A Dramatic Shift in Paradigm

I will argue that there are not simply compelling, but indisputable reasons that the Roman Catholic Church, prior to Pope Leo, used Latin not just as a theological, but as a precise juridical, pedagogical, archival, and institutional language.

Why, in a dramatic shift of paradigm, Pope Leo has apparently chosen otherwise, we can only speculate upon — which I will not do. However, if we choose the least contentious (but misleading) explanation we will probably arrive at something like the following:

Drafts only?

If we argue that by its explicit wording the paragraph in question pertains to “drafts” only, that is to say, to preliminary versions, tentative in nature only, and understood as being presented in a provisional form waiting to be rendered into the structural and historical framework of the 1,600-year Latin in which, and through which, the Church has always articulated itself, its dogmas, and its doctrines, then all is well.

It nevertheless remains that even in their most articulate vernacular form, these several (many) languages can only, and at best, approximate any Latin version — and will, at worst, deviate from it.  Either Latin cannot be reconciled with these vernaculars, or these vernaculars cannot be reconciled with Latin. It is simply and factually the case.

This leaves the Roman Revisionists with an uncomfortable choice: one language group must be left out in the cold. They cannot choose to leave out Latin without undermining the very historical framework and foundation upon which the Church exists. But given the Leonine mandate how, then, shall they proceed?

Without a single language invested with what attains, structurally, to near-apodictic certainty, a language forged within and articulated through millennia of unbroken doctrinal, juridical, and theological form — i.e. Latin — and forming a single authoritative linguistic source, to which every “other language” must appeal or submit to in the way of final and decisive denotation, providing both recourse and redress to competing vernaculars, the Church as Magisterial ceases to be. Latin alone can provide this. A plurality of languages cannot.
 

On the other hand …

If this indeed is the case, why bother to add the disjunctive “or” (“or in another language.”) in the first place? What is the purpose of introducing this qualification at all?

That is to say, if the directive that, “The curial institutions will normally draft their acts in Latin or in another language” does not constitute a clear divergence from the unique historical language of the Church, why is it directed to do so in “another” language at all, not simply as permissive, but in so stating, implicitly endowing “another” (any language) with the same historically stable and unique characteristics that are inherent within, and inextricable from Latin alone — especially in the way of precision and immutability (I will explain a bit further on)?

We must notice, too, that the word “will” is used as an imperative — not “can,” nor “are allowed to,” but is applied with equal force to both the vernacular and the Latin — but how can this possibly be?

A literal Latin composition will always differ from every vernacular rendering. What is more, each and every translation distinct from the Latin will differ not just from any “optional,” “alternate,” or even “concurrent” Latin rendering — but from each other as well. In other words, every vernacular translation will be applied without prejudice to each other. All will be “correct” despite any nuance within, or latent conflict between, them.

To further complicate matters, given many translators (and assuming that each translator possesses a mastery of the subtleties inherent in their own language) and subsequent revisions by still other translators within that language, the combined likelihood of a divergence in translation between languages is not just “possible”— but inescapable.
 

What does this mean for the Church?

In abrogating the only non-evolving language — Ecclesiastical Latin — the language through which alone the stringent conceptual architecture of the Church has been articulated, sustained, and preserved, defining its dogma, and sixteen millennia of doctrine — the Magisterium of the Church will now be divided between the Church of roughly 1600 years prior to Pope Leo XIV, and the post-Leonine Magisterium articulated, not through one, but through many languages in many translations. If this indeed is the case, as it well appears to be, then it is unavoidably a move away from apodictic Magisterial certainty.

 If this is what Pope Leo XIV intends, it is not just momentous, but potentially catastrophic, and this is why: the distinct linguistic morphology of Latin is not shared by any other language — it possesses an unparalleled and historically embedded matrix of denotation and meaning — not only which has been — but in which it has been — consistently propagated through sixteen centuries in a way indispensable to matters doctrinal and juridical within Holy Mother Church.

Any appeal to certainty — a certainty absolutely vital to doctrine and unimpeachable Magisterium — that falls short of an unequivocal standard to which all translations must appeal for univocal substantiation — and which alone can exclude all possible translational doubt — of itself subverts the very certainty that it seeks, or must abolish apodictic certainty itself — and with it, Holy Mother Church.

Why?

The Roman Catholic Church is the only institution in the world that (for 2000 years) has claimed absolute certainty concerning its dogmatic and doctrinal utterances. No other religion has made, or been able to make this claim, and possessed the credentials for doing so, and certainly no social or political institution in history has made a pretense to indefeasible ideological claims. Polities and societies change, and such changes are integral to the institutions which articulated them. But this is not so for the Church — nor can it be. The very notion of something logically understood as dogma and doctrine, and at the same time questionable and uncertain is simply an abuse of language. Dogma is certainty. Doctrine is certainty.

If, henceforth, the teachings of Holy Mother Church are no longer — because they can no longer be — understood as unequivocal and categorically certain, then the Church forfeits her right to teach anything absolute, and with that forfeiture, the historical certainty of her Magisterium ends as of Pope Leo’s devastating change on November 24, 2025.

This, of course, will not play out instantly; no more than the devastating changes following the implementation of Vatican II played out immediately — but it is now following a trajectory well established since 1963 and brought to ruinous fruition in the decades that soon followed.

How tragic that the pathological mentality of the 60s so aggressively leached into the Catholic Church, and persists in it with a virulence seen nowhere else.

Perhaps it is due, in part, to the cardinals and bishops who, almost without exception, were and are of that generation, or the children of that generation, both of whom were indoctrinated in the “counterculture” of the 60s: rebellion against authority and established form (moral, artistic, literary, behavioral, etc.), revolution, experimentation, unrestrained freedom of expression (much as we had found, and still find, in the countless iterations of the Novus Ordo Mass) resistance, the inauguration of Earth Day and environmentalism in 1970 (and consecrated in the Church by Leo’s predecessor, Francis, in Laudate si and Laudate Deum).