Replies

In modern times, probably after about 325 AD, the Mass of the Roman Rite was always in Latin until the regrettable damage done to the Church generally and liturgy in particular by Vatican II and its aftermath. Liberal elements within the Church and even in the hierarchy were then convinced that Latin was no longer useful and that new translation(s) were in order.

I trust from your earlier posts on this thread that you were brought up Catholic and even, as an altar boy, served the old Latin Mass in your youth. In those days, the priest said his parts of the Mass in Latin (usually reading the Gospel in the vernacular language and the altar boys, on behalf of the congregation gave the responses in Latin.

You indicated that you had not understood the meaning of the Latin responses you gave as an altar boy. That was likely the fault of the priest who taught you to serve Mass.

The charm of the Tridentine Mass is that its words and the presentation of the Mass are far more precise and respectful than are those of today's Novus Ordo Mass. I join with many other Traditional Catholics in thinking Novus Ordo poorly worded, purposely mistranslating Scripture and placing tons of ambiguity where once our Catholic liturgy was verrrry precise.

Traditional Mass music is the work of Mozart, Palestrina and other magnificent master composers of previous centuries. The effect is that we have a foretaste of heaven when we hear that music at Mass. This in spite of the fact that in my car or at home, I prefer Elvis, Beach Boys, Abba, Motown, folk, Buddy Holly and early Rockabilly, all of which and others give me joy and none of which belong at Mass.

Is your reference to Paul a reference to the author of many Scriptural Epistles (to Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Corinthians, Thessalonians, to Timothy and others) whom Catholics reference as St. Paul, Evangelist and Martyr? If so, St. Paul was a profound and complex man, formerly a persecutor of Christians for the Sanhedrin who martyred his own cousin St. Stephen for becoming a Christian. You can read St. Paul as advising against marriage (and therefore against sexual relations between man and woman) while noting that "it is better to marry than to burn." If all early Christians had avoided celibacy, i would have been MUCH harder to recruit and retain Christians from a pagan world with much looser standards. See the more recent religion called Shakers who went nearly extinct through the total avoidance of sex in marriage.

For Traditional Catholics in our time, the significance of the old Latin (Tridentine, i.e codified by Pope St. Pius V after the 16th century Council of Trent or Counter-Reformation Council) Mass is that it is a product of serious scholarly research on the liturgy which by the time of Luther, had as many as 600 (?) differing Mass rubrics which was deemed to encourage confusion. Pope St. Pius V was a Dominican and he banned almost all preceding rites but allowed the Dominicans to retain their Ambrosian Rite. The pre-existing rites of specific Catholic Church divisions based on nationality or tradition were allowed to continue IIRC.

There is a Catholic Church whose history traces back to Syria when Peter was at Damascus. NYer who posts many Catholic stories here joined that quite traditional rite in the Albany, NY diocese. I believe that their Masses are traditional Tridentine era Masses said in Aramaic which is the language of Jesus Christ but seldom spoken today. It is the language used in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (with English subtitles).

Although Latin is traditionally the language of the Roman Catholic Church as once it was for the secular world rulers of the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire. It has long been a language of diplomats and scholars. It was traditional to defend one's doctoral thesis orally in Latin.

While people are today not as familiar with Latin as they were not so long ago. Many non-Catholic alumni of public schools studied Latin if they were on a college track especially for the vocabulary and the wondrous discipline of mind that grows from an inflected language: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs are declined or conjugated by differing endings for each gender, case, and number and declension (1 to 5) of nouns and pronouns and adjectives, tenses, number, mood, conjugations (1 to 4) and other qualities of verbs.

While it is a substantial job building an understanding of all those endings and what they indicate about those words make it possible to very precisely translate Latin into English or any other modern language. Such languages as English, Spanish, German, French and most modern languages are much simpler. If you have mastered Latin, they become easy to learn.

If I am wrong on any of the foregoing (other than theology on which I won't change and neither will critics who are also entitled to their different beliefs), I welcome correction.

God bless you and yours.