And if I ask your wife what it means, will she be able to tell me? If so, what language will she be using to tell me?
Would you say that she is better or worse at making that translation than someone who has studied Latin for 40 years and has read hundreds of Latin texts to help understand the true meaning?
Listening to the Mass in Latin over and over again for years is not immersion in Latin, it is rote memorization. No different than learning a song in German, and thinking that you really understand what the song means.
How did your wife learn what the Latin meant without using English equivalents, and once she had used those English equivalents, how was the Latin still sterile?
The author is incorrect when he states:
“Sadly, most Lutherans have no desire for reconciliation with those in fellowship with the Bishop of Rome.”
The largest Lutheran Church body in the US, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the church of Rome signed a “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” some years back.
Sure she can tell you what it means. If I give her a text she’s never seen before, can she translate it perfectly, no, but she can give you the gist of it.
Do you have a firm grasp of how a liturgy works? There are texts we hear over and over every Mass...but there are variable texts as well (readings, introits etc.) So over the course of a year you are exposed to the language in a variety of different ways. It’s not mere rote memorization of a phrase over and over.
Anyway, why be insistent on some perfect understanding of the text as if the liturgy is eviscerated without it? No *English* speaker has that. Does everyone fully understand what “consubstantial” really means, or “proceeds from the Father and the Son”? Does everyone know what “tares” are or “spelt”?
Every Catholic is (or should be anyway) from a young age catechized with what is going on at every point in the Mass. I could walk into a Chinese Mass, tell you exactly what is going on, and participate in it without understanding a single word. It’s no harder than watching a soccer game with a Spanish announcer.