
The
Loss of Language — and other Paradigms —
in the Catholic Church
Every
Jew knows how to pray in Hebrew in his Synagogue
— just as every Muslim knows how to pray in Arabic
in his Mosque.
...
and every Catholic priest (and many laity) — for nearly 2000 years
— once knew how
to pray in Latin during the Most Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass!
Both are essential idioms in their respective
religions, although most Jews, like most Muslims, do not speak, or largely
understand either language. Each is unique to, and are carefully preserved identifying markers
both 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 Shahada.
It is important to understand that Arabic
is only specific to Arabia and 25 other countries throughout
the world, 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.
“Smacking” — Latin as idiomatic of Catholicism
Why, then, has
the Catholic Church not just relinquished, but systematically
repudiated it —
even effectively censured Latin
as the language specific to collective
Catholic prayer at Mass, in the Sacraments, and in the Divine Office
(the Liturgy of the Hours)? The severity of this censure can be seen
in Francis’s Motu proprio called Traditionis custodes
on July 16, 2022. This did not simply “restrict,” but abolished
the Latin Mass .. worldwide!*
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 synonymous with the Catholic
Church for over 2000 years has become forgotten (yes, and verboten)
in less than 50. To pray in Latin is historically and absolutely unique
to the Roman Catholic Church. All formal ecclesiastical pronouncements
are still indited in Latin! Simply visit
http://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_index.html
Why, then, is Latin the lightning rod
of all “progressive” criticism of the Church — especially in the language
of worship? Virtually every other profane language (any
vernacular language specific to location: e.g. English, Spanish, Vietnamese,
Lao, German, etc.) is permitted ... but the sacred language
itself is not? Why such widespread animus toward Latin? The answer
is surprisingly simple: it “smacks” of Catholicism in an age of unbridled
ecumenism. Every language is acceptable to the Post-Conciliar Church
— except Her own. If She has forgotten how to speak, how can She "teach,
govern, and Sanctify", for
which purpose God established Her in the first place?
1
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 |
|
A Catholic Cathedral less than
50 years after Vatican II
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“The Eternal President of the Republic”
Kim Il-sung (his formal title, despite being dead 19 years now and counting)
and Kim-Jong-il (dead now 12 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
__________________________________
* To mollify the outrage it caused
both within the Church, and surprisingly, throughout the world where
prominent voices (not American Cardinals, we are quick
to point out) criticized this heavy-handed suppression of an
institution that has been part of the fabric of Western civilization
for well over a millennia. It was seen as a spiteful act of
authoritarianism.
1 Baltimore Catechism: 120. Q.
“Why did
Christ found the Church? A. Christ founded the Church to teach, govern,
sanctify, and save all men.”
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Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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