Latin is an entirely foreign language to most Americans but completely incomprehensible babble to the hundreds of millions of Catholics outside Indo-European linguistic traditions—primarily in the interior of Africa and in East Asia (Vietnam, China, and Korea). Offering the Mass in the local vernacular language enables the peoples of these nations to understand the Mass as it happens and encourages them to convert and to join the Church. (Imagine that the Church suddenly decided that all services hereafter will be in Korean only; how many would understand it?) I don’t have anything against the Latin/Tridentine Mass, but it isn’t for everyone.
I’d like to see the unchanging parts in Latin and the propers, or the changing parts, in the vernacular.
When I was a child, prior to VatII, you could go to Mass anywhere in the world and you felt right at home because you knew what was going on and it was in a “neutral” language. They always read the Gospel and Epistle in the native language afterwards, and of course, preached in that language.
But the all-vernacular mass has been a very divisive factor. We now have Spanish masses, English masses, Vietnamese masses, etc., and these people never see each other or go to mass together. We have created ghettos.
What’s worse, in countries where language has become a political statement (such as Spain, where Basque has become the banner of the radical separatist left), the mass in that language also becomes a political statement, and excludes anybody who does not subscribe to it.
I say, put it all in Latin, or put it mostly in Latin - and see Catholicism shed the lefty nonsense it has been swamped in for lo these 50 years.
Plus there is a generation, mine that either was too young, or not even born when Latin was around. Since I am a child of Vatican II, Latin is still an exotic language. Even tonight at the end of the evening prayers for the monthly meeting of the local 3rd order Carmelites, and I am almost finished with formation studies, 1st year, to be recieved in the spring, the closing song was in Latin, Salve Regina. Since I did not have any paper, but was givin one, I simply hummed the chant.
When Latin was replaced by the vernacular, it wasn’t just the language that changed. The meaning changed as well, and it wasn’t just because of poor translation. Restoring the Tridentine Mass would return the liturgy to where it was before the ravages of Vatican II. So what if Africans and Americans and Asians have to learn Latin. People are intelligent enough to follow the Mass with Latin on one page and their own language on the opposite page. And to answer your question, yes, I could and would learn Korean, if that had been the original language of the Mass.