Introduction
The day that the Church abandons the Latin language will be the day
she returns to the catacombs.
–Pius XII
I would like to talk today on a subject which touches the whole life
of the Catholic Church. This conference is entitled “Why the Church
must return to the Mass in Latin” or rather, “Why the Church must
return to the Latin Mass”, and will concentrate mostly on two things:
the importance of the language of the Mass, and secondly, as a conse-
quence, the necessity of the return of the Latin Mass for the continued
existence of the Church. I say ‘continued existence’ expressly, as the
very existence of the Catholic Church is what is at stake.
One of the rst things that makes manifest that a country is under
occupation is the change of language. Culture is especially expressed
in language, as it is the instrument by which this culture is transmitted
from generation to generation. Thus, to destroy a culture one need
simply destroy the language of its people. To destroy a language it
is often only necessary to ridicule the use of it, make it something
‘unfashionable’, or even cease to teach it. Once the language of a
country has become unrecognizable, one may soon call the country
by another name, it become in essence another country.
We might argue that this is what has happened to the Catholic
Church since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. The very
language of the Church has been thrown aside, ridiculed, and is now practically unknown. One may argue that that what is now calledthe church is quite dierent than that which is the Roman CatholicChurch. We will not be exploring in this conference all the changesthat have taken place after the Second Vatican Council, nor of allthe errors that this Council has fostered and from which the Churchsuers so acutely today.It is useful to learn from the past, but it is more important and moreedifying to look to the future, at what must be done to insure thesurvival of the Kingdom of God here on earth. We can see certainly inthe enormous errors of the Council the undermining and weakening ofthe Church from within, to its state of practical paralysis of today, butI think it is more imperative to look to what can be done to improvethe future, that is, what we ought to do to insure the future of theChurch.Thus my conference will be divided into three fundamental parts,providing as it were the proof of the conferences title: the Church mustreturn to the Latin Mass, and that this return is not simply somethingaccidental but rather essential to the future of the Church.Firstly, I would like to make a general reminder of the Catholicdoctrine concerning the Mass, especially emphasizing certain pointsof doctrine that are fundamental to the understanding of the Massand which as it were form not only the core of our belief but also thepractical consequences it has upon the life of the Church.Secondly, we will discuss the nature of the Church, especially howthe Church accomplishes its work and practical consequences whichow from it. We will see that the Church has an ocial language,and the role that this language must fulll in the ocial prayer of theChurch, that is, the liturgy and the especially the sacrice of the Mass.We shall examine the authoritative decrees of the Church concerningthe language of the liturgy as a logical consequence of her doctrineconcerning the Mass.And thirdly, by way of conclusion, we shall see what we mean by theLatin Mass, and see that the Church cannot fulll its mission withoutan ocial liturgical language and that the present state of the Churchwould be substantially altered for the better by the enforcement ofher decrees concerning the Latin language as the ocial language of the Church.