Vatican launches website in Latin

[Ludovicus]

The Roman Catholic Church, for centuries a bastion of Latin usage, has given the ancient tongue a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin."

 

 

For more, click here:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7393548.stm

Edited May 10, 2008 by Ludovicus

[Faustus]

The Roman Catholic Church, for centuries a bastion of Latin usage, has given the ancient tongue a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin."

"The Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation.

Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language.

 

"You have to say something and move on," he says.

 

"It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' "

[Ludovicus]

The Roman Catholic Church, for centuries a bastion of Latin usage, has given the ancient tongue a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin."

"The Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation.

Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language.

 

"You have to say something and move on," he says.

 

"It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' "

 

 

I think these last quotes from the BBC article show some bias on the part of the speaker. It's entirely possible to "write a whole page" in any language without saying anything. I posted the link to the article because I thought some of our members would be interested in reading Latin online, esp. newly coined terms from the Internet age.

[M. Porcius Cato]

And here's the Latin website.

[Ursus]

Kudos to the Pope. Some traditions should be preserved.

[Marcus Caelius]

Kudos to the Pope. Some traditions should be preserved.

 

But why this one?

[Ursus]

Kudos to the Pope. Some traditions should be preserved.

 

But why this one?

 

 

As opposed to, say, Inquisitions?

 

Because it is a reminder that Christianity was forged under the auspices of a particular time and place. It's a link to two millenias that affirms the cultural and linguistic heritage of Christianity as a product of the Greco-Roman experience. Why would anyone not want to proudly affirm their identity with such a long past? I'm not Christian and I strongly disagree with the Church on many issues, but I respect the weight of history it embodies.

[Silentium]

The Roman Catholic Church, for centuries a bastion of Latin usage, has given the ancient tongue a 21st Century boost by launching a website in Latin."

"The Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation.

Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language.

 

"You have to say something and move on," he says.

 

"It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' "

 

 

I think these last quotes from the BBC article show some bias on the part of the speaker. It's entirely possible to "write a whole page" in any language without saying anything. I posted the link to the article because I thought some of our members would be interested in reading Latin online, esp. newly coined terms from the Internet age.

 

Well, if we look at this from a Sapir-whorfian perspective I think it is undoubtedly true that the English language, for example, is infinitely more pragmatic (and so is Latin) than the French, perhaps also for historical reasons.

[Northern Neil]

...it is a reminder that Christianity was forged under the auspices of a particular time and place. It's a link to two millenias that affirms the cultural and linguistic heritage of Christianity as a product of the Greco-Roman experience. Why would anyone not want to proudly affirm their identity with such a long past? I'm not Christian and I strongly disagree with the Church on many issues, but I respect the weight of history it embodies.

I agree totally with this - hats off to the Church for building this great website. I have not studied Latin in any detail, but I was fascinated as I explored this site. Amazingly, I also felt as if I understood quite a lot of it, which just goes to show how heavily modern languages have borrowed from (and in some cases derived from ) latin.

[Marcus Caelius]

...it is a reminder that Christianity was forged under the auspices of a particular time and place. It's a link to two millenias that affirms the cultural and linguistic heritage of Christianity as a product of the Greco-Roman experience. Why would anyone not want to proudly affirm their identity with such a long past? I'm not Christian and I strongly disagree with the Church on many issues, but I respect the weight of history it embodies.

I agree totally with this - hats off to the Church for building this great website. I have not studied Latin in any detail, but I was fascinated as I explored this site. Amazingly, I also felt as if I understood quite a lot of it, which just goes to show how heavily modern languages have borrowed from (and in some cases derived from ) latin.

 

Well, I took four years of Latin, and I don't understand a single word (or, more properly, a single sentence - I can pick out the occasional word) of the web site. Which is to the point of both these quotes. If communication involves the transmission, reception and understanding of information, just exactly how much information is being communicated by that site's transmission to the average viewer? Virtually none, I'll warrant, and on those grounds it is an abuse of bandwidth.

 

And let us not forget what is embodied by the weight of the history of the Latin-speaking Church: intolerance; bigotry; torture; murder; slavery; conquest; ignorance; fear... And all because Deus volit. I think it fair to say that most if not all human progress made while the power of the Church was at its greatest, was despite that power and not because of it. Ursus, as a descendant of western Europeans the history of the Roman Catholic Church is part of my identity, and I definitely do not want to affirm any of it; moreover, I completely disavow it. I do not deny the good that the Church did or inspired, but neither do I deny that useful knowledge can be dredged out of the Nazi medical experiments. I do not deny that the average Catholic is a good and decent human being, but I assert, and I believe I can corroborate, that goodness and decency are human, not religious, attributes. To my mind, the persistence of the Roman Church for the better part of two thousand years is the greatest of human tragedies.

Edited May 12, 2008 by Marcus Caelius

[Northern Neil]

Well, I took four years of Latin, and I don't understand a single word (or, more properly, a single sentence - I can pick out the occasional word) of the web site.

...Well, being a French speaker helps a bit!

 

 

And let us not forget what is embodied by the weight of the history of the Latin-speaking Church: intolerance; bigotry; torture; murder; slavery; conquest; ignorance; fear... And all because Deus volit. I think it fair to say that most if not all human progress made while the power of the Church was at its greatest, was despite that power and not because of it. Ursus, as a descendant of western Europeans the history of the Roman Catholic Church is part of my identity, and I definitely do not want to affirm any of it; moreover, I completely disavow it. I do not deny the good that the Church did or inspired, but neither do I deny that useful knowledge can be dredged out of the Nazi medical experiments. I do not deny that the average Catholic is a good and decent human being, but I assert, and I believe I can corroborate, that goodness and decency are human, not religious, attributes. To my mind, the persistence of the Roman Church for the better part of two thousand years is the greatest of human tragedies.

 

...whoa there, my friend! I too am a Western European, and as you will see from some of my posts on other topics, I am very much an admirer of Dawkins et al, far from being religious in any sense. But, all these criticisms can be applied to any political regime with a modicum of power over the last 1500 years - I admire the French culture of my ancestors, for example, but I also acknowledge the bloodshed they caused in Algeria in the 50's and all over Europe a century and a half before. It does not stop me listening to Django Reinhardt, or enjoying fine wines, and giving credit to the French for both those pleasures. Despite the many negative aspects of the Roman Church, I applaud this website and the people who put it together - it is harmless and, for me, fun.

[Marcus Caelius]

It does not stop me listening to Django Reinhardt, or enjoying fine wines, and giving credit to the French for both those pleasures. Despite the many negative aspects of the Roman Church, I applaud this website and the people who put it together - it is harmless and, for me, fun.

 

Hmm. You're going to have to explain the "fun" part. On second thought, I take that back.

 

As I said, I don't deny the good that the Church has done, and we donate regularly to the local Catholic church (they've got the only distribution network worthy of the name in our town), and I'm more than happy to go to their parish chicken dinners. However, the question was raised why anyone would want to deny their roots in the Church, and I answered it. Latin was famously used by the Church as a barrier between the faithful and their faith, ensuring the power (and income) of the priesthood. To celebrate such a use strikes me as something more than a little obscene. It is the language of the Caesars, not of the Church, to which we owe the most.

[Ludovicus]

It is the language of the Caesars, not of the Church, to which we owe the most.

 

 

Whatever your view of the Roman Catholic Church may be, history shows that the Church gave Latin at least a thousand more years of life. That Latin was the most important language in Western Europe through the Dark Ages and until quite recently has had many important consequences for the development of Latin's offspring: Spanish, French, Italian, etc. and for many non-Latin languages such as English.

 

 

 

After the last Caesar abandoned the imperial throne, hundreds of Roman Catholic monks were busy in dozens of scriptoria in barbarian kingdoms. Thanks to their centuries old project of rescuing and preserving

Latin literature and language we are able to read and discuss many of the important writings of the Roman civilization. Let's give credit where credit is due!

 

I'm not making an argument here in favor of the Tridentine Mass (Latin Mass) as opposed to the Mass in the vernacular tongues, by the way.

[Traianus]

Everything that helps Latin to be still alive among us, is good, who the hell matters if the church was/is corrupt and one of the most hypocrital organizations in the world( sorry if someone feels hurt by this opinion but is my conclusion of the overall history of the church)?this should not be discussed here.

 

Btw, church may have born and may have its central power here, but is much more spread in your continent (both north and south amercia) I think. We have suffered from it during many centuries, specially in the incomprehensible evolutive deterioration that took place in the Middle Ages.

Edited May 12, 2008 by Traianus

[Marcus Caelius]

Thanks to their centuries old project of rescuing and preserving

Latin literature and language we are able to read and discuss many of the important writings of the Roman civilization. Let's give credit where credit is due!

 

I don't think there's any credit to give, certainly not as much as is popularly believed. Ancient Greek seems to have remained quite translatable, and didn't need a political/religious sponsor to do it. Likewise, Roman literature and language was just too widespread to disappear without the Church, and probabably would have survived well into the Middle Ages via the eastern Empire. By that time, the emergence of the universities and printing would have revitalized it.