Latin Lesson for 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time

May I recommend getting your own copy of the Daily Roman Missal (ed. James Socias). It’s a wonderful resource: readings for all Masses, weekday and Sunday, all 3 cycles, Proper of the Saints, Common Masses, Ritual Masses, a summary catechism, and loads of Devotions and Prayers. The beautiful leather binding and gold gilt pages make you want to respect what’s in it…something the disposable Missalette lacks.

But the feature that I most enjoy about the missal is its inclusion of Latin. The missal employs Latin alongside the English in the canon and also inserts it at the Responsorial and Alleluia verses.

While some do not see any reason to pay attention to the Latin, I personally find it absolutely fascinating. As you may know, Latin is our Catholic ancestral language (one of them – Greek is the other). Latin is also the official language of the Church. So if you want to know what the Church really says about something, you need to “go to the Latin”.

This is the same reason Biblical scholars “go to the Greek” – since it’s the language in which most of the Bible was written, or at least has come down to us. No serious student of the Bible doubts the importance of “going to the Greek” in any genuine study of the Bible. Thus, we shouldn’t doubt the importance of “going to the Latin” when we are searching for the truth in matters as regards our Liturgy and official Church teaching.

I am not a Latin scholar, but Latin resources are easy enough to come by these days. One particular resource is Latin Grammar – Grammar Vocabularies, and Exercises in Preparation for the Reading of the Missal and Breviary. Since we are at present more concerned with the study of Latin as it regards our Faith and not the reading of Virgil or Cicero, this book (and its companion “Second Latin”) would be an excellent and focused resource. Other excellent resources are only a click or two away online. But back to the topic at hand.

The side by side translations of the Responsorial and Alleluia verses sometimes amaze, amuse, or at least interest me. Here is an example.

This past Sunday, (34th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C), the Responsorial Verse reads:
“The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.”
The accompanying Latin text reads:
“Venit Dominus iudicare populos in aequitate”.

Let’s do a word by word translation:

Venit - Venit is a third person singular perfect indicative active verb, and is the main verb of the sentence. Thus, we get: “came” or perhaps “has come”.

Dominus – Lord

Iudicare – to judge

Populos – people

In – in
Aequitate – equity or justice

The words are quite easy and almost a transliteration, thus you almost don’t need a dictionary.

The actual translation is:
“The Lord has come to judge the people in equity (justice)”.
And again, the English translation in the missal is:
“The Lord has come to rule the earth with justice”.
Since the English translation of the Lectionary is authorized by the USCCB we cannot question its legitimacy so we won’t. We can and should however dig more deeply into texts to better understand and grow from them just as a student of the Bible would want to get at the words behind the words to get a better sense of the biblical message.

In this case, I see the Latin giving us a full sense of God as Judge, something we don’t hear much about anymore, along with such related topics as sin, hell, purgatory, judgment, etc. I don’t know about you, but I need constant reminding about my “End”. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me good. I’d like to say that I choose “Good” because I want to please God. But I don’t. Perhaps I’m not spiritually mature enough, so the “fear of the Lord”, helps me in times of great temptation.

But let’s continue the Latin Lesson just a bit more. Again, I in no way want to slight or slander the English translation as we must accept it as valid and licit. But the word study here is valuable.

There are those who may say “well, it may not be an exact translation but it still gives the same sense or the same meaning”. Maybe it does, but the bottom line is what the Latin actually says and what it doesn’t say.

The English uses the word “rule” instead of “judge”. In Latin, “to rule” is “regere”. There is no relation here to “judge”. It’s a completely different word with a completely different sense. Obviously the Latin wanted to stress that God will judge us … and that there is something to judge!

The English translation uses the word “earth” instead of “people” (populos). “Terra” is the Latin word for “earth”. While it could be argued that “earth” implies its human inhabitants why not just use “people” since that is what it actually says? Also, only “people” can be judged since only people have free will and thus something to judge. God won’t be judging the rocks and dirt.

The above discussion reveals an obvious attempt to “soften” the message of the scripture, something that happens quite frequently in the current Lectionary and in more contemporary versions of Scripture. While we cannot contend with the translator’s right to make such modifications, I believe we should ask ourselves if a “kinder, gentler” message is what our culture needs just now. I personally think not. Yes, God is infinitely loving and merciful. But He is also infinitely JUST. I wonder if we understand the implications of that.

Misericordiae

I have more important things to do than taking time to gripe about things that I can’t do anything about. And you have more important things to do than taking time to read my gripes about things that none of us can do anything about. But for the sake of therapy I’ll gripe anyway.

The cause of my present anxiety is my beautiful, new, leather bound, gold trimmed Daily Roman Missal. You see, this version, in response to the Vatican’s encouragement to reacquaint ourselves with the universal language of the Church, that being Latin, and indeed, Vatican II’s own dictate: “…the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites (SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM 36.1), actually has many of the prayers and responses printed also in Latin.

Now why should this cause me anxiety? Well because now I can see what the original text ACTUALLY says whereas before I just ignorantly babbled (prayerfully of course) the given English translation. I’m no Latin scholar, but I know just enough to be bothered by what I see.

One of the responses that is always accompanied by the Latin translation is the Psalm response. This week (15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B) the response was “Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation.” It is a verse I’ve repeated many times. But now I feel cheated. Why? Because that’s not what the text actually says.

The word translated as “kindness” is “misericordia” which actually means “mercy” or even “an appeal to pity”. In fact, a literal translation would be: “Lord, pity us…” The Latin word for “kindness” is “beneficentia” or “benevolentia”.

A few weeks ago, (12th Sunday) the psalm response read “Give thanks to the Lord, his love is everlasting.” Again the word “misericordiae” appears in the Latin, but this time is translated “love”. The fact that there are many Latin words for “love” testify to the great ambiguity of the word “love” in English. Here are a few: “adamo” (as in to fall in love), “amor” (to love passionately), “cupido” (physical desire), and even “lucrum” which is love of gain or avarice, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

“Misericoridae” is obviously a very different word than the tepid “kindness” and the ambiguous “love”. The fact that “misericordia” translates as mercy and even pity implies that there is a NEED for mercy and pity. It cries out from our fallen nature. It affirms our complete and utter reliance on Him and our truly desperate sinful state.

It is my opinion that more and more Catholics are increasingly morally, doctrinally, and spiritually confused, if not neurotic. This, I think, is a direct consequence of our being increasingly shielded from the full conscious horror of sin and our dire need for sacramental repentance. Fulton Sheen once said that not to go to confession is like not changing a dirty diaper. We may pretend not to see the problem but the stench eventually overwhelms.

The effects of sin and the consequences of neglecting the confessional are better documented elsewhere. My point here is to suggest that it is not only the much discussed lack of authentic, consistent orthodox catechesis that is at fault in our society’s “slide to Gomorrah”, but the whitewashed text that we in the American Church have adopted as our official translation.

As stated at the outset, there is nothing a poor layman can do about an officially approved translation. We must say what it says. But there is no law against complaining about it…the squeaky wheel, you know. There is also no law prohibiting me from reading the Latin, knowing the Latin, and teaching my children the Latin. And so I do that…and encourage you to do it also.

Yes, Lord, let me know your kindness and love, but moreover, hear my cries for “misericordia”.