While prayer is not FOR teaching you Latin, that’s no reason it can’t do so. Food, for example, is for staying alive, but it can also provide delight and friendship. So why write this essay? Easy: a great good can be accompanied by lesser ones. For the same reason, no one who does not already pray is likely to start praying only to enhance his Latin! Unless stated very carefully, any expression of the ‘utility’ of prayer strikes pious ears as something approaching sacrilege. With the exception of the occasional prayer of petition, prayer is meant to raise the mind and heart to God, and not to get something else. The reason for this is simple: Anyone who prays takes prayer as an end in itself. On the other hand, I have yet to stumble across a discussion of the reverse, namely the utility of Latin prayer for the learning of the language. Tolkien famously continued, rather loudly, to use the Latin responses at Mass after his parish had adopted the new English options.
Vatican II insisted on the retention of Latin, and every Pope since, including Francis, has spoken in its favour,. Pope John XXIII called for the replacement of university professors without Latin by those fluent in it.
The Council of Trent anathematized the suggestion that the Mass ought to be said only in the vernacular. Much has been written about the crucial importance of the Latin language for the life of prayer in the Church. DIRIGATUR AD TE, DOMINE, ORATIO MEA SICUT INCENSUM IN CONSPECTU TUO.
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