For those who know Latin well, what's your experience at Mass?

[LausTibiChriste]

This is a side bar from the Eastern Liturgy thread and a question I've meant to ask for a while now. I have been dabbling but want to get properly serious about learning Latin (and Ancient Greek but that's a different story [I'm into intellectual BDSM]).

A part of me echoes some of the issues @Gardener has raised about the vernacular use in the Liturgy. I like that I can't fully comprehend the words being said - it allows me to detach and be in a prayerful mood rather than a "listening" mood. This is, of course, not to say that listening to the prayers in Mass and understanding them is somehow less beneficial.

So for those of you who know Latin well, particularly those who learned it after already attending the TLM for a time, what has your experience been like?

[Miriam_M]

I learned Latin as a child and teenager, so the Latin Mass was never something I considered "a foreign language," so to speak. But I wouldn't have to know the meaning of every word beforehand in order to experience the prayerfulness of it. 

That said, I do think it's helpful to understand the meaning of both the stable and rotating parts of the Mass, since traditionally, the Church has wanted the faithful to benefit from all of it, and without that, we can still have a receptive and meditative experience, but not always the fullest.  For example, a priest I knew once told me that the Collect summarizes a particular message that should be understood as essential to that day's Mass.  Sometimes, he would preach about the Collect in particular, for that reason.  In addition, there are several rotating Prefaces throughout the liturgical year.

All of that is possible to find on sites like www.extraordinaryform.org and other sites, as well as missals with full translations.

[KreKre]

I am not fluent at Latin, I couldn't hold a conversation, but I can read it with some effort. Learning English and Italian as second languages helped me with Latin significantly, to the point I've managed to get through quite a few old treatises in Latin on various subjects, and if I am familiar with the subject, I didn't have much trouble. But reading difficult texts like st. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica is quite a bit beyond my level. At home, when I pray in private, I usually pray in Latin. I heard that demons really hate it, and since it's such a beautiful, solemn language, I am always motivated to get better at it.

I have no trouble following the Latin Mass, mostly because of familiarity. Once you've been to it a dozen times, it's shouldn't be a problem to follow it. However, when it is a sung Mass, one can barely hear the priest praying, anyway. I usually keep a little pocket missal with me, but I find that looking at it is often distracting, so I just say my own prayers to God and meditate on our Lord's Sacrifice. I also silently say the Confiteor, and try to sing along for Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

But the point of Latin is not that we should necessarily understand everything, but that we should put God in the focus, not the people. God has no trouble understanding any language, and the Mass is an offering to God, not to people. Vernacular language is just too distracting, and encourages improvisation. Also, the beauty of Latin Mass is the same when all over the world, so you can travel far away from home and still celebrate the same Mass as you would at home.

[Michael Wilson]

I studied Latin when I was thinking of going to the seminary; and I got to the point where I could understand what the priest was praying in the Mass and the readings from the Mass of the day; but for me it was a distraction, as I found it hard to recollect myself since I understood what the priest was saying, his words and their meaning kept intruding into my mind and kept me from meditating on the sacrifice and prepare myself to receive communion, as well as in making my thanksgiving.

[Maximilian]

I took AP Latin at a Jesuit high school, so my grammar and vocabulary are good. However, we didn't learn a single word of Catholic Latin, and I was already graduated from college before I learned that there even was such a thing as a "Latin Mass."

I have experienced both of the approaches that you describe. For many years I would always have a 4-year old on one side, a 2-year old on the other side and a baby in my arms, so using a Missal was out of the question. One has no choice but to make an effort towards silent recollection since there isn't any alternative. The Epistle and the Gospel are read out loud in English, but that is during the Sermon, when one's brain is in a different state of discursive rational intellect, so it's not the same as praying along with the Mass.

In more recent years I am now free to follow the Latin and/or English in the Missal. In my experience, this is a much superior way to follow the Mass. The prayers and the readings provide a much superior source of material for meditation compared to one's own random thoughts. One becomes much more deeply involved in the flow of the liturgical calendar and the lives of the saints. At daily Mass, the priest is not going to read anything in English, so if you don't follow in the Missal, then you have no idea what is going on.

There are 3 levels of mental prayer, but virtually all of us are struggling even to reach the first level which is contemplation of supernatural truths through faith. Someone who does not know any Latin and doesn't follow along in the Missal can try to meditate on a general truth of the Faith like the Passion, but the material provided to us day-by-day in the liturgical life of the Church is so much infinitely richer than our own thoughts on the subject. The cycle of the liturgical seasons along with the calendar of the saints is designed to create a complete and harmonious presentation of all the truths of the Faith, each at their appropriate moment.

Jesus said, "A man learned in the kingdom of God is like a paterfamilias who can go into his storehouse and take out things both new and old." This is a description of someone who follows the Latin and/or the English in the Missal, preferably every day. A person who tries to pray devoutly without the material can never reach the same level. Like the Israelites in Egypt, they are trying to make bricks without straw.

The Latin prayers allow you to penetrate more deeply into the supernatural truths being presented. Just this week I noticed that a 1958 Missal was left in the pew where I sit. I was struck with horror when I looked into it. There was not a single word of Latin in the sections of the Missal with the Propers for Weekdays or the Propers for Sundays. All of the English was a new, modern translation, but the reader had no way of knowing whether it was accurate since there was no Latin to compare it with. I took out my own Missal to make a comparison, and the difference was shocking. In general, of course, the English followed the sense of the true Latin prayers, but there were numerous inaccuracies in virtually every prayer I examined.

There was facing Latin - English for the Ordinary, but even that was very badly translated. Just to give one example which I recall, for the prayers at the foot of the altar, the English translation didn't have the word "youth." You could see the word "juventutem" on the Latin side, but the English said "God who gives me joy and gladness," nothing about youth.

[QuaeriteDominum]

Having been born in 1954, I grew up on the Latin Mass. I didn't take Latin until my Jesuit High School years. Nobody in my orbit from 1954 until 1969 spoke Latin.  It wasn't necessary because we all had big meaty missals to simultaneously pray the English words of the Latin prayers that were said by the priest. I know most of them by heart at the ripe age of 70. No one was expected to "speak" Latin. After years of hearing Latin, and then eventually learning it in school, I can listen to an Epistle or Gospel and pretty much know the reading. But the missal is a treasure chest of content, especially the St. Andrew's Daily Missal (1953 version).  It is truly amazing for its wealth of content within and outside of the Mass.

I always chuckle at folks who don't attend the TLM because they don't speak Latin.