Latin has a unique way advantage in communicating thoughts, emotions and ideas from one person to another: it can do so across time and across space. As with any language, one needs to be very familiar with it in order to understand meaning, and familiarity is a key which unlocks deeper truths.  This unlocking is possible when one knows a language well. One can have a passing acquaintance, say with French or Spanish, but unless you have actually lived in France or Spain, inhabited the culture, experienced day-to-day life, walked the streets, the nuances of the language often pass you by.

So it is with all of the deep truths and mysteries of the Church, which are recorded for ease of communication, in the Latin language. It is challenging and requires careful study over a long period of time. It is not something you can pick up easily, not because it is intrinsically difficult: I suspect that Mandarin Chinese is more difficult for Westerners to understand, or perhaps even Arabic.   Nevertheless, Latin has complexities all of its own, because we change the structures of the words in order to change the meaning itself. We are not so used to that. In English, we tend to use adjectives and adverbs to change the meaning of the words, and our verbs do not change their form often.  However, in Latin, both nouns and verbs are constantly changing their form.  It is essential to remember what those forms are in order to have any understanding of the Latin text.

Further complicating the search for meaning, the Latin language contains more diverse ways of expressing ideas. It is critical for priests to have a very thorough understanding of the Latin language.  Priests need to know Latin. All priests need to know Latin. There are no official translations of any Vatican documents whatsoever. None. Not one.

The Catechism is in Latin. The official version of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal is in Latin. The Code of Canon Law is in Latin. No translations that are available have authority. This is very important to understand. The translations do not have authority. The translations are merely people’s opinion. So when I read a Latin text, I might have some understanding of it. If I were to write down what my understanding is, that would be a translation, but it would not have authority, because the authoritative version is the original in Latin. Therefore, it behooves all priests to know their Latin, because if they know their Latin, not only will the texts of the Sacred Liturgy come alive to them, but also the teaching office of the Church as well.  Without Latin, a priest is hampered: he has his hands tied behind his back, because he cannot read the teaching documents of the Church, and that includes the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which are all promulgated in Latin only. There are no authoritative translations to the documents of Vatican II! How on earth can any priest know the content of Vatican II if he does not understand Latin?

Similarly, all of the magisterial documents since then, including the ones of our Holy Fathers Benedict XVI and Francis, are authoritatively written in Latin.  To understand what the Church actually teaches requires knowledge of that language.

Why is that important? There is a grave danger when there is a gap between comprehension and activity in the Church.  Rigorous study of the Latin language among priests is no longer required.  Rather than actually understanding the text of promulgated documents that effect the Sacred Liturgy, the priests are reading translations, and not the documents in their original language. This gap between comprehension and activity risks turning liturgy into magic, spells and ritual, because there is a chasm of misunderstanding. Liturgy is not witchcraft; it is not spells; it is entirely knowable, but it requires learning in order to know it.  It is knowable, it is the priest’s role to be the conduit. Not all Catholic Christians need to have a rigorous knowledge of the Latin language, but they should be able to trust that their priest does.