What is the Traditional Latin Mass?
For nearly 1,400 years, the traditional Latin Mass was the Liturgy of the Roman Catholic world. This is the Mass at which every Pope, and Saint and Christian of the West worshipped from 600 A.D. to 1970 A.D. This is the Mass Catholic martyrs gave their blood to preserve during the Protestant Reformation. This is the Mass that unites Christians across Continents and across centuries. The traditional Latin mass has been described as “the most beautiful thing this side of heaven.”
What happened to the Latin Mass?
At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Catholic Church dramatically changed the way Mass was celebrated. The Church’s goal was to make the Mass more accessible to the modern world. These changes resulted, for the most part, in the replacement of the Latin Mass with the new Mass, which most Roman Catholics of today are familiar. Many Catholic priests, however, such as Saint (Padre) Pio, continued, and still continue to celebrate the Latin Mass.
Why has the Latin Mass returned? With the crises both in the world and in the Church today, more and more people (young people, especially) seek an alternative to the “modern world.” They are returning in droves to the wisdom of the ages, to things tested and timeless. For many young Catholics and converts to the Catholic Faith, this has included a return to the Latin Mass.
What has Pope John Paul II said about the Latin Mass?
His Holiness Pope John Paul II called for the “wide and generous” availability of the traditional Latin Mass. He praised the Latin Mass for capturing a “sense of the sacred.”
Latin is the official language of the Church, and Pope John Paul II called for the greater use of Latin in the liturgy. Across the centuries, Latin has helped unify Roman Catholics from different countries and backgrounds. Because Latin is not an “evolving” language, the meaning of the prayers said at the Latin Mass do not change over time, but remain fixed. What is more, it is fitting to worship God in a special, sacred language reserved for this purpose alone.
If rumors become reality, perhaps Pope Benedict XVI will issue a motu proprio which recognizes the "pride of place" which was put forward in Vatican II for the Latin language and specifically Gregorian Chant music. We will see if that happens. We do know that Pope Benedict has strong views on preserving elements of our Faith's traditions, including that represented in the Mass of Ages and Latin.
And I've got no problem with it staying the "bureaucratic language" of the church. That is no reason for it's continued use in the liturgy.
"It is a matter of tradition."
That's "tradition", not "Tradition". Latin purists don't seem to recognize that there is a difference.
""..a heightened sense of the sacred in the Latin liturgy".
No such thing exists.
"..a recognition the unique benefits which are provided in the unchangable reverence contained in the Latin Mass liturgy."
And what might those benefits be, compared to the difficulties caused by the laity not understanding the language?? I don't buy that the benefits outweigh the negatives.
"Why that is raised as a reason to deny the 1,500 years of Latin tradition in the liturgy since Christ's death on the cross doesn't confront the true and basic issues here."
Because the early church used the vernacular, depending on what country the apostles were preaching in. One of the first "gifts" of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles was the "gift of tongues", specifically for that reason. LATIN was "the vernacular" at one time. The long-term use of Latin was strictly an accident of politics, and the retention of it by the Church was probably also political (trying to retard/prevent the breakup of the "Holy Roman Empire).
"The Church’s goal was to make the Mass more accessible to the modern world. These changes resulted, for the most part, in the replacement of the Latin Mass with the new Mass, which most Roman Catholics of today are familiar.
And rightly so.
"Latin has helped unify Roman Catholics from different countries and backgrounds.
The ONLY group that has ever been true for is the priesthood/church bureaucracy, not for the 99.999% of Catholic worshippers who don't know Latin.
"Because Latin is not an “evolving” language, the meaning of the prayers said at the Latin Mass do not change over time, but remain fixed."
Oh, please--with the practically instantaneous translation capabilities that exist today, you actually think that matters.
"What is more, it is fitting to worship God in a special, sacred language reserved for this purpose alone."
Do you honestly think God cares what language we use??
The language of any Church or rite, as distinct from the vulgar tongue, is that used in the official services and may or may not be the common language. For instance the Rumanian Church uses liturgically the ordinary language of the country, while Latin is used by the Latin Church for her Liturgy without regard to the mother tongue of the clergy or congregation. There are many cases of an intermediate state between these extremes, in which the liturgical language is an older form of the vulgar tongue, sometimes easily, sometimes hardly at all, understood by people who have not studied it specially. Language is not rite. Theoretically any rite may exist in any language. Thus the Armenian, Coptic, and East Syrian Rites are celebrated always in one language, the Byzantine Rite is used in a great number of tongues, and in other rites one language sometimes enormously preponderates but is not used exclusively. This is determined by church discipline. The Roman Liturgy is generally celebrated in Latin. The reason why a liturgical language began to be used and is still retained must be distinguished in liturgical science from certain theological or mystic considerations by which its use may be explained or justified. EACH LITURGICAL LANGUAGE WAS FIRST CHOSEN BECAUSE IT WAS THE NATURAL LANGUAGE OF THE PEOPLE. But languages change and the Faith spreads into countries where other tongues are spoken. Then either the authorities are of a more practical mind and simply translate the prayers into the new language, or the conservative instinct, always strong in religion, retains for the liturgy an older language no longer used in common life. The Jews showed this instinct, when, though Hebrew was a dead language after the Captivity, they continued to use it in the Temple and the synagogues in the time of Christ, and still retain it in their services. The Moslem, also conservative, reads the Koran in classical Arabic, whether he be Turk, Persian, or Afghan. The translation of the church service is complicated by the difficulty of determining when the language in which it is written, as Latin in the West and Hellenistic Greek in the East, has ceased to be the vulgar tongue. Though the Byzantine services were translated into the common language of the Slavonic people that they might be understood, this form of the language (Church-Slavonic) is no longer spoken, but is gradually becoming as unintelligible as the original Greek. Protestants make a great point of using languages "understanded of the people", yet the language of Luther's Bible and the Anglican Prayerbook is already archaic.
History
When Christianity appeared Hellenistic Greek was the common language spoken around the Mediterranean. St. Paul writes to people in Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy in Greek. When the parent rites were finally written down in the fourth and fifth centuries Eastern liturgical language had slightly changed. The Greek of these liturgies (Apost. Const. VIII, St. James, St. Mark, the Byzantine Liturgy) was that of the Fathers of the time, strongly coloured by the Septuagint and the New Testament. These liturgies remained in this form and have never been recast in any modern Greek dialect. Like the text of the Bible, that of a liturgy once fixed becomes sacred. The formulæ used Sunday after Sunday are hallowed by too sacred associations to be changed as long as more or less the same language is used. The common tongue drifts and develops, but the liturgical forms are stereotyped. In the East and West, however, there existed different principles in this matter. Whereas in the West there was no literary language but Latin till far into the Middle Ages, in the East there were such languages, totally unlike Greek, that had a position, a literature, a dignity of their own hardly inferior to that of Greek itself. In the West every educated man spoke and wrote Latin almost to the Renaissance. To translate the Liturgy into a Celtic or Teutonic language would have seemed as absurd as to write a prayerbook now in some vulgar slang. The East was never hellenized as the West was latinized. Great nations, primarily Egypt and Syria, kept their own languages and literatures as part of their national inheritance. The people, owing no allegiance to the Greek language, had no reason to say their prayers in it, and the Liturgy was translated into Coptic in Egypt, into Syriac in Syria and Palestine. So the principle of a uniform liturgical language was broken in the East and people were accustomed to hear the church service in different languages in different places. This uniformity once broken never became an ideal to Eastern Christians and the way was opened for an indefinite multiplication of liturgical tongues. [2]
The principle of using Latin in church is in no way fundamental. It is a question of discipline that evolved differently in East and West, and may not be defended as either primitive or universal. The authority of the Church could change the liturgical language at any time without sacrificing any important principle. The idea of a universal tongue may seem attractive, but is contradicted by the fact that the Catholic Church uses eight or nine different liturgical languages. Latin preponderates as a result of the greater influence of the Roman patriarchate and its rite, caused by the spread of Western Europeans into new lands and the unhappy schism of so many Easterns (see Fortescue, "Orthodox Eastern Church", 431). Uniformity of rite or liturgical language has never been a Catholic ideal, nor was Latin chosen deliberately as a sacred language. Had there been any such idea the language would have been Hebrew or Greek
*That encyclopedia entry was writen by Fr Asrian Fortescue, normally, a hero of those opposing Rome