Do You Pray In Latin?

[son_of_angels]

[quote]Some of us actually pray from the heart and just make it up as we go along... no need for Latin then.[/quote]

Some of us (i.e. all of us [i]should[/i]) pray in the words which Holy Mother Church has offered as her divine worship and veneration for millenia. In the western rite, those prayers are in Latin, and translated to other languages. Those translations often differ from one another both in wording and in content. Therefore, there is a reasonable purpose, other than just preference, for praying in Latin above other languages, just as their is a reasonable purpose for reading the New Testament in Greek rather than Swahili.

It's all well and good to pray using your own words, but is that really just a mask for pride, i.e. holding up your own prayers above those taught to us by the Church Fathers?

Always add, never subtract.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='son_of_angels' post='1306577' date='Jun 30 2007, 02:42 PM']It's all well and good to pray using your own words, but is that really just a mask for pride, i.e. holding up your own prayers above those taught to us by the Church Fathers?[/quote]
I'm going to go with "no" here... thanks for asking.

[StColette]

[quote name='son_of_angels' post='1306577' date='Jun 30 2007, 01:42 PM']It's all well and good to pray using your own words, but is that really just a mask for pride, i.e. holding up your own prayers above those taught to us by the Church Fathers?[/quote]

Considering the prayers of the Church Fathers were once "their own words" or "their own prayers" I would say that it's definitely not a mark for pride. Some of the most beautiful prayers I've ever heard have come from the personal prayers of Saints, in their own words.

Edited June 30, 2007 by StColette

[Moneybags]

The head exorcist of Rome - [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Amorth"]Fr. Gabriele Amorth[/url] - has said that the Latin prayers of Exorcism are much more powerful than the prayers in the vernacular.

[Mercy me]

[quote name='StThomasMore' post='1306494' date='Jun 30 2007, 11:26 AM']I don't pray in my own words either so unless I'm praying in a group with others who don't know Latin I have no use for the vernacular.[/quote]

You really should pray in your own words. Memorized prayers are great and use them everyday but personal prayer is also required.

[Sojourner]

[quote name='St. Benedict' post='1306664' date='Jun 30 2007, 03:22 PM']The head exorcist of Rome - [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Amorth"]Fr. Gabriele Amorth[/url] - has said that the Latin prayers of Exorcism are much more powerful than the prayers in the vernacular.[/quote]
I'd like to see the actual quote of him saying that. Could you provide a reference, please?

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='Mercy me' post='1306693' date='Jun 30 2007, 03:43 PM']You really should pray in your own words. Memorized prayers are great and use them everyday but personal prayer is also required.[/quote]

Memorized prayers are personal prayer. If you say them from the heart and dont rush through them they are much better than any made up prayer you could pray. Personal prayer is not required. What is required is the lifting up the heart to God and the external words and actions which show that you are doing so.

[King's Rook's Pawn]

[quote name='Pio Nono' post='1306477' date='Jun 30 2007, 11:50 AM']I pretty much enjoy praying in any language EXCEPT English. And German. They're ugly languages.[/quote]

I don't think any language is "ugly." I think English can be wonderfully poetic and expressive. Just look at the poetry in the great plays of Shakespeare. Or the works of Milton, Dryden, Robert Frost and a thousand others. I can't speak for German because I don't know any German, but I assume it's the case there too. Goethe wrote in German. You probably mean that Germanic languages should guttural, as opposed to the more soft-sounding Romance languages. I'll agree, but I don't think that's what makes a language beautiful. What makes it beautiful is how expressive it is.

Edited June 30, 2007 by King's Rook's Pawn

[King's Rook's Pawn]

[quote name='StThomasMore' post='1306702' date='Jun 30 2007, 05:53 PM']Memorized prayers are personal prayer. If you say them from the heart and dont rush through them they are much better than any made up prayer you could pray. Personal prayer is not required. What is required is the lifting up the heart to God and the external words and actions which show that you are doing so.[/quote]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we do away with or even de-emphasize the standard memorized prayers. But why would you limit yourself by never praying in your own words? How do you pray about matters specific to yourself? I think it's best to have a these two kinds of prayers. At night, for example, I pray in my one words about specific concerns and then a few memorized prayers afterward.

I do love the Latin language and think it should be used more often amongst Catholics. Not because it's necessarily more beautiful or expressive, but because it is part of our history and heritage and sanctified by Time and centuries of sacred use.

[Era Might]

[quote]Understanding of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. ...If the divine Latin language kept us apart from the children, from youth, from the world of labor and of affairs, if it were a dark screen, not a clear window, would it be right for us fishers of souls to maintain it as the exclusive language of prayer and religious intercourse? What did St. Paul have to say about that? Read chapter 14 of the first letter to the Corinthians: "In Church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue" (I Corinthians 14:19).

--Pope Paul VI[/quote]

[Sojourner]

Era always knows just the right thing to say ...

[Laudate_Dominum]

I think that one should be careful not to disparage the use of Latin in Liturgy and personal prayer. Pope Paul VI said that those who are willing to devote themselves to learning, using and advancing Latin as a living language, do a great service to the Church. And I suppose it would be redundant to remind phatmass of the words of Pope John XXIII in [i]Veterum Sapientia[/i].
[url="http://www.adoremus.org/VeterumSapientia.html"]http://www.adoremus.org/VeterumSapientia.html[/url]

If I may quote more words of Pope Paul VI from the general audience that Era quoted.
[quote]"It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language... We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance... We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth... What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church's values?" (General Audience of Nov. 26, 1969, 8-9)

[url="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/audiences/1969/documents/hf_p-vi_aud_19691126_it.html"]http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/...9691126_it.html[/url][/quote]
So yes, Pope Paul VI supported an increase of vernacular use in the Liturgy, but not without lamentation. And it seems clear to me that he did not foresee the staggering level of disuse which has come to be. We see this in the sentence which follows that which Era quoted: "[i]But, in any case, the new rite of the Mass provides that the faithful 'should be able to sing together, in Latin, at least the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, especially the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father' [/i][Sacrosanctum Concilium 19]."


Some words from Cardinal Arinze (and others):
[quote]...Blessed Pope John XXIII- in his Apostolic Constitution, Veterum Sapientia, issued on February 22, 1962, gives these two reasons and adds a third. The Latin language has a nobility and dignity which are not negligible (cf Veterum Sapientia, 5, 6, 7). We can add that Latin is concise, precise and poetically measured.
...
Just before he opened the Council, Blessed Pope John Paul XXIII in 1962 issued an Apostolic Constitution, to insist on the use of Latin in the Church. The Second Vatican Council, although it admitted some introduction of the vernacular, insisted on the place of Latin: "Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36). The Council also required that seminarians "should acquire a command of Latin which will enable them to understand and use the source material of so many sciences and the documents of the Church as well" (Optatam Totius, 13). The Code of Canon Law published in 1983 enacts that "the eucharistic celebration: is to be carried out either in the Latin language or in another language, provided the liturgical texts have been lawfully approved" (Canon 928).

Those, therefore, who want to give the impression that the Church has put Latin away from her liturgy are mistaken. A manifestation of people's acceptance of Latin liturgy well celebrated was had at world level in April, 2005, when millions followed the burial rites of Pope John Paul II and then, two weeks later, the inauguration Mass of Pope Benedict XVI over the television.
...
As already quoted, article 36 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy began by enacting that "particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rite". Article 54 required that steps be taken "enabling the faithful to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass belonging to them". In the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours "in accordance with the centuries old tradition of the Latin rite, clerics are to retain the Latin language" (SC, 101).
...
The Latin liturgy expresses not only facts but also our feelings, our sentiments, for example, in front of God's transcendence, majesty, mercy and boundless love (cf Liturgiam Authenticam, 25). Expressions like "Te igitur, clementissime Pater", "Supplices te rogamus", "Propitius esto", "veneremur cernui", "Omnipotens et misericors Dominus", "nos servi tui", should not be deflated and democratized by some translating iconoclast. Some of these Latin expressions are difficult to translate.
...
In prayer, language is primarily for contact with God. No doubt, language is also for intelligible communication between us humans. But contact with God has priority. In the mystic, such contact with God approaches and sometimes reaches the ineffable, the mystical silence where language ceases.

There is therefore no surprise if liturgical language differs somewhat from our every-day language. Liturgical language strives to express Christian prayer where the mysteries of Christ are celebrated.
...
It follows that no individual, even a priest or deacon, has authority to change the approved wording in the sacred liturgy. This is also common sense. But sometimes we notice that common sense is not very common. So Redemptionis Sacramentum had to say expressly: "The reprobated practice by which priests, deacons or the faithful here and there alter or vary at will the texts of the Sacred Liturgy that they are charged to pronounce, must cease. For in doing thus, they render the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy unstable, and not infrequently distort the authentic meaning of the Liturgy" (Red. Sacramentum, 59; cf also General Instruction on Roman Missal, n. 24).
...
It follows that seminaries should discharge carefully their role of preparing and forming priests also in the use of Latin (cf October 2005 Synod of Bishops, Prop. 36).
...
May the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Word made flesh whose mysteries we celebrate in the sacred liturgy, obtain for all of us the grace to do our part to join in singing the praises of the Lord both in Latin and in the vernacular.[/quote]

[Laudate_Dominum]

I found an English translation of that audience for those unfamiliar with Italian.
[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6691126.HTM"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6691126.HTM[/url]

[Laudate_Dominum]

Oh, and I responded with a three-fold affirmative to your poll StThomasMore.

[aalpha1989]

[quote name='StThomasMore' post='1306381' date='Jun 30 2007, 02:08 AM']Hearing Mass as a Baptized person is called "assisting" at Mass.[/quote]


haha um....

i knew that! :



i guess i should have voted differently then......