Thanks to everyone linking to this site. I’ve begun to blogroll all of you that have been so kind. I’m using the WordPress Dashboard to find out who has linked here. If I haven’t included your site in the Blogroll list and you have linked here, let me know at once and I’ll fix it.
I don’t usually have a strong internet connection so I can’t spend too much time putting up the Latin/English and the layout is quite wooden. Leo, one of the Voices in the Wilderness, has suggested using Bible commentary on the Scripture posts. A useful suggestion, which I think I’ll begin soon. I intend to run through the posts beginning January, editing them with a more recent translation in addition to the standard Catholic Douay-Rheims, probably the RSV, (another good suggestion in the comments) and changing the timestamp the current time; earlier posts will of course begin to disappear.
In other news, I attended only my second Tridentine Rite Mass today. I’m beginning to get used to following the Latin in my 1960 Missal. Reading through the Vulgate an putting this blog up has certainly helped. No fuss; this is Latin everyone should be able to use easily. Thank you, Holy Father Benedict.
Good stuff from the National Archives:
1. Basic Latin
2. Advanced Latin
Links happily acquired from Past Thinking.
So far, I have been posting interesting things I find in my daily stroll through the Vulgate, along with little bits from prayers and the occasional hymn to break any monotony felt from reading OT excerpts.
So. Is this helping anyone? Is anyone really reading the Latin? Are we wasting our time? Give me some comments and what you think could make this better. Please use the comments box.
Pax Christi.
“…In order to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church, I wish to endorse the proposal made by the Synod of Bishops, in harmony with the directives of the Second Vatican Council, that, with the exception of the readings, the homily and the prayer of the faithful, such liturgies could be celebrated in Latin. Similarly, the better-known prayers of the Church’s tradition should be recited in Latin and, if possible, selections of Gregorian chant should be sung. Speaking more generally, I ask that future priests, from their time in the seminary, receive the preparation needed to understand and to celebrate Mass in Latin, and also to use Latin texts and execute Gregorian chant; nor should we forget that the faithful can be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin, and also to sing parts of the liturgy to Gregorian chant…”
Most excellent. The bold formatting of the text is, of course, my own work.
Access the entire document right here.
I will be working 24 hours for a while. Here’s Dr. Blosser’s post on Fr. Reginald’s despair.
This from Fr. Reginald Foster, the ‘Pope’s Latinist’:
“It is dying in the Church. I’m not optimistic about Latin. The young priests and bishops are not studying it,” said Fr Reginald Foster, 68, a Carmelite friar who was appointed the Papal Latinist 38 years ago by Pope Paul VI.
He said priests were no longer compelled to study Latin at seminaries, and now found it impossible to read vital theological tracts.
Linked over from Catholic and Enjoying it.
Famed Latinist opening a new school in Rome. From Catholic World News.
