Immediately after Pentecost, there will be something.


Translation of an original article from the
German language journal Der Spiegel.

That is the Pope’s Motu Propriu for the use of the Latin Mass.

To what extent, this has anything to do with China, became clear this weekend in a meeting in the gardens of the Vatican Gardens.
1 And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place:
2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them:
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak.
Acts 2:1
(Spiegel edited the bible citation).

Pope Benedict.

Friend of the Latin Liturgy


Professor Wang has translated Ovid, Homer and Cicero into Chinese. He is China’s most prominent Latinist and a member of the Academy of Social Sciences. He knows everything about the old “luó ma”, which means Rome in Chinese. He does, however, prefer to speak Chinese, even if this takes some brilliance from his lecture on the enormously growing importance of Latin for contemporary China.

In any case, it was discovered that in Peking, there is in progress on a dual language edition of the "Corpus Juris Civilis” and according to Professor Wang, it has been “received cordially by a multitude of readers”. The Papal Council for Historical Science has been debating for two years on the topic, at "Domus Sanctae Marthae", in the Vatican Gardens, “The Latin Language in the service and identity of Europe”.

There were endless lectures on the importance of the Latin in general and of the individual. Robert de Mattei of the National Science Council said that “Latin was a language which has translated a whole complex of a religious, legal and ethical principles into words and rules.

The Bosnian writer, Pedrag Matvejevic has recently declared this language to be a suitable tool for values in the battle of civilizations.

Latin is the English of Europe.

It is for this reason that there is not only a Latin Wikepedia
(Self-promotion: "Nunc sunt 13075 paginae!") but also a daily language broadcast in the language of Petrarch on Finnish Radio and Radio Vatican.

Fear of a new schism

The people of neo-Latin or Romanic languages are in terms of their number stronger than those who speak English or Arabic, so Mattei explains. During the time when the Latins slip into their Pentecost weekend, the Pope is writing his Sunday homily. It appears that during this week, a Motu Propriu will be published ( Latin translation given on own initiative) which will be a minor Papal opinion, without seal, signature or justification.

In it, the Latin Mass is going to be promoted more strongly to the Faithful. This is good news for some and in this manner, one does no longer have to understand what is said and done at the front and the liturgy will assume a stronger emphasis towards the action of the Rite. But others, for example, important Bishops in Germany are afraid of a schism if the Pope would actually support the use of the Latin Mass.

As well as that the French bishops are contemplating an open rebellion because they are afraid that the Pope will make common cause with the unfaithful traditionalists of Archbishop Lefebvre. Ceterum there is a country in which the Latin Mass survived right up to the 90s because the liturgy reform of the Vatican Council was perceived as a Western interference, this country was China.

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