The Glory and Power of Latin Liturgy

I believe that every person, man woman or child, can be at ease with the Latin parts of the Mass which pertain to them, such as the Confiteor, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater Noster and Agnus Dei. By reciting these every Sunday at Mass (as required by Vatican II, in fact) with an accompanying English translation, they easily get to know what they are saying. They do not need to know Latin Grammar. They do not even need a word-for word translation; many of us happily sang Frère Jacque in primary school without knowing its translation, and at a recent Christmas Carol Concert by primary school children they sang one Carol with a different language for each verse: German, French, Spanish, Italian and English. No Latin of course -this was a Catholic school.

The New Liturgical Movement posted an article of great interest the other day by David Clayton. It was entitled ‘ The devil Hates Latin, says Exorcist’ (see here).  it is worth a read. Yesterday I came across a post by an anonymous Caremlite nun on the Usus Antiquior site entitled ‘Why Latin?’ (see here). I was struck by the simplicity of Sister’s words, and have already put them into the Bulletin. Sister begins by asking,

Question: “Does the Devil hate Latin?

 Answer: Yes.

Question: Why?

Answer: Because Latin is inherently divine? No, it’s a human tongue. Because it is intrinsically superior as a language?  Maybe not.  It is certainly beautiful in its unique way, and there are prayers, hymns and sequences that are only as effective as they are because of the succinct Latin drumbeat in which they are composed (e.g., Lauda Sion Salvatorem, Dies iræ, Victimæ paschali laudes, Corde natus ex parentis), to say nothing of the mind-opening secular works of Cicero, Ovid et al.

Here is the section I quoted and noted in the Bulletin:

I quoted: 'Satan hates Latin because Latin promotes unity, especially the unity of the Church, Christ’s mystical Body.  Unity among the members of His Body on earth, yes, but also unity of the past, the present and the future—in fact the whole Communion of Saints.  Disunity is what the Devil is all about: he divides, scatters and confuses.  His very title means just that (devil, diabolo, from the Greek dia ballein, “to throw apart”). As Screwtape might have taught, anything that serves the principle of unity, especially unity of faith, should be resisted, opposed, undermined..” 

I noted: Let us not resist, oppose or undermine Latin then,  it is for the sake of our unity in God that we should value, support and promote Latin, not side with the devil by opposing and resisting it.

Sister also says, “As members of secular society, we are willing to put tremendous effort into learning second languages, or requiring our children to learn them, and for the sake of mere commerce and recreation. But we are members of Christ’s Body first, and the unity for which He prayed does not exist where His members do not—because they cannot—worship together.”

I recommend readers to read sister’s post and to reflect upon its insights.

I am no Latin scholar. In fact, in our seminary in the 1980s/90's we went through six years of seminary without any training in Latin (contrary to the teaching of Vatican II in Optatam Totius and to the Code of Canon Law, Canon 249). In order to celebrate the Usus Antiquior I and Andrew McDowell, the ‘tie’ of this blog, attended a one year course in Latin basics so as to become at least ‘idoneous’. 

First Sunday of Lent

So, Lent has begun. As every year, I am reminding folk that Lent is not about bashing ourselves over the head for our sin; we ate not meant to damage ourselves. Rather, Lent it is about weeping and mourning, as Ash Wednesday reminded us; weeping and mourning for having offended God who loves us so much. When we hurt someone we love, such as our child, our parents, our brother or sister, we hurt for them, do we not? We make up to them by doing something nice for them; by actively showing our love. This is a good way of handling Lent: doing something beautiful for God, as Mother Teresa of Calcutta would say. Those beautiful things are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The first two relate directly to God, the third to our neighbour.

Our prayer is our way of speaking to God and listening to His response in our conscience; our heart. We cannot have a good relationship with those with whom we never converse, and this is as true of our relationship with God as it is true of our relationships with those around us.

Fasting is not about giving up sugar or our favourite TV show for Lent then going back to them when Lent is over; it is about changing who we are by our way of life; about getting rid of old bad habits and developing new, good habits. It is about giving up all those things that, even though they may be good in themselves (such as sporting events, time with family etc) can become distractions from our religious duties (how many of us choose to play in a sporting event than attend Sunday Mass?) getting our priorities right: putting God first, not the glories or comforts of the world: as Thursday reminded us, what gain is it to have won the whole world yet lost or ruined one’s very soul?

Almsgiving is the social aspect of doing something beautiful for God, and fixes our attention on the acts of corporal and spiritual mercy; it is about taking the time to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick, visit the imprisoned, pray for the sinner, instruct the ignorant etc.

We will all fail as we struggle through Lent -and through life. We came into this world handicapped by sin; we came into it broken people, and we cannot expect the broken to work perfectly. This is where the need to have ‘broken hearts’ rather than bashed heads is important: Christ equates sin with sickness of soul, saying He has not come for the virtuous but for the sinner; the healthy have no need of a physician, it is the sick who need him. And we are sick. All of us are sick in sin to one degree or another; all of us need Christ. Lent is a time for refocusing on our relationship with Him. The devil may show us the comforts and glory of the world with its relativism and subjectivism. We have to be strong. We have to worship not the things of the world or follow passing political correctness; we have to put God before worldly glories, and adhere to the truth, which is Christ, because it is only the truth which sets us free.

Radicalisation

A commentator (James) noted my lack of contributions to the blog recently, and Father Dickson made known my procrastination, so I thought I’d better contribute something...

I attended a talk on Radicalisation this week, in which we were told about the problems caused by radicalisation and how to spot it, but we were given no definition of it. It seemed to be assumed to be religious extremism expressed in terrorism. I believe from Wikipedia that the British Home Office has defined Radicalisation as “The process by which people come to support terrorism and violent extremism and, in some cases, then join terrorist groups.”

During discussions after the talk I voiced the idea that “people can be radicalised in Secularism too, but be unaware of it”. The speaker dismissed this, but I believe many people today are radicalised in secularism and don’t know it, with an obdurate adherence to relativism which causes them to engage in the active persecution of Christian folk -aided and abetted by Governments who pass ‘hate laws’ by which anyone offended by religious belief can legally persecute their neighbour.

Governments rightly seek to stem terrorism, but they might be said to engage in radicalisation themselves on behalf of atheism when they enforce relativist secularism in education and establish laws that hinder religious people from living by the basic tenets of their faith. Thus Christians have been persecuted under ‘hate crime’ laws for holding to marriage as a union of one man and one woman for the procreation of the human race and stability of society. One need only think of bakers who have been prosecuted for refusing to bake a cake for a homosexual pairing or for refusing to let a room to a homosexual pair; one need only think of marriage officials fired for refusing issue marriage certificates which violate their beliefs; one need only think of folk forbidden to wear religious items at work, such as a crucifix.

I wonder if it is not true that radicalisation in atheism is occurring in our schools and colleges by the promotion of relativism and secularism, with persecution of decent, religious folk by legal prosecution its consequence? The unswerving dedication by secularists/atheists to relativism is the very thing they deride in Christianity: dogmatism. The relativists have failed to see or are ignoring their contradictory stance: “it is true that there is no truth”, along with their duplicitous ignoring of their persecution of persons in their prosecution of Christians. 

Gifts and the Epiphany

I’ve said time and time again not to believe anything one hears from a pulpit whether it be by a Bishop or Priest, and not to simply believe whatever one reads on some internet site (be by a Bishop or Priest or theologian) because we can all get it wrong. My recommendation is always to buy and study the Catechism, because we can all be too easily astray. For example, we’re singing ‘We Three Kings from Orient are’ at the moment, but how many kings does the bible say there were? It says ‘some’, it doesn’t say three. And it uses the words Magi, rather than kings. So not only do we not know how many Magi there were, we don’t know if they were teachers, kings or just distinguished men. And how old was the Child Jesus when the Magi came? Reckoning by the date the Wise Men gave him, Herod had all the male children less than two years old killed, so Our Lord may have been a two-year-old by the time the Magi visited. And He may not have been lying in a stable manger when they arrived, for Matthew tells us the Magi went into a house, not a stable.

This needn’t disturb us; the scriptures do say wise men visited the infant Jesus bringing three gifts, and stables were often the lower floor of a dwelling, so it may have been the very same building visited by both the shepherds and the Magi. But the actual biblical text compared with our hymn sheets should wise us up to getting to know our Faith well, by getting a Catechism and learning the official, formulated teaching of the Church as set down by the Magisterium over the centuries.

But to turn to the message of this particular Feast of the Epiphany: the romanticism of Christmas with a star in the sky, angels singing ‘Gloria’ and our families and friends exchanging gifts, food and drink, can bring us to miss the message of Christmas -which is one of reconciliation between God and man. God’s gift to the nations is His Son; what is our gift to Him going to be? Well, there are three traditional offerings that we are expected to give God: prayer, fasting and almsgiving; we can also give more time to visiting the sick, the housebound and the imprisoned. But reconciliation between the individual soul and God is only half the story: we need to be reconciled to one another too. So, is there someone to whom you need to say ‘sorry’? Reconcile with them. Is there someone whose reputation you’ve damaged? Restore their reputation in the eyes of those to whom you defamed them. 

If this jubilee Year of Mercy is going to achieve anything it must focus on the sacrament of reconciliation, and the celebration God’s mercy celebrated in prayer, fasting and almsgiving. So go to Confession; go regularly (at least once a month) to grow in the grace of reconciliation with God. And feel free –indeed be ready- to challenge the sinful attitudes and actions of those who are engaging in sin; challenge them in order to help them to reconcile their lives to the beauty of goodness and truth. Call them to meet Christ in Confession too. In the Epiphany, God is calling to all men of all nations; let us then give all folk the opportunity of being healed by Christ, the Light of the World. 

Reflections of the Christmas Feasts

On December 25^th we celebrated the Nativity. We are often told that Christmas is about Children. The truth is that it’s about one child: the Christ Child, God-made-man, who came to earth to redeem us from sin. And no sin is too big to be forgiven, for no sin can be bigger than God who is infinite (without end –and how can you get beyond that which has no end?) So no one should ever be afraid of facing God. If Christmas is about anything it is about God coming into the world to seek out and save that which was lost: mankind, so we should never be afraid to run to Him for mercy. We should, however, have a fear of sin -and a healthy rebuke of ourselves, for the danger lies not in God but in us: we get complacent because we judge ourselves against the worst in society, and since we don’t murder, don’t rob with violence, don’t cheat on our spouse and don’t abuse our kids; and since we do give time to supporting others in need, donating to charity and coming to Holy Mass we feel good about ourselves. But none of this stops us falling into sins of omission: the neglect of our prayer life; the neglect of developing our understanding of The Faith; the neglect of public witness; nor does it prevent us falling into sins of commission such as gossip, duplicity, impurity and drunkenness. So while we should never fear God because His mercy is infinite, we should  -we must-  fear sin, since sin separates us from God. It can kill our relationship with the God who loves us -not from His side, but from ours by choosing to sin. So never fear God, but do fear sin. Do you fear sin, or do you dismiss it easily?

On December 26^th we celebrated St. Stephen, the proto Martyr. Like Stephen, we have to die. We may not have to die a physical death as did those beheaded by ISIS, but we do have to die to selfishness and self-directive autonomy. We do have to die to the vices that put distance between ourselves and God, and between us and our neighbour. It isn’t easy to die to self; we are so used to getting our own way in so many things. But to die to self is an essential part of the Christian Life; “THY will be done” (not mine). Can we get up fifteen minutes earlier to ensure we begin our day with God? Can we switch off the TV or computer to do good and fulfil our responsibilities in life? Can we call it a night when out with friends and they take a wrong turn in alcohol consumption or conversation? Can we say no to passing pleasures for happiness in Heaven?

On December 28^th we celebrated the Holy Innocents. It would be easy to relate this to the slaughter of unborn children that has overtaken society since the 1967 Abortion act in the UK and Roe Versus Wade in 1973. The correlation would be sound, but incomplete. For the innocence of children is being slaughtered every day in classrooms and in the media, and with this goes great damage to their spiritual life. Schools are pushing a sex-education curriculum that rejects the Gospel of Christ (yet left unchallenged or worse, even supported by the majority of Bishops); classrooms in our colleges push moral relativism as a non-judgmental stance to our young adults; the media affirms cohabitation, contraception, homosexual activity and promiscuity of men and women as normal, and often presents the killing of the unborn child and the sick as wise and compassionate. Can you see the errors in the sexualisation of our children by school and college curricula? Can you switch off the TV when it focuses on violence and immoral lifestyles?

The messages of Christmas are not romantic if we see beyond the emotionalism of the season, but how many of us do? I’m afraid the majority of our Bishops and presbyters do not, cannot or will not. No wonder our people today reject solid teaching in the homilies of the tradition-loyal priest, and reject liturgies which focus on God and propitiation for sin rather than bright and breezy liturgy focused on affirming the people who should still be working out their salvation “in fear and trembling” (Phil.2v12).

Those Tax Collectors and Prostitutes

One can almost hear those whose understanding of mercy is distorted proclaiming that all should be welcome at Holy Communion in light of today’s reading from the Novus Ordo. The Gospel passage in question is Matthew 21v28-38: “Prostitutes and tax collectors are making their way into the kingdom of God before you”. What the proponents of the distorted Gospel will say is that these prostitutes (and this would include all sexually irregular lives) and tax collectors (dishonest, collaborating men) are making their way into the Banquet of Heaven before Traditional Catholics who ‘count their rosaries’ while holding like Pharisees to the Church’s laws. Nonsense; that is prejudiced (or at the very least ignorant) preaching. The reason those prostitutes and dishonest men were making their way into the Kingdom of God was because they left their sin behind after hearing John the Baptist: “John came, a pattern of true righteousness, and you did not believe him, yet the tax collectors and prostitutes did.” And what was it John was preaching? “Repent ('about face'), for the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand” (Matt. 3v2). It was because of their repentance; their metanoia, their ‘about face’ that they entered the Kingdom of Heaven; they were in fact former tax collectors and former prostitutes, not people actively living a life of sin. You can bet your last dollar that this will be forgotten in many homilies offered today, and that what we will will be distorted presentations of mercy that diminish or even eradicate the need for a change in lifestyle; presentations that say we should accept active homosexuals, cohabitees and those in civil marriages to the Eucharist. Such preachers are, I suggest, by failing to act on the Gospel teaching of John, our Lord, and the 2000 year history of the Church, those who 'do not believe’. Their love for the sinner is not one of holy charity and truth but a human emotion –and it is human emotion that lead many they support into the irregular lifestyles Holy Mother Church has long-since labelled ‘occasions of sin’. 
Who could not want to see everyone in heaven? Whop could ever hope that any soul would be lost? Surely we all want to see every person whom the lord has created and for whom He died enter into heaven? But we do have to uphold the need for a change of life from one of vice to virtue if that is to happen, all the while encouraging folk that no matter how often they fall, if they are genuinely repentant and willing to return to the life of virtue, that there is no sin God cannot or will not forgive, and that he is eager to welcome them home.

Youth, Christ the King & The Ten Commandments

This weekend the Church is celebrating the Feast of Christ the King. Moving it to the end of the Liturgical year in the Novus Ordo gives the feast a kind of ‘parousial’ feel; something along the lines of “in the end, Christ will reign over all”. While it is undoubtedly true that Christ will reign in over all at the end of time, the reality is that Christ has a social kingship over man even now; thus one reason for the Ten Commandments. On the Feast of Christ the King when we in the UK pray for the youth, it is useful to remind ourselves that when the young man in the Gospel asked Our Lord what he had to do to inherit eternal life Our Lord said ‘keep the Commandments’ (Matt.19v16,17).

Yet to the detriment of souls, The Commandments are often ignored today as outdated –even by the highest ranking of prelates who currently seek to eliminate the practicalities of the 6^th and 9^th Commandments under the guise of mercy. They, like many today, seem to defer to majority of public opinion and to the legality of an act rather than its moral quality; they allow folk to determine their choices by whether or not an act is legal or illegal, rather than morally right or wrong. To act this way is to abandon our duty to give precedence to God by giving precedence to the State and it’s laws; it is to follow a false god. While the right to determine the legality of an act rightly belongs to the Government, the right to determine the moral quality of an act as right or wrong belongs to God alone, and this moral quality is expressed in the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are not simply social justice directives or cold laws to prove loyalty to God, but a Charter for our Individual Character Formation so that we become morally good and ‘fit-in’ with God when we die: God is He Who Is, therefore we honour and serve Him above all people, places and things (we keep holy the Sabbath); God is holy, so we respect is Holy Name (we do not take the Lord’s name in vain); God is faithful, so we are faithful (we do not commit adultery); God is Truth, so we are truthful in all we say and do (we do not bear false witness, we do not steal); God is Life therefore we protect and promote human life which is made in His image(we do not kill); God is generous with His gifts, (so we do not covet our neighbours goods; we are content with what we have). If we want to form our character into one that fits with God and able to live with Him in heaven, then we need to keep the Commandments and teach others -especially the youth- to do the same in this God-forsaking world. We have already denied youth the Truth by removing the ‘Penny Catechism’ from schools; we have already denied them an act of worship that focuses them on God. We are now denying them even the Ten Commandments and thus the ability to form their character for Heaven. The Feast of Christ the King reminds us that our Lord is King of the Universe from beginning to end; in time and in eternity. And while the Church as Christ’s Body on earth is not obliged to rule each country as its government, all governments should recognise the ultimate and Absolute Sovereignty of Christ and ensure statutory laws are consistent with the Ten Commandments. If they pass laws contrary to the Law of God they set themselves up as an alternative authority to Christ; those who then follow the law of the land rather than the law of God abandon Christ to follow instead the sitting President or Prime Minister, breaking the very first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no gods before me”. 

It is God’s right to be honoured and served as God; it is His due to have all bow before Him and conform themselves to Him, whether they be Monarch, President or Prime Minister. It is to our eternal good that we follow the Ten Commandments, and to our eternal detriment if we do not. Thank God for Confession! And go often: “Those who are accustomed to receiving Communion often or daily should be instructed that they should approach the Sacrament of Penance at appropriate intervals, in accordance with the condition of each” (Redemptionis Sacramemtum #86, CDF/CDWDS, 2004); “Daily or frequent communicants should be instructed to go to confession regularly, depending on their individual needs” (Eucharisticum mysterium #35, Sacred Congregation of Rites, 1967)