Liturgical Contemplations - Latin in Liturgy

I would be in favor of a new openness toward the use of Latin. Latin in the Mass has come meanwhile to look to us like a fall from grace. So that, in any case, communication is ruled out that is very necessary in areas of mixed culture... Let's think of tourist centers, where it would be lovely for people to recognize each other in something they have in common. So we ought to keep such things alive and present. If even in the great liturgical celebrations in Rome, no one can sing the Kyrie or the Sanctus any more, no one knows what Gloria means, then a cultural loss has become a loss of what we share in common. To that extent I should say that the Liturgy of the Word should always be in the mother tongue, but there ought nonetheless to be a basic stock of Latin elements that would bind us together.

[God and the World (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2002), pp. 417-18]

Commentary: One of the shadows of the Vatican II Council has been the blatant rejection of everything Roman, including the Latin language in the liturgy. In fact, much like the propaganda begun at the inception of the Church of England (where the Catholic Church was derogatorily termed "Roman"), the word "Roman" once again falls into disfavour, this time by the Catholics themselves.

Many, after Vatican II, have come to take pride in their being "Catholic", because in their subjective assessment, being Catholic speaks of a plurality. Being Catholic is the perfect excuse for not toeing the liturgical line, e.g. "We're Malaysian Catholic, so let's do it the Malaysian way.

While these take pride in being Catholic, they detest the thought of being ROMAN Catholic, because being Roman, for them, speaks of a particularity to which they object. In which case, Latin as the language of the Roman Church is discarded with distaste. After all, why should anyone want to use a language that isn't theirs?

This is ethnocentrism. We react to that which we perceive as external impositions, and in return, impose our own right to use our vernacular language whilst discarding Latin in totality simply because the latter isn't our language. The reason given is that we know our own language and we're more comfortable in our own language. But really, if you were truly Catholic as you say you are, you'd be very aware of the fact that not all Catholics are like you. And if all Catholics abided by such ethnocentric principles, it wouldn't take very long before the Church would lose its linguistic catholicity. Imagine hundreds of thousands of Catholics coming together as one Church, and yet, not being able to pray or worship together simply because they all insisted on the use of their own languages at the expense of the greater unity of the Catholic Church. What misperceived notions of Catholicity.

Therefore, today, if anyone speaks against the preservation of even the slightest tint of Latin in the liturgy of the Church, it cannot be anything more than a manifestation of myopic self-serving ethnocentrism.