When I wrote the article below for The Remnant back in September of 2014, I treated “the official language of the Church is Latin” as a kind of fixed point. It was one of the few things that still seemed immune to the post conciliar revolution. Whatever chaos reigned in the average parish, you could still say that the official texts of the Mass, the law, the dogmatic definitions, the curial decrees, all had a home address: Latin.
This week Rome quietly took a wrecking ball to that assumption.
On November 24, Leo XIV’s Vatican published new Regulations of the Roman Curia and new Regulations for Curial Personnel. Buried in the fine print is Article 50, which rewrites the old language regime. Where John Paul II’s norms required curial acts to be drafted “as a rule in Latin,” the new text blandly states that acts are to be drafted “as a rule in Latin or in another language.” In other words, Latin is no longer the rule. It is an optional ornament, politely acknowledged and practically sidelined.
The Catholic Herald reports that Vatican officials themselves admit what this means in practice. With Italian, English, French and other modern languages now permitted for routine use, Latin will simply cease to be the ordinary working language of the Curia. The creation of a “Latin Office” in the Secretariat of State is little comfort when the real decision has already been made: the day to day business of governing the Church will increasingly be conducted in fluid, evolving vernaculars rather than in the fixed language that once anchored doctrine and law.
Continue reading at Hiraeth In Exile