Is Italian the new language of the Church?

Many people still claim — mistakenly — that Latin has always been the Church’s official language.

Nov 08, 2018

By Robert Mickens
Many people still claim — mistakenly — that Latin has always been the Church’s official language.

But that is not true today, nor was it true in the past. For several centuries, Latin was, indeed, the official idiom for issuing documents and celebrating the liturgy in only one part of the Universal Church — the Western or Roman Church.

However, after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) the Western Church began what some would argue was an unintended process of de-Latinisation. What was intended as a cautious introduction of the use of the vernacular — or national languages — in the liturgy (as had already happened with seminary lectures and textbooks), rapidly became the overriding norm.

Despite efforts after the council to maintain Latin as the “eternal” language of Roman Catholicism, it gradually began losing its force even at the Vatican.

In a matter of only a few decades, the norm was dropped that only the Latin prototype could be considered as the official text of a papal or Roman Curia document. Once upon a time, translations of those texts were only that — mere translations.

But today only a relatively few of the many documents that the pope or the Vatican issues are drafted originally in Latin. And many of them never even get translated into the language of Cicero.

Finding a common language to replace Latin

The truth of the matter is that, apart from its continued use as the normative text for the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgies and laws, Latin — which once was the lingua franca of Western civilisation — has become mostly a language of scholars and researchers.

Though it is certainly not the “dead language” that far too many of our contemporaries disparagingly call it, no one can deny that it has been surpassed as a global tool of communications by other modern languages, English first among them.

But that does not sit well with many bishops and Vatican officials who lack the facility to read or speak English — or any other modern language, for that matter.

What to do? All efforts in the post-Vatican II period to restore Latin as a major working language in the Church have failed. And suggestions that English replace it, following the lead of most other international organisations, have been resisted. That resistance has come mainly from Italian Church leaders.

So instead of trying to retrieve the language of the old Roman Empire, there has been a push by some to impose the language of modern Rome on the entire Church. If you require proof, take note of what a mid-level Vatican prelate recently said.

“Italian can be considered, in a certain sense, as the official language of the Church, since it is the one most used in large gatherings of the faithful coming from the various continents, especially when the pope is present in Rome or in other countries,” said Msgr Paolo Rizzi, a 55-year-old priest who has worked for the past 20 years in the Secretariat of State.

Msgr Rizzi, who grew up in a town about an hour’s drive south of Milan, made his comments during an Oct. 22 talk at the Accademia della Crusca, a scholarly academy founded in Florence in 1583 to maintain the purity of the Italian language.

He cited the “well known” fact that the all recent popes have used Italian as the principal language for their public gatherings at the Vatican — including the weekly general audience catechesis, the Sunday Angelus address, liturgical homilies and in “a wide variety of talks to groups and individuals.”

Of course, Pope Francis speaks only in Italian and Spanish. Unlike his two most recent predecessors he has a limited capacity to address people in any other language.

But Msgr Rizzi implied that Italian is the Church’s universal language because it is the language of the Roman Curia.

“The Roman Curia is an international entity, in the sense that bishops, priests, religious and lay people from all over the world work there,” the priest said.

And he noted that the general norms for Vatican personnel make it very clear that all employees occupying mid-to-upper level posts — including those who are local hires at the papal nunciatures around the world — are required to know Italian.

What he failed to mention is that they are also to know Latin, first of all. And, in addition to Italian, another modern language.

“In practice, Italian is the most widely used language in the whole Roman Curia, which includes some 40 structures concerned with the various areas of the Pope’s pastoral activities for Catholics spread out over the entire planet,” he said.

Thinking outside the Boot

What Msgr Rizzi and too many other Vatican officials still refuse to recognize is that the Roman Curia is not the Catholic Church. Because of its location — a tiny island in the heart of Rome — it is natural that most of its employees are Italians. And it is not unreasonable that the working language is Italian.

But the world and the Church are much bigger than the Italian peninsula. And Vatican officials like Msgr Rizzi need to learn how to think outside the “Boot.” --LCI (international.la-croix.com)

Total Comments:0

Name
Email
Comments