The esteemed commenter and priest, Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf made comment recently on the lack of modern languages accomodating Summorum Pontificum at the Vatican website; over at his blog WDTRPS.
I opined a little tongue-in-cheek, but there is a grain of truth in what I say. Please read my response:
I say this tongue-in-cheek, but there is an air of truth that rings in this.
It is in Latin. Shouldn’t all priests and seminarians be able to at least read Latin? Isn’t that the mandate the Church has always promoted and supported? Didn’t that great Council, the definer of our times, Vatican Council II demand that priests know and be able to communicate to the faithful the Latin Language?
Where is the problem? For THOUSANDS of years, the Church proclaimed any document ONLY in Latin. To be honest, I find no problem with it being only in Latin. Those of us who took the time and made the effort whilst in seminary (I am not a priest, I didn’t make it through, but I digress) can understand the majority of the Latin prose which makes up the document.
As it is, priests and seminarians don’t know Latin. Why? Well, we can thank Monsignor Bugnini, Pope Paul VI and their successors for not following through on what the authentic Magisterium wanted. Many people today will say, “Get over it and live in the world you’re in.”
I say to them, “YOU get over it. The disobedience and severe limiting of the Church’s universal message isn’t on MY soul.”
I have enough to worry about with my soul, this issue is one that I’m not going to fight. In being faithful to Vatican Council II, I took Latin. I took enough Latin that I am conversational. I am not as fluent as our esteemed host, but I can hold my own.
Si quid fecerim modo volui sanctae Matris Ecclesiae, hoc non omnes proventus. … Paucissimi et quid sit loquor sit sacerdotes saeculares. Quod facit me tristis.
It's time to talk to our bishops again. It is time to talk to our pastors. Latin must be returned to use in Holy Mother Church, for the Novus Ordo as well as for the TLM. The Latin Language is not a matter of nostalgia or archaic tradition. It is a reality of Holy Mother, in today's world. Vatican Council II Fathers knew that this was the case. Why can't we just be faithful to the Magisterium? Or have those who have come to power in the last 40 years really re-envisioned the Church in their own image?
"Or have those who have come to power in the last 40 years really re-envisioned the Church in their own image?"
ReplyDeleteWhenever I think about the Council, I said, I always have one image in my mind: an aging Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, now blind, about age 80, limping, the head of the Holy Office and so the chief doctrinal officer of the Church, born in Trastevere to parents who had many children, so a Roman from Rome, from the people of Rome, takes the microphone to speak to the 2,000 assembled bishops.
And, as he speaks, pleading for the bishops to consider the texts the curia has spent three years preparing, suddenly his microphone was shut off. He kept speaking, but no one could hear a word. Then, puzzled and flustered, he stopped speaking, in confusion. And the assembled fathers began to laugh, and then to cheer...
"Yes," Gherardini said. "And it was only the third day."
"What?" I said.
"Ottaviani's microphone was turned off on the third day of the Council."
"On the third day?" I said. "I didn't know that. I thought it was later, in November, after the progressive group became more organized..."
"No, it was the third day, October 13, 1962. The Council began on October 11."
"Do you know who turned off the microphone?"
"Yes," he said. "It was Cardinal Lienart of Lille, France."
"But then," I said, "it could almost be argued, perhaps, that such a breech of protocol, making it impossible for Ottaviani to make his arguments, somehow renders what came after, well, in a certain sense, improper..."
"Some people make that argument," Gherardini replied.
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/04/controlling-mic-at-vatican-ii.html
Or have those who have come to power in the last 40 years really re-envisioned the Church in their own image?
Yes, 45 years to the day of the Prophetic Apparition of Fatima (10/13/1917-62), the Truth was silenced.