Luther and the Pope on the Latin Mass

Sometimes the headlines get it exactly wrong. The title of the following article:

Pope set to bring back Latin Mass that divided the Church

is exactly the opposite of the reality.

The use of Latin in church services didn't divide the Western Church at all - in fact, it was a source of unity among Western Christians for many centuries prior to the Reformation, as well as a continued flag to rally round for Roman Catholics until the divisive 1960s. One could wander into a Catholic church anywhere in the world - Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, or Africa, and follow the service even if one wasn't fluent in the local vernacular. There was a standard set of rubrics followed by all - without local displays of culture and individual flourishes. It was easy to fit in and to take part. The Latin Mass served to undo the curse of Babel and confessed a bond that held Christians together that transcended language, race, class, and culture. There is something to be said for this kind of universal standardization.

There is also the continuity from antiquity to consider. If something has been done a certain way for 1,500 years, it testifies to the timelessness of the practice and confesses a comforting sense of stability - unlike our modern culture in which one pop-idol is replaced by the next one in a matter of days, in which our state-of-the-art electronics become doorstops in a couple years.

So, the press gets it wrong to claim the Latin Mass "divided" the church.

Far from it. The division happened when Latin was abandoned by the Roman hierarchy in the 1960s. Of course, it wasn't merely abandoned, it was proscribed, outlawed, shunned like a leper, banned as though it were a sinister method of artificial birth control or the Arian heresy. That sudden and heavy-handed revocation of something dear to Christians was what in fact "divided the church" and led to Archbishop Lefebvre to form a schismatic organization of Catholics outside the jurisdiction of the pope.

But today, Pope Benedict is reportedly trying to heal the rift and the hurt caused by the ecclesiastical bullying of the 1960s, by allowing local congregations discretion to freely use either the newer Mass in the vernacular language or to celebrate the old Tridentine Mass. There is a refreshing liberty of the Gospel and pastoral sensitivity being displayed by this Bishop of Rome who is so often maligned as a kind of archlegalist fascist with hatred in his eyes and blood dripping from his mouth. (How often are we reminded of his membership in Hitler Youth and the fact that he was a WW2 era German soldier by the anti-Christian media, when we're not told the whole story that he was compelled in both cases, and that furthermore, he actually deserted the Nazi army?).

Pope Benedict's actions are a form of reconciliation between those who felt their church turned their backs on them for doing nothing other than what the church has always done, for standing up to the whims of the Godless culture of modernity. The pope is not commanding those accustomed to the New Mass to adopt Latin. Rather he is allowing a diversity of practice in the interest of pastoral care. He is striving to right a wrong by restoring that which was lost.

Interestingly, the first truly public confessional document for Lutherans, the Augsburg Confession of 1530, points out that the Lutherans (then reform-minded Roman Catholics) had introduced some elements of the Mass in the vernacular language (which was, of course, German) in addition to the Latin that was being used in the Mass at the time. Four years before this time, Martin Luther translated a German version of the Mass that replaced many of the Latin chants with more indiginous German hymns that better fit linguistically with the German language. Some people assume that the Lutherans instantly stopped using Latin and insisted that the chuch services all be in the vernacular language - but this simply wasn't the case. In fact, Latin Masses were said and sung in Lutheran churches as late as the 18th century.

In the American Edition of Luther's Works, volume 53 (Liturgy and Hymns), page 53 (the introduction to "The German Mass and Order of Service"), we find the story of Luther's famous 1526 translation of the Mass into the vernacular German. He actually dragged his feet quite a bit, and mainly offered this Deutsche Messe out of fear of the many German Masses appearing on the scene, and the lack of standardization ("confusion") they would create. In fact, Luther "objected to the legalism of those who meant to abolish the Latin mass completely and acted as though the reformation of the church depended on the exclusive use of the German language" (AE 53:53).

Look how similar this "abolish Latin" legalism by some reformers of Luther's day was repeated by Vatican II in the Roman Catholic Church four centuries later! The spirit of the post-conciliar liturgical reform was not to offer the opportunity to worship in the vernacular, rather it took the form of a legalistic prohibition to ban Latin. Both Luther and Pope Benedict take a more evangelical approach - let the Mass be said in the vernacular, but don't ban the traditional liturgy in Latin.

It was never Luther's intention that his German Mass would replace the Latin Mass. He says: "For in no wise would I want to discontinue the service in the Latin language, because the young are my chief concern. And if I could bring it to pass, and Greek and Hebrew were as familiar to us as as the Latin... we would hold mass, sing, and read on successive Sundays in all four languages, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. I do not at all agree with those who cling to one language and despise all others." He goes on to point out the necessity of linguistic training for evangelism (AE 53:63).

Though educators and theologians tried their best to render Latin a dead language in the 1960s, the fact is, that it lives on. In Roman Catholic circles, traditionalists have succeeded in bringing back Latin, both in elements of the New (novus ordo) Mass, as well as the restoration of the Tridentine Mass in many places. The current pope seems to be facilitating Latin along both of these lines. Latin lives on in the titles of the ordinaries of the Mass in Lutheran hymnals, such as the newly published Lutheran Service Book (LSB). In this 21st century English language missal, we find many ancient Latin liturgical terms such as: Benedicamus, Benedictus, Gloria in Excelsis, Gloria Patri, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, Pax Domini, Sanctus, Te Deum, and Venite. Even schools today are bring Latin roaring back into the classroom.

While Lutherans have no recent history of the celebration of the Latin Mass (they have not been celebrated in our churches since the 18th century), we do see a revival of Latin in the form of the interest in classical education in Lutheran schools. As Latif Gaba points out in a recent blog entry, Latin prayer services are offered in Lutheran schools that teach Latin (as an aside, you might also want to see this related offering from Latif as well). As a pastor and teacher at a Lutheran school that is not (at least for the time being) operating under the classical model, I lead all of my students in grades 6 through 8 in prayers in Latin to open class. My students pray the table prayer (Benedic Domine), the Lord's Prayer (Pater noster), and the Apostles Creed (Credo in Deum). I'm looking forward to teaching them a few Latin hymns as Christmas approaches.

The removal of Latin from school curricula in the late 20th century was a huge mistake. It severs young people culturally from what came before (leaving a vaccuum to be filled only by rap music and flash-in-the-pan celebrities), further setting them adrift from their own western history, and robbing them of the copious lingustic benefits of studying the root of all modern Romance languages and the source of more than half of the vocabulary in the English language (not to mention the benefits of logical thinking and grammatical precision that comes with the discipline of Latin study).

Like many other social experiments of the 1960s, this one was a failure. The pope knows it, just as another German priest knew that it would be - nearly five centuries ago. Much to the dismay of the social revolutionaries of forty years ago, not all "progress" is good. Some changes simply have to be rolled back for the good of society and for the individual.

I agree with Benedict and Luther that Latin is good not only for society and the individual, but also for the Church, and that stifling Latin is nothing more than legalism that at its foundation is antithetical to the Gospel.

Besides, as Ovid wrote two thousand years ago: "Rident stolidi verba Latina" ("Fools laugh at the Latin language"). Say what you want about Martin Luther and Benedict XVI, neither man is a fool.