Traditional Latin Mass is like an Easter egg hunt that lasts a lifetime

(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of The John Henry Westen Show, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski returns to discuss key themes from his new book, Turned Around: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional Latin Mass.

This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Stay tuned for Part 2.

I began the episode by asking Kwasniewski why we should have the Mass in Latin when, for the most part, the faithful don’t understand that language.

Kwasniewski explained that every Christian church, East and West, has developed a sacred language over the centuries that is difficult to understand.

“Generally speaking, when we approach God, when we approach, [when] we come into the presence of God, we don’t simply use the language of the marketplace or the language of the kitchen. We use this special level or register or type of language that’s called sacred,” he said.

“And what you see … with the Greek Orthodox Church 2,000 years ago, everybody was speaking Koine Greek. But the Greek Orthodox Church today still uses ancient Koine Greek, when modern Greek is a quite different language. Similarly, the Russian Orthodox … use Church Slavonic, which is similar to other Slavic languages, but it definitely is a foreign register now. It would be for us, maybe Chaucer’s English, something that’s difficult,” he added.

Kwasniewski added that Latin became the language used by the Church not because it was the common language but rather because it was the language of scholars and aristocrats giving the liturgy a divine resonance.

“So I think there’s a phenomenon you can see not just in Christianity, but in all religions, in Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism and Judaism, of course, to use a special language when we approach God in worship. That makes sense in terms of anthropology, in terms of psychology because it puts us in a certain frame of mind,” he said.

“When we’re approaching God, we’re approaching the infinite and the eternal One. We’re not just approaching a chum and we’re going to have a beer together. So I think it’s very helpful for us when we go into that domain.”

A bit later, along the same lines, I asked Kwasniewski why the readings are said in Latin, not the vernacular, and if reading them in Latin leads to biblical illiteracy.

Kwasniewski disputed the idea that Catholics are biblically illiterate, arguing it’s a common myth promoted by Protestants to fulfill their own agenda.

That’s not factually true. … Even in the Middle Ages, when people were illiterate, they were educated in all kinds of ways. If you go into a medieval church, it is the Bible in stone and glass all over the place. And they were catechized by that, without having to be constantly lectured at.

They were catechized. And we have evidence, like Eamon Duffy, the English historian, he’s a bit of a liberal himself, but he’s an excellent historian. And when he talks about medieval Catholicism, he says it was saturated with the Bible. Everybody knew the stories of the Bible. They also had these mystery plays that went on year after year after year, telling, retelling in the common language outside of the church as a kind of entertainment all the stories of Scripture. … So there was a huge amount of biblical literacy.

Kwasniewski then emphasized that having a lectionary in the vernacular isn’t a silver bullet to teach the faithful Scripture. After all, biblical literacy is at an all-time low while the average Mass is celebrated in the vernacular.

“If there’s good preaching, good catechesis – which should happen outside of Mass – good sacred art, and [you] encourage people to do lectio divina right, to pray with Scripture: this is the Christian tradition [that] developed all these different ways to educate people about the Word of God. And the Mass wasn’t meant to be the only vehicle by which that happened,” he said.

Watch or listen to my full interview to hear more from Dr. Kwasniewski, and stay tuned for Part 2.  

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