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EVERY JEW …
The loss of Language — and other paradigms —
in the
Catholic Church
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We
thought that would capture your attention. But you will note the
ellipsis ( … ) following the title, so allow us to complete the sentence:
Every JEW knows
how to pray in HEBREW — just as every MUSLIM
knows how to pray in ARABIC.
Both are essential idioms in their respective
religions, although most Jews, like most Muslims, do not speak, or largely
understand either language. It is unique to — as it were, totally specific
and carefully preserved identifying markers inseparable
from, characteristic of, and exclusively pertaining to — their
respective religions. Even Reform Jews know the Sh'ma Yisrael,
just as the most culturally assimilated Muslim knows the Du'aa for
Salah.
It is important to understand that Arabic
is only specific to Arabia and is not the lingua franca
of other Muslim states. Hebrew is only specific to Israel
and is not the native tongue of the Diaspora. We are agreed upon this,
yes? The language of prayer is different from the language spoken outside
the place of worship. Judaism clung to Hebrew. Islam clung to Arabic.
Why, then, has the Catholic Church jettisoned Latin
as the language specific to prayer in collective, and often private
worship?
Why is Latin a taboo, unlike Hebrew and
Arabic? You will be hard-pressed to find a Catholic fluent in Latin,
and much more to the point, any ecclesiastic (priest,
bishop, and cardinal) who any longer has facility with Latin.
Our own “Cardinal Sean” (as he prefers to be called) is fluent in Spanish,
but I highly doubt that he could conjugate the simplest Latin verb.
It is no longer taught in seminaries (despite Can. 249 requiring it),
and no longer perpetuated in the Church itself at its highest levels.
The language that has been nearly synonymous with the Catholic Church
for over 2000 years has become forgotten (yes, and verboten)
in less than 50.
North Korea as the Paradigm of the Policy to Abolish
Catholic Ecclesiastical Language: specifically, Latin
The period at which the people of North
Korea became totally sequestered from the world and the inception of
the Novus Ordo (New Order) Mass (concomitantly with the abolition
of the centuries old Tridentine Mass) coincides within a 10 year
margin. Important — and potent — analogies obtain:
Having been both categorically and systematically indoctrinated
— crushed under an iron fist with no tolerance for dissent or dismay,
North Koreans subsequently know nothing other than what their brutal
regime propagates and allows them to know. This concerns such quotidian
features as whether the earth is round, the notion of free speech, and
the freedom of thought.
“The Three-Generations Punishment”
as a Paradigm
150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans were
born in, live, and will die in concentration camps under North Korea's
policy of deterrence through “three generations of punishment”: the
criminal together with his entire family, and the following two entire
generations that will be born — and die — in the prison camps: in other
words, the primary “malefactor”, his children, and their children. If
there IS a fourth generation, it will possess no knowledge of anything
whatever from posterity and outside the concentration camps. It is their
world. At least two complete generations born within it will not know
of any other kind of existence, and will understand their own miserable
existence as “normal”. Through this policy of “Three generations of
Punishment”, there is no possible transmission of any knowledge apart
from what is acquired (indoctrinated) in the camp itself. All possibility
of dissidence is totally expunged, for there is knowledge of nothing
from which to dissent.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church subsequent to the “policies”
enacted following Vatican II, appear to have taken a similar approach
in the way of language, worship, tradition, and the Mass itself. Within
three generations, Catholics have largely lost (or more accurately,
have been systematically deprived of the transmission of) what pertains
to the unique Catholic identity that had been taught and lived for centuries
prior to the catastrophe that has been euphemized as “Vatican II”.
Centuries
of teaching, worship, and tradition were categorically abolished and
anything verging on “residual” was not allowed to emerge again. In may
ways, it was not so much abolished as “stamped out” — much as any criticism
of the "Dear Leader" was met with a quick and final “dismissal”, so
was any criticism of “the Spirit of Vatican II” a specter even more
ghastly and destructive than the actual corpus itself.
Not only was a millennia old language abolished as unacceptable
anymore, but nearly every tradition and concept that was
uniquely Catholic
was peremptorily suppressed, tossed out, and ultimately forgotten …
such that the last “malefactor” who breached the policy, were he still
alive, would no longer recognize the institution in which he was nurtured
— and the fourth generation Catholic would no longer recognize the last
malefactor and would not understand his language, let alone his gestures
and manner of living. Indeed, the physical structure itself in which
the celebration morphed from a Mass to a Prayer-Space, would itself
become unrecognizable to either. The spires ascending to God would seem
archaic and meaningless beside the Bauhaus flat, unadorned, and indistinguishable
building that could as well be a synagogue, a mortuary, or an office
building and which has a “presider” instead of a “priest” (a now unacceptable
patriarchal image of Christ).
North Korea succeeded in extinguishing, obliterating all memory
of anything that preceded it. And so did Vatican II. Despite the
motu proprio Summum Pontificum, allowing the Tridentine Mass
to be said by any priest without “permission” from his ordinary (bishop),
virtually any attempt to celebrate it is met with hostility and every
possible impediment. Vatican II had spoken … much as the “Dear Leader”
had spoken, and the matter was settled and irreversible.
Another
paradigm ...
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Dresden
as another Paradigm of the aftermath
of Vatican II
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| Dresden at the turn of
the century |
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Dresden less than 50 years
later in 1945 |
Irreversible also is the damage. It is rather
like a vignette of the city of Dresden before and after its infamous
fire-bombing in World War II. The name was retained, but it designated
utter ruin.
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Vatican II
as another Paradigm of the aftermath
of Dresden
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| A Catholic Church at the
turn of the century |
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A Catholic Cathedral
less than 50 years
after Vatican II |
“The Eternal President
of the Republic” Kim Il-sung (his formal title, despite being dead 10
years now and counting) and Kim-Jong-il (dead now 3 years and counting)
and his porculent, maniacal son Kim Jong-un have made North Korea another
Dresden. And if we look at it closely and without bias, so did Vatican
II make a once flourishing Catholic culture the mere detritus of another
Dresden called the City of Man which is still being dismantled and destroyed
as we watch — without any outrage ... or even wonder.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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