Joseph Bottom at First Things laments the demise of Latin:
So what, you may ask? Here's my prediction: Latin will make a comeback, not only as the language of the Church and a growing respect and reverence for TLM. It will, again, become a force in the West as unlikely and unlooked for as, well, say, the singling out of an elderly gentleman and his aged wife in the land of Ur to become the father of many nations. Or a gaggle of slaves coming to the edge of a body of water and walking across its bed dry shod. Or a virgin girl giving birth to a God-man with heavenly messengers in attendance and the equivalent of bikers (shepherds) coming to pay homage. Or a criminal dying in humiliation coming back to life and walking through walls like we walk through campfire smoke.The decline and fall of Latin is so nearly complete that it’s hard to remember just what it is that we have lost. In a radio interview this spring, Silvio Berlusconi remarked, “My Latin is good enough that I believe I could even have a lunch with Julius Caesar.” It’s appropriate, I suppose, that the prime minister of Italy has luncheon-level Latin. The pope’s command of the language is pretty good, too, I hear, despite the fact that he started out life as a German. But outside of this pair in Rome, does anybody else still know the language of the Caesars? I mean, anybody on a prominent public stage?
There was a time, and not so long ago, when knowledge of Latin was taken as a fundamental mark of culture: that which distinguished genuinely educated people from, say, journalists and sociology professors. But those days are as gone as gone can be. When Rudyard Kipling published descriptions of Latin classes in his school stories, Stalky and Co., in 1899, he was writing of a time when the entrance exams for the British imperial service and officer corps still gave thousands of marks for the mandatory Latin section. Nobody is held back now for anything by a lack of classical languages.
Be not tempted to despair. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Remember?
1 comment:
Dear Ath,
You bravely wrote: "So what, you may ask? Here's my prediction: Latin will make a comeback, not only as the language of the Church and a growing respect and reverence for TLM. It will, again, become a force in the West..."
I think you are right, for Latin not to die out, but even to grow it will have to be from a new "conversion" - a new birth sprouting up from the mustard seed.
In my post Saint Clare A Good Catholic Girl I quote my friend Gerry Straub as he wrote, "(W)hen she encountered Francis, she was introduced to something radically different from just being good. She suddenly realized that God wasn’t interested in our “just being good.” God desired far more than that… Francis inspired Clare to dedicate herself to live in full accordance to the highest demands of the gospel. She put the whole gospel into her whole life. She lived for nothing but God. Her mind and heart were constantly centered in God."
I agree with you that Latin will make a resurgence due in part to a new reverence, not only for the TLM, as you acknowledged, but also for our desire to be more than "just good enough" - to become a people, His people, once again.
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