Might Latin Have A Part to Play?

Catholic traditionalists are sometimes accused of selecting the bits of the Second Vatican Council they like and forgetting the rest

But this amnesia also exists elsewhere, not least regarding clause 36:1 of the decree Sacrosanctum Concilium: “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rite.”

The celebration of Mass in a language that people understood and in a form intended to recover and re-emphasise earlier liturgical traditions, that the reforms of the Council initiated, brought with it a fuller participation that not only transformed the experience of Mass-going for Catholics but their sense of the place of all the baptised in the Church. The reformed Mass is the settled liturgical expression of the theology of the Council.

The sense of a liturgical mysterium tremendum was not lost when Mass was celebrated in the vernacular, but the sense of awe, of something mighty and majestic, near but just out of reach, is readily evoked when it is said in Latin. The plainsong Missa de Angelis, done well, has a haunting beauty that transforms the spiritual experience. This explains why many parishes include Latin Gregorian chants such as the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei in the Mass, and why the pre-conciliar version of the Latin rite, the so-called “Tridentine Rite”, still has an allure for a small minority of Catholics.

Mass in the vernacular should be the norm. Scriptural readings should remain in the vernacular. But Latin has its place as part of the Church’s liturgical heritage. Its inclusion does not have to come at the price of a loss of liturgical unity. Latin is glimpsed in contemporary culture through the law – habeas corpus, affidavit, bona fide, cui bono – through medicine – pectoralis major, vertebra, fibula, virus – and in horticulture – rosa, helleborus and clematis. It is time for the Church to reclaim it as its own, and with it, the sense of being rooted in classical culture yet spread without boundaries of ethnicity or nationality through time and space.

The funeral service for Pope Francis – most of it in Latin, but with the homily in Italian and prayers in English, Polish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, German and Chinese – and the ceremonial surrounding the installation of Pope Leo has revived interest in liturgical Latin, as has the new Pope’s clear singing voice and his mastery of Gregorian plainsong. This is the tradition the bishops at Vatican II wanted to preserve. Could a revival of Latin in the liturgy coupled with greater use of plainsong be a modest component – and even help to drive – the liturgical renewal across the global Church in every parish and diocese that Pope Leo might make one of the marks of his papacy?

~ THE TABLET, 14 June 2025