Posted on 09/23/2015 2:54:03 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
As a visitor to the United States, Pope Francis faces a minor challenge: His English isn’t so great. Over the course of the trip, he’ll give 18 speeches, and only four of them will be in English; he’ll mostly use his native language, Spanish, to give homilies and addresses.
But at Wednesday’s mass in Washington, D.C., at which Francis will canonize Father Junipero Serra, he’ll add another linguistic twist. The main prayers of the service, along with the celebration of the Eucharist—the part of the service when people take communion—will be in Latin.
Latin! This is an exclamation-mark-worthy fact for a few reasons. “It’s very unusual,” said Father John O’Malley, the Georgetown University professor and author of What Happened at Vatican II. “It’s not unheard of, but it doesn’t make much sense, if you’re in an English parish, or a Spanish parish, to do it in Latin.”
[big snip]
...That’s why it’s so interesting that Francis has chosen to include Latin in his D.C. mass:... “He’s the first pope in 50 years not to have participated in the Council,” O’Malley said. “That’s good, because he’s not fighting the battles of the Council.”
The mass that will be celebrated in D.C. on Wednesday is not the pre-Vatican II mass. The service will include English, Spanish, and several other languages, according to a Vatican spokesperson, and the pope won’t be following the Tridentine liturgy....
More likely than not, the decision to use Latin in the mass is a matter of comfort: The pope isn’t very good at English and he’ll already be speaking a lot of Spanish, so the mass offers an opportunity to incorporate another language into this visit. But it’s a small reminder that no move the pope makes come without complicated history—and symbolism—attached.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Regular Mass-going Catholics of any language will be able to follow what's going on at any point in the ceremony, anyway. The structure of the Mass is still the same.
And the music is wonderful, just wonderful.
I still want (and Deo gratias am able to attend) my Latin mass.
I (not a Catholic) always thought it should have been left in Latin, precisely because it would be the same anywhere in the world one went.
(As an extra boon, most of the Catholic kids I knew who went to Catholic schools, actually LEARNED Latin - never a bad thing ;-)
-JT
>>Why did he wait 1500 years?
Humankind wasn’t ready. We needed the Roman Empire to fall and development of Western Civilization with the subsequent spread of Christianity throughout Europe under a strong centralized church before he could trust us to be free in our Christian walk.
You're pretty much an expert on what Jesus would have abhorred? Jesus abhorred what millions of his Saints for 20 centuries, with all the love and devotion in their hearts, have loved?
I guess that Temple incident was because He hated all that hoity-toity set-apart solemnity stuff? Wanted things more street-level practical, eh?
Good point.
Do you think the Lord never went up for the temple sacrifices or never celebrated Purim or never participated in the festivities of Simchat Torah?
Do you really think that sitting in an air-conditioned auditorium thumbing through a copy of The Purpose Driven Life while a miked-up guy sings a pop song in front of a big HD screen with lyrics on it is "humble" or would be intelligible to a first century Judaean?
Your prejudices are clouding your thinking.
Latin because it’s closest to an international language. But the article says it will be a Novus Ordo Mass.
The magical thinking is strong here, jtal.
>>Your prejudices are clouding your thinking.
So are yours. We are both human.
do you speak Latin ?
I remember “High Mass” (11:15 AM on Sundays) back in the day.
I didn’t understand a word of it but it was linguistically beautiful.
Common Core not withstanding there is value in learning/knowing Latin.
do you speak Latin ?
do you speak Laein ?
>>> Because it was gorgeous and we all understood the Latin phrases - is that so hard to understand? <<<
I wasn’t laughing or denigrating: merely stating my perception of the current issue versus my memory of an earlier era.
I attended a High Mass in Latin once when I was very young, and although I understood nothing, it was an impressive and beautiful thing.
>>Yes, because as we all know, both the Old Testament and the New Testament were written in Latin. It’s God’s language, right?
<<
How’s your Aramaic?
Baloney! Parts of Mass are always in Latin for special occasions. Still.
Best analysis on the thread.
Having attended Catholic school many moons ago and taught by nuns, one year of Latin was mandatory. Did me a world of good.
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