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Variis linguis loquebantur Apostoli . . .
. . . but among the many tongues The Church speaks nowadays, Latin, the proper language of The Latin Church, apparently is not to feature. We are preparing for The Liturgical Celebration of Pentecost, the bestowing upon The Church of “The Gifts of Tongues”.
Yet, the language most securely fixed into place by Tradition, and by the enactments of Popes and Councils, Latin, has had a gag rudely thrust into its mouth by The Enemy and by those whom he has corrupted. It is difficult to avoid a conclusion that The Bishops, as a body, are largely the guilty men.
I have noticed, over the years, three or four occasions when a Bishop, perhaps when asked to provide a Celebrant for The Extraordinary Form, has cheerfully informed the World that not many Clergy know Latin. nowadays, so that it’s hard for him to find someone who can Celebrate The Extraordinary Form.
I am amazed by the nonchalant and shame-free way that Bishops make this revelation, without any apparent awareness that Canon Law (249) requires The Clergy to be proficient in Latin. If a Diocesan Bishop were rebuking a cheeky young Curate for ignoring Canon Law, what would be his reaction if The Junior Cleric cheerfully (and nonchalantly) said: “Come off it, “Bish, dear”, nobody takes any notice of all that old Canonical C**p any more, nowadays !!! Crawl out from under your poncy Mitre and try to get real !!!”
But, apparently, there are Bishops who feel exactly this same disdainful contempt with regard to Canon Law. Is chirpy insouciance, combined with dereliction of duty, any less reprehensible when expressed in po-faced management-talk by self-important Bishops than it would be among lowly and racy Presbyters ?
I am moved to repeat the actual Teaching of The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Popes on this highly-important matter.
SAINT JOHN XXIII and Latin.
Roman Pontiffs do not commonly sign their Magisterial documents on The High Altar of Saint Peter's in the presence of The Body of Cardinals. But Saint John XXIII thus promulgated his Apostolic Constitution “Veterum Sapientia”, 1962, in which he insisted that the Latin language must remain central to the culture of Western Christianity. What on Earth could the good old gentleman have done in order to make his point more emphatically ?
That Letter was praised by Saint Paul VI (“Studia Latinitatis, 1964", . . . principem obtinere locum dicenda sane est”), who was anxious that Seminarians “magna cum cura et diligentia ad antiquas et humanas litteras informentur”; and Saint John Paul II (“Sapientia Christiana”) emphasised the requirement for knowledge of Latin “for the faculties of The Sacred Sciences, so that Students can understand and use the sources and documents of The Church”.
Benedict XVI (“Latina Lingua, 2012”), praised “Veterum Sapientia” as having been issued iure meritoque: it is to be taken seriously both because of its legal force and because of the intrinsic merit of its arguments; and, in his Encyclical “Sacramentum Caritatis”, wrote specifically about the need for Seminarians to be taught Latin.
We have, in other words, a coherent and continuous expectation in the teaching of Popes Saint John XXIII, Saint Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, that all Seminarians should become proficient in Latin, the Language of The Church. [So let nobody argue that the provisions of Canon 249 have fallen into desuetude because the legislator has failed within living memory to continue to insist upon them.] And the attitude of the Popes, to the promotion of Latin studies in even broader contexts than that of the formation of the Clergy, is demonstrated in the establishment by Saint Paul VI of a Latin Academy; a Foundation re-established and strengthened by Benedict XVI.
This Papal Teaching by no means relates solely to the language of Worship; it desires Latin to remain a living vernacular for the Clergy and not least for their formation; and it is explicitly based upon the belief that, by being Latinate, a Clerisy will have access to a continuity of culture. My post would have to be very long indeed if it quoted fully all the words of all four Popes to this effect.
Coming as I do from the Anglican Patrimony, I will instead share the witness of C S Lewis's Devil Screwtape, who confessed: “Since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for, where learning makes a free commerce between the ages, there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another”.
And, in his “Pilgrim's Regress”, Lewis suggests that the growing disuse of Classical Languages is a Diabolical trick to isolate the educated classes from the wisdom of the Past. Both in secular culture and within The Church, there is a risk that the educated class will be cut off and imprisoned in the narrow confines of a particular culture - victims of its particular Zeitgeist. A literate Clerisy is one that reads what other ages wrote, which means that it will at least be able to read Latin; and an obvious sign of such a Clerisy, in practical terms, will be that it can with ease say its Divine Office in Latin.
VATICAN II and Latin.
It is in this context that we must see the requirement of Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium 101): “In accordance with the Centuries-old Tradition (saecularis traditio) of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by Clerics in reciting The Divine Office”.
And it is highly significant that it goes on to make any use of the vernacular an (apparently very rare) exception, which Bishops can grant “only on an individual basis”. One might plausibly surmise that this exception may have been envisaged as useful in areas where resources for Clerical formation were limited, like the remoter parts of the 1960s Third World.
I wonder how The Council Fathers - or a significant proportion of them - might have reacted to the information that in less than a decade the Bishops of Western, Old, Europe (whose culture, both religious and secular, had been based upon Latin for nearly two millennia, the Continent of the great universities in which the civilisation of The Greek and Roman Worlds had been transmitted) would regard both this Conciliar mandate, reinforced by the directions of the Conciliar Decree “Optatam Totius” on Seminary Training, as an irrelevant dead letter. As early as 1966, Saint Paul VI was deploring (“Sacrificium Laudis”) the habit of requesting dispensations for a vernacular Office.
Readers of this Blog [Editor:
FR HUNWICKE'S MUTUAL ENRICHMENT] are probably familiar * with the other prescriptions of Vatican II for the retention of Latin, particularly in The Liturgy, and I will not labour the point. I emphasise that I am not basing an argument for the retention of a living Latin culture simply and nakedly upon the words of The Council. The auctoritas for that retention is very much more broadly based, as the Council Fathers themselves emphasised by calling it and invoking it as a “sæcularis traditio”.
The conciliar mandate is merely a dutiful affirmation, proper to an Ecumenical Council of The Church, of the continuity and abiding prescriptiveness of The Church's Tradition; the guarantee making explicit that in an age of revolutions the old assumptions are still in place. Without these words of The Council, it might have been plausibly argued by ill-disposed persons that a radical cultural and intellectual shift had invalidated previous assumptions.
In view of the plain language of The Council, such a thesis can only be advanced as a deliberate repudiation of the explicit words of an Ecumenical Council . . . as well as of the Centuries preceding it and of the Teaching of subsequent Popes.
CANON LAW and Latin.
But, not long ago, I met a bright and recently-Ordained young Priest who had been taught “a little Greek, but not a word of Latin”. So, despite Canon 249 (in the Post-Conciliar Code of Canon Law), the Clergy have not all learned, and are not now all being taught, Latin as part of their Seminary formation ?
Well, of course, they all haven't so learnt, and are not all being so taught. Everybody knows that. A Priest of my acquaintance once wrote to me: “When I was a Seminarian in the 1980s, the very fact of having done a course in Latin at University was considered tantamount to a declaration in favour of Archbishop Lefebvre.
A Priest who gave a Retreat (a prominent moral theologian of those days) searched our places “in Choir” and denounced those who possessed Latin Breviaries as certainly having no vocation”.
One can hardly blame the present generation of English Bishops for a problem which looks as though it arose more than half a Century ago (in any case, blame is not my purpose). Indeed, I have heard that matters may now be a little less bad. But not, I believe, everywhere, and certainly not for all Seminarians.
Surely, Catholic Bishops have some say about the syllabuses taught in Seminaries ? Surely, they have some responsibility for the formation of their own Clergy ? Are they happy that Seminaries are run in a way which pays only very selective regard to the Magisterium of Saint John XXIII ? And to The Second Vatican Council, which (vide “Optatam totius 13”) laid emphasis on the role of Latin in Seminary education; or is that particular Conciliar document now to be consigned to oblivion ?
Saint Paul VI, as the first in his list of academic priorities for Seminarians, wrote: “The cultural formation of the young Priest must certainly include an adequate knowledge of languages and especially of Latin (particularly for those of the Latin Rite). (“Summi Dei verbum”.)”
There has long been a tacit assumption among some that the Magisterium of the “pre-Conciliar Popes” is to be quietly forgotten. Pius IX ? Pius XII ? Who on Earth were they ? But now one might be forgiven for wondering whether the Magisterium of The Council, itself, and the Teaching of the “post-Conciliar Popes”, are now also (when it suits) being treated with similar contempt by these grand men.
Are those more recent Pontiffs to be elaborately honoured with questionable Beatifications and break-neck-speed Canonisations and facile rhetorical praise, while their actual Teaching, emphatically and insistently given, is tossed aside as irrelevant or impractical ?
“There just isn't room on the syllabus for any of that”. Really ? When Seminary syllabuses are composed, shouldn’t it be the first aim to ensure that the insistent mandates of Roman Pontiffs are not to be ignored ? Since entering into Full Communion in 2011, I have met significant numbers of Clergy who have deplored the fact that, at Seminary, they were robbed of what The Catholic Church regards as the first building block of a Priestly formation. They have seemed to have in mind quite a number of useless topics which could profitably have been omitted so as to liberate syllabus time.
Cardinal Basil Hume, back in the 1990s, rather impertinently reminded Anglican enquirers that “Catholicism is table d'hote, not a la carte”. Surely that gives an ex-Anglican some right to wonder whether this principle also applies as much to those who run, or who episcopally supervise, Seminaries as it does to Anglican enquirers ?
A final quotation from Saint John XXIII: “The Teachers . . . in universities or Seminaries are required to speak Latin (latine loqui tenentur) and to make use of textbooks written in Latin. Those whose ignorance of Latin makes it difficult for them to obey these instructions shall gradually be replaced by Teachers who are suited to this task (in eorum locum doctores ad hoc idonei gradatim sufficiantur).
Any difficulties that may be advanced by students or professors must be overcome (vincantur necesse est) either by the patient insistence of the Bishops or Religious Superiors, or by the good will of the Teachers.”
And a final question: How many of those currently Teaching in English Seminaries are (in the sense of Saint John XXIII’s precise use of the word) idonei, “fit for the job” ? Indeed, are there any ?
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* You sometimes find claims made to the effect that “Vatican II mandated more extensive use of vernacular languages in The Liturgy. Sacrosanctum concilium para 54 says 'Linguæ vernaculæ in Missis cum populo celebratis congruus locus tribui possit'. Doesn't sound to me much like a 'mandate'. It doesn't even say 'potest' ! Somebody must have decided to put the verb into the subjunctive ! It goes on to say 'præsertim' and mentions the readings. Then, much more cautiously, it raises the possibility of the vernacular 'even' (etiam) 'in partibus quæ ad populum spectant' linking this with a specific requirement that the laity should also be able to sing and say those self-same parts in Latin. Hardly a 'mandate' for the vernacular ! Rather, a nervously tentative partial permission.
