Here's some news for all you neo-catholics out there!!
The Roman Catholic Church is trying to give the ancient language a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin.
The Vatican website now has a section - Sancta Sedes (Holy See) - with Latin papal texts and religious works.
Pope Benedict XVI is an advocate of Latin, allowing Mass and infact propogating it in the dying language.
But when a papal decree was issued only in Latin by mistake last June, there was confusion until the Vatican press office put out an Italian version.
The Vatican website already has sections in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
For centuries church documents were all written in Latin, the mass was said only in Latin.
Priests are needed to know this language.
After Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation , Latin has fallen out of favour in recent years as the subject has been dropped from school curricula in many countries and normal Vatican business is conducted in Italian, or increasingly in English.
But Pope Benedict wants the Catholic Church to keep its ancient traditions.
After his election to the papacy three years ago, he addressed the Church's cardinals in Latin.
He has encouraged the use of the language in seminaries where new priests are trained.
Last year he lifted restrictions on celebrating the Latin Tridentine Mass.
"It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' said Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist.
Perhaps other languages too should be lifted up through the online media
0 comments :
Post a Comment