Latin is still alive and well

A FEW DAYS ago I noted an advertisement in a Catholic newspaper telling readers that Pope Paul had authorised Latin language Masses. that Latin was not a dead language, and that those wishing to hear Mass in Latin should sign up for this particular church.
Latin Masses generally have given way to the vernacular and the overwhelming bulk of the Holy See's correspondence is also in the vernacular, but suggestions that Latin is a dead language were poohpoohed disdainfully by the small handful of experts now left in the apostolic palace.
'This four-man group of Latinists produces Papal Encyclicals, motu proprio and speeches, etc., in this language. In bygone years they were all Italians, French or Spanish. Strangely enough today the man who has virtually replaced the late Cardinal Antonio Bacci, who was known during Vatican H as "the Pope's Latinist,' in the position that was once known as that of "briefs to princes," is an American Carmelite religious, Fr. Reginald Foster.
Fr. Foster agrees with Cardinal Bacci that "if it cannot be said in Latin it cannot be said at all." But he is far from advocating a somewhat ad hoc translation of so-called modern terms in Latin and is convinced that Roman orator, statesman and historian Marcus Tullius Cicero had already coined most of the expressions used in English today.
"Everyone wants the world to be as he would like to have it," says Fr. Foster. "This is not new and it was not new either to the young or the elderly in Cicero's day. There is an eternal youth, eternal revolution, eternal old age and eternal generation gap.
"In the time of Cicero there were marches on the 'establishment' and Cicero, a liberal with communist leanings, took part in them. Then he went to Greece and came back speaking of Acquacio bonunt (the equalising of good — communism) as 'the most pernicious thing in the life of the people,' " Fr. Foster said.
And Cicero denounced hippies. too, in words remarkably like those heard today. Here are excerpts from one of his speeches:
Look at this homo (man). with cappi lautai permanti (longer hair than before), harbicatus (bearded.), witor vesti obsilaiori (wearing worn-out granny's clothes), torpor inculpa (body unbathed) . .
Fr. Foster mentioned some of his own more recent Latin efforts: Pope Paul's letter to John Charles McQuaid when he retired as Archbishop of Dublin, a St. Joseph's nameday letter to Hungarian Primate Jozsef Mindszenty, and the Pope's address during the ordination of 19 new bishops, including the new Archbishop of Dublin Dr. Dermot Ryan.
Confusion
IT was an English-TrishPolish event at the English church of St. Sylvester in
Rome on Sunday last week when Pallotine Fr. Richard Maslakiewicz, a Nottingham seminarian of English-Polish descent, was ordained a priest and two other seminarians, John O'Connor and John Kelly, were ordained deacons.
Almost the entire English Catholic community, together with a large number of Polish and Irish friends, attended the ordination Mass celebrated by Archbishop John Dooley, a Columbian Missionary to China.
Fr. John Guidera, the Rector of St. Sylvester, and Fr. John Gorman, the new Irish General of the Pallotines, welcomed some 200 guests in the English church's club-rooms after the ordination.
In fact, last week was a busy one for ordinations and there was quite a lot of last-minute confusion, headaches and heartaches.
Masses of upwards of 30 concelebrants seemed the rule rather than the exception and there was much difficulty in borrowing vestments. The Benedictine father house on the Aventino was forced to refuse to lend more vestments since they had been _returned by one college in a very sorry state.
At the French college, orchnees, worried when Cardinal Gabriel ,Garrone, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, failed to turn up, telephoned to find that his secretary had forgotten to remind him. He arrived 45 minutes late.
Dacca probe
THE Holy See is considering establishing diplomatic relations with the new Asian state of Bangladesh, I am told. One of the Vatican's top diplomats, Archbishop William Aquin Carew, a Canadian, last week flew to Dacca to make contact with the government.
Mgr. Carew, who is Apostolic Nuncio to the two African countries of Burundi and Rwanda, is accompanied on his scheduled three-week survey of Bangladesh by Dominican Fr. Henri de Riedmatten, Secretary of the newly created pontifical Cor Unum Council.
Fr. de Riedmatten will review on the spot the efforts by Catholic organisations to to help this newly emerged nation recover from the recent war destruction and damage and co-ordinate the efforts of these charities.
Some years ago, when Mgr. Carew was a ranking member of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican before becoming a Nuncio, I asked him how, as a native-horn Newfoundlander, he had become a Canadian and he replied : "By force of circumstances," referring to the end of Westminster rule. Now he has both a Canadian and a Vatican diplomatic passport.