The Church has never set up a mysterious unintelligible language as an ideal. There is no principle of sacerdotal mysteries from which the layman is shut out. In spite of the use of Latin the people have means of understanding the service. That they might do so still better if everything were in the vulgar tongue may be admitted, but in making this change the loss would probably be greater than the gain.
By changing the language of the Liturgy we should lose the principle of uniformity in the Roman patriarchate. According to the ancient principle that rite follows patriarchate, the Western rite should be that of the Western patriarch, the Roman Bishop, who uses the local rite of the city of Rome. There is a further advantage in using it in his language, so the use of Latin in the West came about naturally and is retained through conservative instinct. It is not so in the East. There is a great practical advantage to travellers, whether priests or laymen, in finding their rite exactly the same everywhere. An English priest in Poland or Portugal could not say his Mass unless he and the server had a common language. The use of Latin all over the Roman patriarchate is a very obvious and splendid witness of unity. Every Catholic traveller in a country of which he does not know the language has felt the comfort of finding that in church at least everything is familiar and knows that in a Catholic church of his own rite he is at home anywhere. Moreover, the change of liturgical language would be a break with the past. It is a witness of antiquity of which a Catholic may well be proud that in Mass to-day we are still used to the very words that Anselm, Gregory, Leo sang in their cathedrals. A change of language would also abolish Latin chant. Plainsong, as venerable a relic of antiquity as any part of the ritual, is composed for the Latin text only, supposes always the Latin syllables and the Latin accent, and becomes a caricature when it is forced into another language with different rules of accent.
Not.
"It is a witness of antiquity of which a Catholic may well be proud that in Mass to-day we are still used to the very words that Anselm, Gregory, Leo sang in their cathedrals.
Why in the world should anybody care??? If you want to focus in on "the very words", then say the mass in Aramaic, which were "the very words" (or at least the same language) Christ used. But, we don't KNOW exactly what words Christ used, so spending a lot of time emoting about the "antiquity" of the langauge is a frivolous vanity.
60. The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth. In spite of this, the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission. It is forbidden, therefore, to take any action whatever of this nature without having requested and obtained such consent, since the sacred liturgy, as we have said, is entirely subject to the discretion and approval of the Holy See
*Fr. Fortescue was a fine priest. However, he wasn't Pope