ASK FATHER: Can’t get “Liturgy of the Hours” in Latin – Wherein Fr. Z RANTS
From a seminarian…
QUAERITUR:
I am a seminarian for ___, and I have been looking for a 4 Vol. Latin Breviary [Liturgia Horarum] … I emailed the Libreria Editrice Vaticana and received this response:
Dear Mr. __,
I’m sorry to inform you that all the volumes of the Liturgia Horarum in Latin language are no longer available and at the moment there is not a reprinting plan.
Best regards
Dott. Alfredo Maria Ottaviani
Ufficio Commerciale
Libreria Editrice VaticanaTel: +39 06.6988.1032
Fax: +39 06.6988.4716
Email: commerciale@lev.va
www.libreriaeditricevaticana.vaWhy aren’t they printing these volumes anymore? What can we do if we want a book-version? I don’t even think MTF is printing their version anymore.
I can imagine a couple reasons.
First, market forces: If the demand drops, the publisher won’t print it. If the demand returns they will reprint. This is the most obvious reason. For the Vatican Press, it’s all about money.
Second, ideology: There has been a concerted effort to wipe out Latin. This has been going on since before Pope St. John XXIII’s Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia. I think that there may also be an ideological reason because, were some other publisher want to take on the task, the LEV would probably deny them permission.
I remind the readership, especially those readers who are diocesan bishops, that the Code of Canon Law, can. 249, requires – it doesn’t suggest or recommend or propose, but requires – that seminarians be “very well skilled” in the Latin language: “lingua latina bene calleant“. Not just calleant, says can. 249, but bene calleant.
Calleo is “to be practiced, to be wise by experience, to be skillful, versed in” or “to know by experience or practice, to know, have the knowledge of, understand”. We get the word “callused” from this verb. We develop calluses when we do something repeatedly. So, bene calleant is “let them be very well versed”.
Review also Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 and Optatam totius 13, just to point to documents of Vatican II. … unless you “HATE VATICAN II!”, as the libs throw about.
Latin is necessary. Its benefits are so numerous that they shouldn’t have to be enumerated. And yet we are faced today with a clergy of the LATIN Church who are nearly totally ignorant of Latin!
I ask you, Reverend and Most Reverend gentlemen, what does it mean for our Catholic identity if our clergy don’t know the language – and therefore what goes with the language – of their Rite and Church?
Do you think that that’s a problem?
“But Father! But Father!”, some of these priests and bishops will respond, “We have so many more pressing problems to address!”
Is that so.
Out Catholic identity has been severely enervated over the last half dozen decades. Let’s do something about this, starting with elementary high schools! Let’s do something about this starting in homeschooling! We have to recover these lost tools or we will, shortly, begin to pay massively for the wounds to our identity.
Oh… and by the way… when rectors or others stand up during ordinations to attest before God that the men to be ordained for the Latin Church have been properly trained…. is that true if they have no Latin?
