The blithe hopes for what the vernacular Mass would do for Catholic worship is a beautiful illustration of de Tocqueville’s
une fausse idée claire. For, unfortunately, it was ‘‘a clear but wrong idea’’ that once the Mass was translated into the language of the people it would at long last be really understood: that a genuine and vocal participation would drive hordes of men, women and children to the nearest church. After all, the argument ran, Latin was ‘known to only a few Catholics; the majority were subjected to watching the sacred ritual in a state of bored passivity. And at Vatican II, this argument prevailed.
But ironically enough, the move to the vernacular, like most of the Conciliar innovations, was a revival. Our Latin Mass is the result of an early vernacular movement, when Greek, the language of educated persons, was supplanted by the more popular Latin. (
The Kyrie Eleison, as well as a short Good Friday text, are remnants of the Greek liturgy.) After the adoption of Latin, Greek unfortunately fell into total oblivion in the Western Church; even St. Thomas Aquinas was unable to read the Scriptures in the original. It was the Humanists who rediscovered the language of early Christianity—a language that is indispensable to any serious theological study and discussion.
Latin, in time, also died as a vernacular; but it remained the language of the liturgy. This was hardly unusual; after all not only Catholicism, but every great religion has its sacred language—and a large number of them are ‘‘dead.’” Almost all of the Eastern Rites, for example, use a dead language—Old Slavonic, classic Greek, Syriac, etc.; the Hindus use Sanskrit; the Buddhists, Pali; and the Moslems a classic Arabic which is neither spoken nor easily understood by the Arab masses, let alone by the vast majority of non-Arabic Moslems. All of these faiths use dead languages not only because they impart a sense of the sacred and the sublime, but because they imply permanence.
But beyond its attribute (actually an advantage) of being ‘‘dead,’’ Latin was a unifying influence in the Church, a common bond for Catholics on six continents. In Europe alone it has been used by people of Celtic, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Iberian, Greek, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and Semitic stock—which means that the Mass was celebrated in the same language by nations as different from each other as the Irish and the Flemings, the Poles and the Maltese. Luther himself, in his preface to the ‘‘German Mass,’’ insisted that his translation into the vernacular was only for the young and the uneducated, and that Latin would and should retain its place.
Nevertheless (according to today’s enthusiasts for the vernacular Mass), the Church must accommodate herself to the modern age! The enthusiasts overlook at least one important aspect of the modern age. Yesterday’s nationalism, born of the French Revolution and German Romanticism, though by no means dead, is yielding to an internationalism fostered by technology—the new fast means of transportation and communication. Nationalism is a dividing, internationalism a unifying force; and their mutually opposed action in the world should certainly make us ponder.
The experience of Hungary comes to mind in this connection. The official language of that country until 1844 was Latin. It was then replaced by Magyar, and this proved to be Hungary’s undoing. The Magyars, of course, knew their own idiom, but it was alien to the other ‘‘nationalities’’ in the country—Slovaks, Vallakhs, Serbs, Germans, Carpatho-Ukrainians and Croats—and deeply resented. The result was disunity and, finally, the catastrophic fall of one of Europe’s most ancient realms.
The idea of a unifying sacred language brings up an old and still raging question. Since Latin is the classic language only of
Western civilization, why should the Church—being catholic, world-wide and encompassing all cultures—choose this Western tongue as the universal sacred language? Anti-Latinists still bemoan the defeat of the Jesuits on this point in the eighteenth- century quarrel over the Rites of Eastern Asia. Had the Jesuit position then prevailed, they say, that crucial part of the globe might have been won for the Church. It follows that this opportunity, once ruined by a narrow Europeanism, must be attended to
right now!
I must confess that before I became a world traveller I thought this a very sensible argument. It is perfectly true that the eighteenth-century Jesuits were right, and it is a real tragedy that Jansenist intrigues ruined their chances. But it is part of the wisdom of the Church that she restrain herself from adopting immediately, unhesitatingly and unthinkingly every passing fad and fashion. Every idea, it is true, has its
kairos, its ‘‘right time.’’ The question now is: Is
this the time for the Church to accommodate herself to the various, still-existing, independent cultures? There are actually only a few areas left on the globe devoid of a desperate craving for total and utter Westernization. This is deplorable, in a way, but it is nonetheless true. China has adopted the ideas of an unbalanced son of a Prussian lawyer. In Japan the surgical removal of the Mongol lid is now the feminine rage. Even prior to World War II, Japanese Catholics furiously boycotted a church in Nara built in the style of a
tera, a Buddhist temple. India, though struggling to preserve its own culture, will be linguistically English in a few generations. And the main African complaint against the European colonial powers is their failure to do a thorough job of Europeanizing them. Western manners, languages, customs, political institutions, technical inventions, philosophies, ideologies and religions are sweeping the world. In the past, the Latin liturgy might have been considered a Western imposition. But no longer. (Significantly, at the Munich Eucharistic World Congress in 1960 it was the white bishops of Africa, not the native bishops, who opted for the vernacular. The latter understood, among other things, that many Christian concepts do not exist in African vocabularies.)
The world is moving toward a common civilization which will inevitably have, in many significant respects, a Western character. (Whether it is the great Christian values or merely the West’s fecal matter which shall prevail is moot.) The world is shrinking. There are millions of expatriates; millions of Europeans work in foreign countries; and millions of tourists swarm all over the Continent. In my own small Tyrolean village, which is not a resort, about one fifth of the Sunday congregation in the summer are foreigners; in the next village they amount to more than one half. Should they all be exposed to a strange tongue, rather than to Latin which, at least, is familiar to them?
And what about dialects and dialectical inflections? Americans should not forget that German, for instance, is an artificial language; German humor is essentially rooted in the local dialects, and literary German is as different from either the Tyrolean, the Rhenish or the Low German idioms as English is from Saxon. The vernacular in southern France is not French, but the
langue d’oc; the German-Swiss speak Schwyzerdutsch among themselves, and their accent, carried into literary German, is quite frankly funny to non-Swiss ears. To attend a vernacular Mass with devotion in that region is almost impossible for a non-Swiss. In short, in ancient and diversified nations the vernacular and the mother tongue are by no means the same.
To make matters worse, ethnic and national animosities are still creating havoc, as in the aforementioned case of Hungary. True, a number of countries are fairly uniform insofar as their
literary language goes. This was true of Germany before the invasion of foreign workers, and remains true of large parts of Italy, France and the Netherlands. But many other countries, in and out of Europe, are multi-lingual, and quite often the various nationalities do not particularly like each other. Formerly, though sermons were a problem, these mutual antipathies were kept out of the churches, thanks to the Latin liturgy which united the warring factions. This, of course, is no longer the case.
The difficulties are intensified when politics come into play. For instance, in Catalonia the introduction of the vernacular has been called a ‘political time bomb.’ Mass in Spanish? Mass in Catalan? (The tourists understand neither.) What a sorry spectacle it is to see politics dragged to the steps of the altar—not simply ideological politics, but ethnic animosities and rancor, which can be a great deal more bitter.
Outside of Europe the vernacular presents even worse problems. The homesick Spanish worker in the Ruhr Valley who, upon entering a church, hears the same alien tongue which has irritated him all day long, is merely pathetic. In Africa and Asia, the situation can be tragic.
I do not wish to bore my readers needlessly with my own experiences, but my annual travels around the world have given me a global perspective. Surely all the practical problems of the Church should be viewed from this vantage point. For to respond to allegedly Roman provincialism with American, Dutch or New Zealand provincialism is a sorry way to solve the burning questions of a truly universal Faith. On my travels in the past, I could use my Missal as a linguistic passport for the entire world. Whether in Saigon, Nairobi, Poona, Sydney, Punta Arenas, Oslo, Chicago or Antwerp, I always heard Mass in Latin, a language which, I must admit, I never particularly liked, but which I understood, which was familiar to me—the language of the Church. Had I not had a classical education I still would have been able to get along with my bilingual missal. (My sister, who never learned Latin, picked it up by sheer osmosis, and there are many like her who came to understand almost every word in the Latin Mass.)
Nowadays, though I am truly multilingual, I feel stranded. Nor do my extensive travels make me a special case. Though there are not, as yet, a great many world travellers, the signs that there soon will be are apparent; and surely we should anticipate the future. I will be forgiven, I hope, if I consider myself only a prefiguration of the man of tomorrow who will think nothing of hopping over the weekend from Djakarta to Kankakee, or from Kalamazoo to Teheran. All signs point to future peripatetic generations. Will they,
should they, have to endure my experiences?
Take, for instance, my travels in Vietnam. On my third visit to Saigon I hurried to the Cathedral one Sunday for the 8:00 Mass. A pleasant young man told me in French that “my Mass’” was at ten. He took me first for a
Phat, a Frenchman, then for a
My, an American. But I had no choice, a helicopter was waiting to take me inland. The dialogue Mass I had enjoyed in the past became a torture because a monosyllabic language with a specific pitch for each word made it impossible to pray or to meditate. For a Westerner each word is like a pin-prick. After Mass I spoke to an elderly Vietnamese and expressed my regret at the loss of a linguistic bond. To my surprise he was equally dismayed. It seems the priest had been a Tonkinese refugee and
his accent grated on southern ears! I wonder what is being done in the back country where the so-called
Montagnards speak languages that have no similarity whatsoever with Vietnamese; and I shudder at the complications for the Church if the Viets ever try to ‘‘denationalize’’ these aboriginal tribesmen.
In Kenya, the language of communication for Africans is Kisuaheli, the official language is English, and the most important tribal languages are Kikuyu, Luo and Massai. Most Catholics in Nairobi, however, are immigrated Goans, who speak Portuguese and Konkani. What, then, is the vernacular? The present solution is to say the Mass in English, the language of the former colonial power; but this is hardly ideal. The linguistic picture in Nigeria, and further west in Africa, is equally complex; and in Nigeria fierce tribal hatreds have led to the disruption of the republic. A few years ago I attended Mass in Kano. The Mass itself was in Latin, but the sermon in English, and each paragraph was translated twice—into Ibo and Yoruba. The priest later told me that these two languages were spoken by immigrants from the south, and that if the Haussas should join the Church, a third translation would be added. In Ghana this spring I was informed by the Fathers of the Society of the Divine Word that they are clinging to Latin—the only feasible and conducive way to peace and mutual understanding. Analogous problems exist in the Congo where the tribal rivalries are lethal, and in the Cameroons; they exist in the Fiji Islands, wracked with racial tensions, at the other end of the world; and they exist in Ceylon where Singhalese and Tamils are engaged in a bitter language fight which has resulted in manslaughter and murder.
The English ‘‘solution’’ has been adopted in India where that language is increasingly used; but in no way is it a language that comes from the “heart of the people.’’ Language is a most delicate subject in India where, only a few years ago, thousands of men and women were slaughtered during the frightful language riots in the Bombay region. To introduce such an issue into the Church is the height of folly.
The situation is equally delicate on the eastern islands of Indonesia where the government is pushing
Bahasa Indonesia, the somewhat artificial Indonesian language which, however, is not the popular language of the Mollucca Islands.
Who’s a Reactionary?
Reviewing the entire situation, not on a local but on a global basis, one can hardly call the introduction of the vernacular a success. It is not only that the hopes for the innovation have not materialized; numerous drawbacks, even dangers, have cropped up, whose nature and implications have not yet been fully revealed. The vernacular movement might have made sense in the past, but it will become increasingly obsolete as the twenty-first century draws near, as we enter a conformist, anti-pluralistic age. (The notion that our present age, as compared with past centuries, is pluralistic can be maintained only by those ignorant of history and sociology, or who lack intellectual competence.)
All of this is not to say that the old order was perfect; but the strong support for a Latin liturgy that existed until very recently was not baseless. Where the vernacular was introduced by the bishops one is tempted to suspect that they were swayed partly by an urge to democratize and popularize; and partly by strong pressure from intellectual leaders, both lay and clerical. The Constitution on Sacred Liturgy (Article 54) clearly leaves the decision in each case to the bishops, most of whom stood in fear of being labeled ‘‘reactionary.’’ In fact, a truly forward-looking bishop would have been one who sought out the broader, international solution to the language problem of the Church.
Up from Babylon
It would be silly to deny that a problem did exist in the past. Here in Europe we were about to solve it through the widespread use of missals; those who really wanted to follow the Mass always had the means to do so. Moreover, liturgical Latin could and should have been taught to every Catholic. In this connection, the Austrian
Una Voce society has established a quick course in Latin which is proving quite popular and effective. Even a German, whose language is not rooted in Latin, can acquire enough Latin in a few lessons to understand the Ordinary of the Mass. How much easier for a Latin, or an Anglo-Saxon!
Nor is Latin an obstacle to reunion; after all, most of the great works of the Reformers were written in that language. Whatever happens to Christianity, it can neither deny nor forget its Mediterranean roots. This is true of Christianity in Northern Europe, in the Western Hemisphere, and no less among the Afro-Americans. Origins are hard facts; and the past can never be unmade. Nor can we deny our Jewish heritage. Yet there are people among us who unconsciously continue the old Nazi warfare against Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. It is the Tower of Babel with all its linguistic confusions which they desperately want to rebuild. Against them we need courageous bishops—bishops who will unify the diverse, who will make order out of chaos.
Since the French Revolution the West has been obsessed by a neurotic fear of not being up to date. The chains of time are a characteristic worry of a godless, geocentric and materialistic outlook. But it is especially amusing today to see how our progressive neurotics, brandishing the banner of liturgical democratization, are pushing for the nationalization of the Mass in an increasingly international world. Our scientific age is in many ways ruled not by cold reason but by emotional fads; ruled, that is, by
fausses idées claires.
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