Posted on 04/20/2005 6:53:47 AM PDT by royalcello
Is This the End of our Exile?
Christopher A. Ferrara REMNANT COLUMNIST, New Jersey
ROME - We have a Pope: Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. In the fortieth year of our exile from Tradition, the new Pope has begun by restoring a verbal link with the long line of his successors. The new Pope has taken the name last taken by the preconciliar pontiff whose advice, had it been heeded by the world, would have avoided the bloodbath of World War I, the triumph of “democracy” under the tank treads of Woodrow Wilson’s armies, and the final toppling of altar and throne in Europe.
Benedict XV was also one of the Popes cited by Pius XI in his condemnation of social modernists, who (like present-day Catholic “libertarians”) pay lip service to the Church’s social teaching while dissenting from it. As Pius XI wrote in Ubi Arcano Dei:
Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV.
Verbally, at least, the papal line of Tradition has been restored. This is cause for hope, for the papacy is no merely human office.
Many Catholics (myself among them) have objected, with good reason, to certain of the theological views of the man who was once known as Cardinal Ratzinger. We have protested, quite rightly, the former Cardinal’s attempt to “deconstruct” the Message of Fatima. We have even, in keeping with our duty as confirmed soldiers of Christ, expressed our conviction that as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Cardinal did not act in any serious way to protect the Church against her neo-modernist enemies and had even favored some of their errors.
But now we encounter Pope Benedict XVI, and the incomparable grace of the papal office. And that grace was evident in the Latin benediction, rich with traditional Catholic content, to which Pope Benedict proceeded without ado as he stood on the balcony before a crowd of 100,000 relatively subdued Catholics (compared to the rowdy party atmosphere we were accustomed to seeing during the last pontificate), of which crowd I was privileged to be a part. There were tears in my eyes as I heard the Latin words absolving us of our venial sins and explicitly imploring for us the grace of final perseverance. What a joy it was to hear such words from the mouth of a Roman Pontiff again.
After forty years in the postconciliar desert, is this the beginning of the end of our exile? The period seems biblically appropriate—and if not now, then when? But in this moment of high emotion, when we are clearly witnessing some kind of return to unity with the Church’s past, we can only pray and prudently wait and see.
Will the new Pontiff begin steering the bark of Peter away from the ruinous shoals of novelty and bring it back to a firm place of mooring, as in the prophecy of Don Bosco, between the twin pillars of the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Mother? Only time will tell. And while we watch and wonder if our deliverance is really at hand, or whether, instead, the modernist subversion of the Church will only worsen, the traditionalist critique of the postconciliar aggiornamento will continue unabated—supported, in fact, by many strong statements found in the writings of the former Cardinal himself.
But whatever has been said and written before, and whatever will be said and written in the future, every Catholic owes his allegiance to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. May God bless and protect him in the stormy days to come, and may the Holy Ghost make of him a great restorer of the devastated vineyard of the Church.
Here's the other one, for your ping list.
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Well said.
As a protestant with catholic relatives, I struggle to understand this. Is this more than nostalgia for "the way it used to be?" At the beginning, the Church, however structured, was decidedly not Latin. Worship was in the vernacular, or at least the lingua franca. Is there a belief that God prefers one tongue over another? Is there power in a particular incantation, is it a matter of poetry? I'm not trying to be a smarty, I just don't understand that use of a particular language rises to the level of doctrine.
One could cite a great many popes on the use of the Latin language, but I shall confine myself to two. First, Pius XI: "For the Church, precisely because it embraces all nations and is destined to endure to the end of time...of its very nature requires a language which is universal, immutable, and non-vernacular." Pope John XXIII quoted this passage in his own Apostolic Letter on Latin, Veterum Sapientia. He himself wrote: "Finally, the Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular."
Think about that. The Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, and therefore, as befitting this dignity, should possess a language that is the unique possession of no single group of people. Now the Church has never condemned harmless regional variations, which are bound to exist: devotional practices more popular in one place than another, particular saints enjoying greater devotion in some places than in others, and so on. But when we step into our churches, it is good for us to leave outside much of what differentiates us as Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, or Koreans, so that we might better appreciate what we share in common as Catholics. Shame on us if we turn our backs on this beautiful expression of the universality of the Church in order that we might enjoy the familiarity of our own language.
By preserving Latin as the liturgical language of the Roman Rite, not only do we erect a barrier against improvisation and heresy (in the form of questionable translations) but we also give expression to our identity as Catholics. We may not speak any Latin ourselves - though it is highly desirable for Catholics to learn that sacred language - and rely entirely on our missals to navigate the Mass. But a liturgical language common to us all reminds us that we belong to an institution greater than any nation, and one through which we are bound to faithful all over the world. The world is our mission territory, and it is entirely fitting that we missionaries, bound together as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, should worship in a common language.
In addition (and hopefully not in duplication) of what others have said, it has been remarked many times both by Catholic and non-Catholic, especially Anglican, writers, that human beings really seem to need a special, "sacred" language for the purpose of organized worship. Thus, in Anglican circles, for example, the continuing attempts to preserve Elizabethan English as the language of their worship. Even the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, with all its de-sacralizing features, continues to have a Rite One that does this. You can read more about this on the Prayer Book Society web site. And then there are our Baptist brethren, who to my knowledge still largely insist on the Bible in the Authorized (King James) Version.
A good text to read on this from the Catholic point of view is "Looking at the Liturgy" by Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP.
One has to wonder, given that the gulf he spoke of in 2001. I would welcome adding Latin to the Novus Ordo Mass. I think we may also see some postive action on some (irritating) dispensations that were granted in the past.
Latin is better than English (or any other language) because...
1. Latin is Catholic (universal), the vernacular is provincial. So Latin unifies the Church in all of the nations (and ethnicities within the nation), while the vernacular divides it.
2. Latin is ancient, the vernacular is modern. So Latin helps to remind us that God has never changed and will never change, while the vernacular caters to our chronological snobbery.
3. Latin is stable, the vernacular is chaotic. In 100 years (if not sooner), every translation in every nation will need to be redone. Words just won't mean the same things anymore.
4. Neither inspiration nor infallibility *EVER* applies to a translation (for example, an English Bible is not inspired nor inerrant in any way, except virtually inasmuch as it is a faithful translation of the original). Therefore every time we introduce a translation in the liturgy (or scripture), we run a risk of introducing error into the Church, or at least compromise. Yes, the Latin was not inspired either, but it has been tried and tested over many, many years, in a way all of the dozens of translations can never be.
Also, on another point, it isn't always just about the language. If I had my choice of attending a mass said in English according to the 1962 missal, or a Novus Ordo mass in Latin, I would go 1962 anyday. The "Latin mass" isn't just in Latin, it is entirely different in the prayers that are said.
On that note, did anyone notice that in His Holiness' first mass, he said the old-style Confiteor (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa)?
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