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Liturgy and the Vernacular

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

Lancelot C. Sheppard
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Since, at the beginning of this century, Pius X. called the faithful to the restoring of all things in Christ, and indicated as the chief means of such a restoration the active participation of all in the public worship of the Church, much has been done to bring about what he desired. Popular editions of the Missal have been multiplied, courses and conferences, for priests and lay people, have been organized, and in some ways the effects have not been scanty. Yet, in spite of all this, the priest at the altar and the people in the pew seem often entirely separated, notwithstanding all the efforts of zealous pastors to instruct their people to ‘pray the Mass.’

We are only just beginning to realize that much that has been done in the name of the Liturgical Movement has been liturgical only per accidens. People have been persuaded to use a Missal, sing plain chant even, but without understanding. They have followed where they were led, blindly. At last some of this is being realised, and more emphasis is being placed now on the fundamentals, the Mystical Body, the dogmatic truths of the Faith, our re-incorporation with Christ, and the living of the life of the Church through the Liturgy.

But this fuller realization of the true implications of the Liturgical Movement has brought its own problems with it. Now that it has at last been understood that the possession of a Missal is not an entirely necessary passport to the gales of Heaven, that the life of the Church is for all and not an élite, that it must be possible to live this life, not only if one does not understand Latin, but even if one cannot read, the question of the language of the liturgy becomes obviously of the greatest importance. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that a course in liturgical Latin should be added to the curriculum of the elementary school.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 24 , Issue 279 , June 1943 , pp. 206 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © 1943 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 predidam editionem approbvit et universe clevo linigua Slavoiiica rite utenti libenter indulsit. Acta Ap. Sedis, 1927, page 156.

2 Benedict XV, April 17th, 1921. It was owing to a confusion, no doubt, between this concession of the vernacular for the Rituale, and old Slavonic for the Mass, that led the Rev. Gerald Donelly, S.J., to say in America (Oct. 15th, 1938, page 43) that the Roman Mass is celebrated in the vernacular among the Croatians of Yugoslavia. The Concordat with Yugoslavia, signed but never ratified, contains the following : ‘ The Holy See is not opposed to the spread of the use of Old Slavonic, and bishops, according to their consciences and prudence, may permit its use in the Mass, in Slavonic parishes where this is the unanimous wish of the faithful.’

3 See Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. xxv, pages 356-8. Some sixty years later Fr. Luigi Buglio, S.J.. translated the Breviary (Ji-ko Itai-yao) 1674, the Missal (Mi-sa king-tien) 1670. and Ritual (Sheng-sse-li-tien) 1675.

4 Petentibus Carmelitis Discalceatis, facultatem celebrandi Missam ritu Romatio lingua armena, S.C. censuit eorum petitionem esse rejiciendam (Coll. S.C. de Prop. Fide I . I I , No. 33).

5 In Rumania, from the ninth to the seventeenth century, the liturgical language was Slavonic. which was gradually changed to the vernacular Rumanian, printed at first in Slavonic characters, and then in Latin. The Roman alphabet appeared in the beginning of the nineteenth century among the Catholics from whom the Orthodox copied it.

6 Pius Parsch, and Bibel und Litutgie in Austria; Dom Paul de Vooght. O.S.B., Louvain : also Bulletin Paroirssial Liturgique and La Cité Chrtéienne in Belgium; Nouvelle Révue théologique in France; Orate Fratres in the U.S.A. It has so often been a reproach of those who do not understand the liturgical movement that it concerns itself with antiquarian, medieval or aesthetic interests, that this insistence on one of the fundamentals is doubly important.