Your Excellency, let’s pause with that statement for a moment, “Our ancestors heard the Mass in Latin every Sunday but never understood it.” Because once you really think about what that implies, it’s not just historically sloppy, it’s frankly insulting to the entire spiritual inheritance of the Church. If that’s true, then the unavoidable conclusion is that for well over a thousand years, the Church was forming saints who were apparently confused, disconnected, and spiritually malnourished. And I’m sorry, but history just does not back that up at all.
Because if they “never understood,” then I guess we should pity the lay saints, right? We should feel bad for St. Dominic Savio, a teenage boy who lived heroic virtue, deep Eucharistic devotion, and radical holiness in a world where the Mass was entirely in Latin. Poor kid, apparently he had no idea what was happening at the altar. Or St. Maria Goretti, an uneducated farm girl whose grasp of sin, grace, and forgiveness puts most modern …More