I am writing two other posts at the moment, but both have been stifled by that awful ''writer's block'' phenomenon. But here are some questions to fill the gap:
Is the ability to understand Latin necessarily a ''good'' in the appreciation of Traditional Liturgy? I ask because I can read the Rubrics of the Missal and most of the Propers and Ordinary with relative fluency. Does this enable me to ''understand'' Liturgy better than your average joe?
What is it that determines whether a language is ''liturgical'' or not? Is it the immemorial use of that tongue, such as the Latin and Greek languages? Modern vernacular tongues are by no means ''liturgical'' languages of course...
Tuesday 23 February 2010
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I have come to view most of the arguments for a "liturgical language" as essentially bogus. I don't believe there is any such thing. There is a liturgical register, of course - the outcome of a determination to be utterly faithful to the sense, spirit and cadences of the original Biblical and patristic texts, even to the point of doing violence to the "host" tongue. Such "violence", however, in turn creates the conditions by which the Tradition is embedded in the host tongue. That's one of the things, as you're no doubt aware, that distinguishes liturgical from Ciceronian Latin.
ReplyDeleteThere is no virtue whatsoever in insisting on services in a tongue utterly incomprehensible to all but an educated few. In fact, I'd suggest it is one the chief duties of bishops to ensure the incarnation of the Tradition in the languages of their flock. How is one to be transformed by the liturgy if one encounters its texts only with one's face buried in a missal? Hence, I suspect, the predominant notion in the West that the liturgy is a mere receptacle for the "magic words", without any objective value of its own. We all know the consequences of that particular piece of scholastic reductionism...
Moretben, I would argue that since the only Western Patriarchate is Rome, the churches in communion with her should use the Rite and Language that she herself uses - the Latin language and the Roman Rite.
ReplyDeleteAs for understanding in the literal sense - Liturgy is a mystery of the Faith that enshrines an even greater mystery - that of the Eucharist, the Incarnation, Redemption...if you can understand Latin, great, but you're not really that much better off than ''your average joe''...
I think that the Orthodox use of local languages just disguises nationalist prejudices rather than exemplifies a pious and pastoral understanding of the Orthodox hierarchy...at any rate, I don't like worshipping in my mother tongue. I think it goes against the grain. All my private devotions are in Latin.
Mortben - so do you suppose the Jews in Our Lords time, did not fully worship God in the temple, when they used Hebrew?
ReplyDeleteSirian - I don't know: such judgements are entirely beyond my competence. However Christ Himself (and several of the prophets before him) makes it clear that we may at least be permitted to doubt it - don't you agree? If New Testament worship is characteristically "in spirit and in truth", clearly the intention in the context is to draw a contrast with what preceded it. I would agree that this is not necessarily or exclusively a function of having worshipped in Hebrew - nevertheless isn't it significant that Our Lord usually quotes the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic texts?
ReplyDeleteDo you think the Modernist bid to re-engineer the Catholic faith by smuggling in entirely new texts under the cover of "translation into the vernacular" would have met so little resistance if a living relationship with the ancient texts had equipped the people to smell out the scam? Lex orandi lex credendi?
Patricius - you should have given your last reason first. Your first is pure legalism - a subordination of man to the Sabbath - and therefore negligible as an argument. It depends, besides, on a legal fiction - that Latin being "the official language of the Church", one ought to worship as Rome does. Benedict XVI has never since his election celebrated the Gregorian rite publicly, and celebrates the NOM more often in Italian than in Latin. Yet you yourself insist that both the NO and the vernacular should be shunned: I agree with you on the former, but my position is at least coherent and consitent.
ReplyDeleteReason #2 is a kind of spurious apophaticism: comprehensible texts are unnecessary since the Mystery is unknowable in any case; but true apophaticism reposes precisely in Revelation - and that's what the Liturgy is! Everything is therefore essential to its "fullness" - the comprehensibility and "singability" of its texts included. The Liturgy is the "placenta" of the Church - the means by which essential nutrients are communicated to us. In relation to the texts, the Holy Spirit supplies the words and our part consists of "putting our minds where our mouths are" as St Benedict puts it.
I have no problem with people worshipping in Latin "because they like it". That's great. I like it too (and by the way I was serving "EF" Masses in people's garages and hired halls before you were born. I still know by heart certain of the Psalms only in their Latin versions). I like Koine Greek. I like Slavonic - but I suggest the reason you feel worship in your mother tongue "goes against the grain" is because you've never had the opportunity to experience it.
The great tragedy of the botched Vatican II "reform" is that the NO debacle has effectively tainted for the foreseeable future the wholly good and laudable aspiration to make the ancient Roman Rite in its fullness and integrity available in local languages. The same thing has happened within the Russian Church as a consequence of Communist attempts to detatch the people from Orthodoxy by means of a state-sponsored "Restorationist movement" promoting the services in modern Russian (if you wish to abuse a Russian Orthodox, call him a "restorationist"); but this particular development had already been proposed by St Tikhon on the eve of the Revolution!
I'm familiar with your reluctance to ascribe any creditable or pious motivation to the Orthodox - I hope the prejudice doesn't extend to SS Cyril and Methodius. In any case, reaching beyond the caricatures, both Greek and Russian jurisdictions of the "diaspora" have been very energetic in promoting the services in the local languages. I am a tonsured reader in the Greek Archdiocese here, and my parish regularly uses a translation of the Divine Liturgy developed in collaboration with the Russian Diocese of Sourozh. I also serve once a month at a local Russian monastery. I don't use Slavonic.
However Christ Himself (and several of the prophets before him) makes it clear that we may at least be permitted to doubt it - don't you agree? If New Testament worship is characteristically "in spirit and in truth", clearly the intention in the context is to draw a contrast with what preceded it.
ReplyDeleteI think your slant is rather far-fetched. Our Lord worshipped in Hebrew when in the temple and so did the apostles. The worship "in spirit and in truth" has nothing whatsoever to do with whether we worship in the vernacular or in a dead language. I agree there is nothing theologically wrong with worshipping in the vernacular and many saints have not copied Patricius example of even having their private devotions in Latin. But if you are looking to the scriptures for arguments against a liturgical language, you will look in vain.
Arguments in favour of liturgical languages take many forms. I would argue from an aesthetic position most forcefully - English Liturg is boring (but then again, so is the New Rite in Latin - too verbose and the ceremony is unedifying). There is also the fact that ''dead'' (dormant surely?) languages do not change...
ReplyDeleteThis is all hackneyed though. Don't the same old arguments get boring? I worship in Latin because it is as Latin Christians have always done. I have the added ''advantage'' that I can read Latin. I also find the language the finest I have ever encountered, very beautiful, logical and edifying.
I am afraid that both your arguments are rather beyond me, and I sometimes feel the inferior and rustic blog host to a very erudite liturgical debate...
Sirian - I certainly don't recommend "looking in Scripture for arguments" about anything.
ReplyDeleteWe engage with Scripture properly within the Tradition: from which it's incontrovertible that, for whatever reason, the idea of a uniquely privileged "sacral" language was one of the first things to be ditched. Its resuscitation is part of the post-Constantinian "pseudomorphosis", or re-erection of "religion". People who like "religion" like "liturgical language".
Patricius - If you're in favour of Latin because you like it, fine! Just say that! Like the tiara and the sedia gestatoria, Latin is glamorous and it's unsurprising that those immured in the arid, insensible banalities of modern Catholicism should repine for such things. Only don't try to absolutise the sentiment with legalistic or pseudo-theological arguments in support of incomprehensibility per se!
ReplyDeleteThe texts are an integral and indispensible part of what the liturgy is. We're supposed to to engage with them. They're supposed to enter our hearts.
When you say "English liturgy is boring", you're speaking from experience of boring English liturgy. You can't possibly be insisting that English is intrinsically unlovely and incapable of elevated and noble expression.
It is certainly an interesting question and I would emphatically agree with Moretben about a 'liturgical register'.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me as interesting, and perhaps significant, that the 'resistance' to the twentieth century liturgical reforms was weakest in countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal (and their former territories) where their vernacular languages were closest to Latin. One suspects that the change to vernacular wasn't seen a such an issue there and the peoples' understanding of Latin was higher than in English-speaking countries.
I really don't see any advantage in people not understanding the verbal communication of the Liturgy. Of course, one can, get much from non-verbal language. I remember some years ago attending an Armenian liturgy with a, sadly, now departed Orthodox priest who was a friend of mine. "That was good" GW said afterwards. I enquired whether he had any Armenian - "Not a word." However, I think this goes back to 'liturgical register' and one needs a view of liturgical shape to understand this non-verbal language.
I would also argue that Coverdale & Cranmer's English are a liturgical language.
It strikes me that one of the strongest arguments for Latin is the one of musical tradition. The compositions of Palestrina, Victoria, Tye, Sheppard etc are art forms that use Latin as a basic ingredient - like a certain pigment in the painting of an Old Master - one cannot have them in English without destroying the particular artistic form they represent.
Intellibility...the general thrust of that argument is rather Protestant I think. While attempts to make the Liturgy more accessable has desirable motives, it rather depends upon the people put in charge of implementing the change. I would be more in favour of a ''liturgical movement'' in which the chief aims are the increase of High Mass, sung Office, wider use of Mass settings (Mass VIII with Credo III is so banal, but when Credo III is not used, Credo I is used - why not the others? Credo V is my favourite), more Processions, Litanies, education in the Latin tongue etc.
ReplyDeleteI am wary of ''liturgical catechesis'' since I dislike analysis of this kind. Catechesis should be a seperate affair, after which the tutor should say: ''we will now proceed into the church for Sung Vespers.'' When the children ask the tutor why the Psalms are sung in a strange tongue and in a strange way, the tutor should say something like: ''it is the Latin language. Latin means culture and civilisation; it is our link with the Western Fathers who expounded the Faith, with the early Missionaries to this Isle who converted us from the darkness of idol-worship, and most importantly with the Bishop of that glorious City on the banks of the Tiber. Moreover, the Psalms the choir are singing are the very same that Our Lord Himself sang in the Temple. This is the Catholic Tradition.''
Intellibility...the general thrust of that argument is rather Protestant I think.
ReplyDeleteLOL, Patricius! When up against it, detonate the "P" word! ;o)
When the Roman Church finally switched from Greek to Latin (in, I think, the 4th Century, following the North African Province) it was not for reasons remotely "Protestant"; it was not in pursuit of more restricted intelligibility; it was not because Latin was a "dead language"!
As a member of a choir myself, I think the musical point Rubriacaius makes is a good one.
ReplyDeleteMoretben,
I hope you are well.
Paul (aka flying finn from St. Thads forum)
PS I am beginning to make good use of the Liber Usualis you gave me. Slowly but surely. It would be nice to get in contact with you.