When I was in the 5th grade in the early 1950s, the boys in my class received a card containing the Latin responses for the Mass and were told to memorize it. The formidable task seemed a small price to pay for the privilege of serving God at the altar. At the time, I had no idea of what the words meant nor did the card translate them. But Latin was how the Church talked to God. As a 5th grader, that was all I needed to know.
Latin has long held a privileged place in Catholic life, but not always and not everywhere. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the language of Palestine at the time. In the early centuries of the Church, its most vibrant centers, both for liturgy and theology were in the eastern Mediterranean where Greek was the common language. But neither then nor later did the Church use a single language, particularly in the Near East where Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian have always been in use. Although Latin was not commonly used in liturgical worship until the middle of the 3rd century, it soon became the common medium of communication. In subsequent years, Latin served as the primary language of the Western universities, legal systems, medicine, and scholarship. In the 1700s, 30% of books published in Europe were still written in Latin and in the 19th century knowledge of the language, even in the United States was the mark of an educated person.
In the early Middle Ages, most of the Catholic population of Europe no longer understood Latin and liturgical piety was largely replaced by private devotion focused on the visual and ceremonial aspects of the Mass. For centuries, a two-tiered system existed where the faithful “attended Mass” but the liturgy was “read” by the priest using words and prayers not shared with the congregation. As late as 1897, translations of Mass prayers were still listed in the Church’s Index of Forbidden Books.
Only after World War I were prayer books (“hand” missals) made available to the laity in the United States containing the Latin Mass prayers side by side with a vernacular translation. But the notion of “active” participation in the Mass was barely known. Even with the aid of a missal, worshippers found it difficult to follow the often-inaudible prayers of the priest. In the 1920s, a dialog format began to be used at Catholic youth Masses in which worshippers shared many of the Latin responses hitherto reserved to the altar boys. The typical Sunday Mass, however, continued to follow the older pattern in which the congregation sat or kneeled in silence. For most Catholics, the Mass in Latin was simply the way things were.
The announcement by Pope St. John XXIII of an ecumenical council came like a clap of thunder on a calm summer night. At one moment all was still. In the next moment, the Pope and 2600 bishops from around the world were engaged in the greatest renewal effort undertaken by the Church in four centuries. The Council produced a rich tapestry of pastoral work, addressing the meaning of Revelation, the place of the Church in the modern world, the renewal of religious life, ecumenism, the function of bishops, and other topics. At its heart was the landmark “Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy” in which the Eucharistic celebration was defined as the “source” and“summit” of the Church’s life. The Council’s goal was that liturgy be “revived and illumined …to allow the faithful to achieve full, conscious, and active participation.”
In the process of reform, the Council preserved the use of the Latin language in the Roman rite but allowed national bishops’ conferences to replace Latin texts with vernacular translations approved by Rome. Churches throughout the world eagerly seized the opportunity to make the change and Rome supported them. “The enthusiastic welcome given in every country to this permission,” the 1970s introduction to the revised Roman Missal notes, “has …led to the situation in which, under the guidance of the bishops and of the Holy See, all liturgical functions in which the people take part may now be celebrated in the vernacular so that the mystery being celebrated may be better understood.”
It was not until the early 2000s that significant grass-roots movements appeared within Roman Catholicism opposing the reformed liturgy. In the United States, England, and France, various groups began to champion the “classic” ritual of the 1570s, arguing that Latin provided a deeper experience of the sacred than the post-Vatican II liturgy. Latin was viewed as a key element and praised as “a divine language” and a “veil covering the sacred,” “feared by demons” and “spoken by angels.” It was affirmed (incorrectly) that St. Peter in coming to Rome had celebrated the first Latin Miss. The language, it was said, was christened by the blood of the Savior, because a placard bearing a Latin inscription had been affixed to the cross at Calvary. The arguments were sincere but were often more devotional in nature than liturgical. Some desired only that the older Mass retain a place in Catholic worship. More extreme voices suggested that the work of Vatican II to update the worship life of the Church was misguided, even illegitimate.
In July 2021, Pope Francis affirmed that in limited circumstances the older rite could continue to be celebrated, but that the “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression (“unica expressio”) … of the Roman Rite.”
Today, the language of ancient Rome continues to play an important role in Catholic life. The official version of ecclesiastical laws, directives, and disciplinary practices are the Latin texts. The same is true of the Church’s revised Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In the liturgy, Latin is used as the reference language for the updated Roman Missal, Lectionary, Church Calendar, Sacramentary, and Breviary (Book of the Hours). Major celebrations at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome are frequently celebrated in Latin. The same is true for other places, particularly when members of different cultures are participating. Pope Francis used the Latin text of the reformed rite at his 2015 Mass in New York’s Madison Square Garden.” Priests continue to have the option of celebrating the revised Roman liturgy in the Latin language. In all of this, Latin serves as a valuable linguistic tool at the service of the Church, a means not an end.
As a young boy learning my Latin responses, I would have felt at ease with the traditional Catholic Mass. But the Church has moved on and there was so much more to learn. When Vatican II restored the liturgy, it refocused what had long been a predominantly priestly ritual, to a sacred action of the priest and the assembly. No longer was it necessary for altar servers to learn the phrases of a ritual language. Rather, they joined the full community — priest and faithful– in what Vatican II describes as “a sacred action surpassing all others…the full public worship… performed by the Mystical Body of Christ… head and members.” It is a far deeper, richer reality, than I could have ever imagined.
