Part 1: The Church’s Need

1. History

Up until the middle of the 20th century, the Catholic Church used Latin as the main language of liturgy and theology.

In the 1960s the Second Vatican Council took place, aiming to renew the Church. Its documents state:

Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 –

§1. “…the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”

§2. “…the use of the mother tongue… may be extended… in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants.”

This looks nothing like abolishing Latin.

However, under strong pressure from national episcopal conferences, Latin was almost completely displaced by the early 1970s, and the liturgical books were translated into local languages.

Nowadays it is outright impossible to find a Latin Mass of the Ordinary Form in many places, even entire countries.

2. Why It Is Bad

As the old maxim says, lex orandi – lex credendi: people believe according to how they pray.

De jure, dogmatic teaching is primary. It finds expression in the form and wording of prayers. Yet in reality it runs the other way around: people absorb the principles of the faith through prayer.

If so, then lingua orandi est lingua credendi as well: the language of prayer shapes the image of faith. If people use different languages, their faith will inevitably begin to diverge over time.

This is the chief danger of abandoning Latin: the loss of unity.

Like a powerful bond, Latin gathered and held together the entire edifice of the Church. From a cathedral in France to a village chapel in Peru, Catholics pronounced the same carefully honed, theologically precise words at Mass.

At home they might pray privately in their mother tongue. But in the liturgy, the common and public prayer of the Church, you always knew exactly what you would hear.

That is no longer true, and the problem is enormous. I have experienced it repeatedly myself. Arriving in a new country, I wanted to take part in Mass or pray the Rosary with others, only to discover that everything was in a local language I did not understand, making full participation impossible.

The only fallback was to search for a Mass in English – an ersatz Latin for the modern age, so to say.

More than once I have approached a priest for Confession and been unable to receive the Sacrament, because he spoke no language other than his own.

The absence of a common language directly impedes access to sacramental grace. And that undermines the one essential mission of the Church on earth: to administer Sacraments.

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Yet there is an even graver danger.

Latin is more than a pretty relic or a “trad fetish.” It is one of the vital safeguards that has kept the Church from schisms.

If the Church continues for long without a common language, there is a serious risk that within one or two centuries we will see the effective separation of local Churches.

Each will develop its own prayers, theological vocabulary, and eventually its own doctrinal emphases. Those will drift away from the universal magisterium precisely because they are locked inside mutually incomprehensible languages.

An example from real life is the Netherlands from 1960 to 1980. Doctrinal disorientation → the Dutch Catechism of 1966 as its most visible expression → mass apostasy → Mass attendance collapsing from 70% to 15% in a single generation.

Such a threat cannot be dismissed. Not only should Latin be restored as the lingua communis Ecclesiae – it should be restored immediately.

3. Advantages of Latin

Thus, the primary advantage is the unity of liturgy and theology, a built-in defense against heresies and schisms at the level of language.

That alone is would suffice, but there is more.

3.1. Latin is a perfect fit for a sacred language. It does not mutate, has no everyday vulgar use, and is therefore shielded from profanation. Its formulations are precise, yet it sounds majestic and poetic. It has an emotional impact even without full understanding.

The return of Latin will automatically revive the sensus sacri, the sense of the sacred, which has largely faded and that so many people today are desperately seeking.

3.2. Latin is useful for mission. It is impressive and attractive; people are genuinely interested in it.

In multilingual regions (Africa, Asia, the Pacific) Latin enables a priest to arrive anywhere and celebrate immediately, without needing to know ten local dialects. Or, to celebrate for ten different tribes at once without favouring any of them and without risking ethnic tensions.

3.3. Latin is the Church’s living root, the unbreakable link to Tradition and to her own history. When we pray in Latin, we pray as hundreds of saints, popes and Fathers of the Church prayed; in an unbroken line, tracing back to the age of the Apostles themselves.

4. Disadvantages of Latin

Latin has one objective disadvantage: it is not understandable without prior study.

However:

– the regular Catholic does not need to speak Latin fluently. It is enough to know the basic prayers and the Ordinary of the Mass. That Ordinary is quite short. After just one year of actively responding in Latin at Mass, anyone will know it by heart and understand it perfectly.

– Priests can master the required level of Latin without great difficulty. In the past, every rural pater managed it well enough.

– if you eliminate Latin, you will face dozens of local languages instead.

It is better to learn one than dozen. Any Catholic who travels regularly can confirm this, and so can any priest who has been moved from country to country over the course of his ministry.

5. Against Latin

Some common objections:

5.1. “Latin drives away youth and new converts.” An incomprehensible language creates a barrier; people will flee to lively Protestant communities with guitars.

Answer: quite the opposite. Numerous observations and surveys show that youth and converts want Latin. When they come to the Church seeking depth and she does not provide it – that is when they may leave for Protestants with guitars.

5.2. “Vatican II prescribed celebrating in vernacular.”

Answer: nothing of the sort. Cf. the beginning of the article. The current prevailing practice, strictly speaking, contradicts the Council.

SC 54: “…steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them”.

Where exactly are those steps?

5.3. “Priests themselves do not know Latin.”

Answer: as of 2024, in North America there were more than 750 diocesan priests who celebrate the Tridentine Mass at least occasionally, even though seminaries hardly teach it.

This proves that it is perfectly possible to learn Latin even with 3–6 months of self-study. Not to the level of fluent speech, of course, but the necessary liturgic minimum.

A proper course makes it even easier.

5.4. “Latin reduces the laity into passive listeners rather than active participants.”

Answer: this depends on how the Mass is celebrated, not on the language used. In my life I have witnessed active TMs, passive NOs, and vice versa.

Therefore, Mass (whatever the form) should be celebrated in a way that encourages the responses of the congregation. Reading and hymns can be in the vernacular, just as Vatican II envisaged.

5.5. “Latin is a tool of western cultural colonialism.”

Answer: Latin was the language of the multinational Roman Empire, freely adopted by Christians in 3rd–4th centuries. It became familiar to Gauls, Iberians, Africans, and many others centuries before Europe entered the colonial era.

6. The Same Goal Without Latin?

Some will say: we agree that Latin provides unity and sacredness, and this is indeed valuable. Still, it is a particular historical language, originally the tongue of a pagan empire hostile to Christianity.

But the mission of Church, though unfolding within human history, is not obliged to be chained to it. Why cling so tightly to Latin? Its time has passed. Why not choose a new common language for the Church – yes, unifying and sacred, but another one?

Answer:

In theory, this is possible. Nothing prevents us from adopting some other language as the foundation of orandi et credendi.

But which one?

– English, the current lingua franca? It is widespread, everyone studies it, many find it pleasant-sounding.

But English carries heavy geopolitical baggage from which Latin is free. And what if another language displaces it as the global medium? The Church would once again find herself chasing the spirit of the age and ending up empty-handed.

– Esperanto? A beautiful and perfectly neutral language. But it remains a niche project and has no real cultural footprint outside a circle of enthusiasts.

– Chinese? But it is tonal. Roughly 90% of humanity speaks non-tonal languages. For adults, acquiring functional proficiency will be extraordinarily difficult – it requires retraining both ear and speech apparatus.

– Construct a new language from scratch?

An intriguing idea. One could blend the historically decisive languages of revelation (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, perhaps touches of Aramaic) and shape its phonology exactly as desired.

Such a language would be symbolically rich, even inheriting a measure of historical weight from its parent tongues. It would “feel” more ancient than it actually is.

This is fascinating, but, alas, unrealistic. Humanity has not reach the level of collective clarity where a billion people would simply adopt an artificial language for sacred use.

Thus, Latin has no viable alternatives.

The need is evident. What remains is to understand why we lost Latin so abruptly, and whether it can be brought back.

Continued in Part 2.