's Greek)
Assyrian Catholicism (so-called Nestorianism) uses Aramaic
Oriental Orthodoxy uses Coptic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, and ancient Armenian
Judaism uses Hebrew
Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism uses Sanskrit
Islam uses classical Arabic
Shintoism uses ancient Japanese
Theravad Bus=ddhism uses Pali
Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism uses classical Chinese
Even some Protestant communities get this concept.
Anglicans use Elizabethan English
Amish use classic High German
Over half the Catholic Church speaks Latin derived Romance languages as their vernacular (Spanish, Italian, Portugese, French, Romanian, Romansch, Vlach, Ladino, etc.)
My wife is fluent in Spanish and passably able to speak some French and Italian. When I took her to the Latin Mass for the first time, she had no trouble at all follwoing along, and commented that except for the grammatical structure, different pronunciations and some strange words here or there, she understood much of it quite well.
Even myself speaking only English and German, it only took a couple of months of following along to pick up the gist of the meaning of much of the service simply from a knowledge of Latinisms and Francophone words in English.
I would imagine that most speakers of Romance languages understand quite a bit of the Latin Mass. It is only a true barrier for the Germanic peoples and Africans. And the Africans always welcomed Latin as a source of unity among their quarrelsome tribes.
So many people forget that the Traditional Mass, prayed entirely in Latin, was the primary source of spiritual sustenance and inspiration of all of those who we call saints. While many of the saints were well educated, many of them were illiterate. They united their intentions to the priests reciting the latin prayers (audibly or silently). Considering the holy lives they lived, they obviously were "able to understand EVERYTHING, every little minute detail, every little word said by the man leading the service."
St. John Vienny, IIRC, flunked out of a few seminaries because he was unable to grasp latin. He prayed for help and he knuckled down and finally got it. Contrast that to the 2005 man in the same situation: He'd most likely form some pesky movement for disgruntled people who want everything dumbed down to accomodate those don't want to have to work hard at learning something.