Now, now. There's a case to be made for a universal language to unite what is supposed to be a universal Church; I also think that aesthetically, using Latin sets apart what is supposed to be IMHO a transcendental/mystical experience from that of everyday life.
Does it have to be Latin? Not really. To your average American Japanese, Korean, Russian would be "just Greek to me" as much as Latin, but the Vatican ended up centered in Rome AFAIK thanks to the dominance of the Roman Empire at the time, and hence it ended up being Latin.
There's some folks who get worked up about this, there's others who think that using Latin is just a historical cop-out and because the Gospels were written in Greek, that's the language that should be used. I figure if you want to be a purist, Aramaic should be the dead language of choice, since that was Christ's native tongue.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-04-18 07:34 pm (UTC)Does it have to be Latin? Not really. To your average American Japanese, Korean, Russian would be "just Greek to me" as much as Latin, but the Vatican ended up centered in Rome AFAIK thanks to the dominance of the Roman Empire at the time, and hence it ended up being Latin.
There's some folks who get worked up about this, there's others who think that using Latin is just a historical cop-out and because the Gospels were written in Greek, that's the language that should be used. I figure if you want to be a purist, Aramaic should be the dead language of choice, since that was Christ's native tongue.