Replies

Four reasons for maintaining the Mass in Latin (IMO): 1: It's the same everywhere. This is the Catholic Church.
2: The Sacred Worship thing.
3: Vocabulary necessary to understand the Mass in Latin is small. As opposed to understanding the Bible in Latin, which would require a huge vocabulary.
4: Meaning of words in Latin doesn't change.

Incidentally, even at a Latin Mass, the Bible readings are in English (or whatever the local language is).

BTW, in the Fourth Century Roman Empire, the local languang was ... LATIN! For which reason the Church had the Scriptures translated from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic to ... Latin.

Yes, I know the prevailing tongue in 4th century Rome was Latin...per my comment above that the Latin mass is said in the language of the Caesars. If the Church had wanted a language rooted in sacred history they could have created the mass in Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical languages...interesting they chose their OWN tongue so it could be understood!

I have never before considered your point that the amount of Latin knowledge would have been small for the mass compared to the amount needed for reading the Bible.

However, converts still have to learn some new language if they wanted to worship God in a Latin mass. Perhaps this is why Vatican II decided to change...perhaps too many Africans and Asians converting and not liking that they were not able to comprehend what they were saying?