Monday, April 23, 2007

Latin unites


An interesting article about a school concert in Sri Lanka, from Indian Catholic, it is about school concert in Holy Week in which students sang Latin Hymns, older parishioners apparently remember the time when Catholic Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers, people of European descent were able to worship together, using a common language, now of course with the civil war even Catholics have split into ethnic groups and the vernacular has strengthened the divisions within civil society and introduced them into the Church.
I just wonder when diocesan "Justice and Peace" or "Social Action" groups might take up the cause of Latin as a source of dialogue and solidarity. I don't really say this with my tongue in my cheek. Latin actually does overcome the increasing idea of identifying the Church with a particular nationalism.

2 comments:

Physiocrat said...

An instance of this was just after the war, when an army chaplain arriving in liberated Alderney was able to say mass with a combined congregation of British, Germans, Poles, French and other nationalities.

The use of the vernacular has been divisive recently in Belgium and Poland (Silesia - which is part-German). Where there is the potential for this the local bishops ought to be firm and ban it altogether from their churches.

Anonymous said...

Another place where it was beneficial was Wales, were the Church made great inroads until the Council, precisely because Mass was neither in English or Welsh.

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