Reginald Foster, OCD –Vatican Latinist– at Notre Dame
August 10, 2006, 11:18 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
Given the interest in Latin on this blog, I thought people would like to know that Reginald Foster, OCD, the well-known Vatican Latinist, will be speaking at Notre Dame soon.
Is Latin Really Dead?
An informal conversation with
Reginald Foster, O.C.D.
Department of Latin Letters
Secretariat of State
The Vatican
Date: Thursday, August 24, 2006
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Place: Notre Dame Law School, Room 120
Reggie is really amazing; here is a story written after B16′s election.
If I were going to be in South Bend on the 9th day before the Kalends of September, I would come to hear Fr. Foster; but in my case he would be preaching to the converted.
One of the things I like most about us Catholics is that we take seriously Paul’s point that God’s glory is revealed in our weakness.
Why else would a man like Foster proudly wear the initials of his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It puts me in mind of all those truly humble theology profs who announce their STD’s.
(Yeah, I know. Very sixth grade. But my inner-child was due for a day pass).
I guess all of us who saw “Le Mis” here in the US missed out on something -translation is so terrible.
Latin is indeed beautiful and poetic; in the Church, though, it’s a club in the culture war that wants to emphasize the Roman part of the Roman Catholoc equation.
The thing I like most about Reggie is that he doesn’t use Latin as a club. In fact, I think he tends to be on the “progressive” side of things in terms of his approach to moral and social issues. Also in terms of his approach to the liturgy – it is my impression that he does NOT favor a literal, word-by-word translation from the Latin., which comes up with something artificial, almost magical. His whole point is that Latin isn’t magic –it’s life.
Take a look at the articles about him. You’ll see.
As far as I myself go, I refuse to concede love of language and tradition to those who would ossify it. The scholars I most respect, e.g., John Noonan, know and love the tradition — and are intimately familiar with language that embodies it — even as they refuse to turn it into a statue that belongs in a museum. They know that, as MacIntyre stated, “a historically extended argument about the goods internal to the tradition,” as well as the practices and virtues that allow us to participate in those goods. So knowledge of the tradition doesn’t shut down argument and questions, it opens them up. Latin allows us to know the tradition in more of its own terms.
Greg:
When I started graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary (NY), the degree I was pursuing was a “ThD.” Sometime in the course of my studies, they decided it looked to much like a ministerial degree, and so it was changed to “PhD.” One night I was watching “The Wizard of Oz” with nieces and nephews and saw that at the end the wizard bestowed on the Straw Man a certificate awarding him a “ThD”–a Doctorate in Thinkology!
If he’s the son of a plumber, he can’t be all that bad :)
I’m not against Latin although I believe it is dead as a vernacular language. I do not want literal translation of liturgical prayers.
I am optimistic, however, that we shall always have enough folks who enjoy learning and using this language. In fact, I can see good employment opportunities for those clergy and laity who are well versed in Latin. Indeed, perhaps we see here the application of the law of supply and demand.
To Father Reggie, I say “More power to you and God bless!”
Of course Latin is dead as a vernacular language — so is Dante’s Italian, or Shakespeare. But I certainly agree with Joe in not wanting literal translations of liturgical prayers — and I’d go further and deny that there is such a thing as a “literal” translation of a prayer.
I was fortunate (well, at least in some ways) to live from 1969 through 2002 in a place where it was always possible to hear a Latin mass (usually with full music) on Sunday, and was with greater or lesser frequency part of the crowd that assembled. It never occurred to me that I was taking sides in a rather tendentious argument. When did Latin become such a bone of contention? I’m tempted to say that it’s when the older generation who had the superb Catholic secondary education of the 20′s and 30′s died out and those who were left no longer remembered just how bad so much of the Latin masses of the 50′s and 60′s were.
According to Oxford scholar NIcholas Ostler (Empires of the Word A Language History of the World, 2005) Latin died twice. The first time, during the Carolingian Renaissance, was at the hands of Alcuin of York, when he established new standards for the spelling and pronunciation of Latin, approaching Latin as a foreign language he learned about from books. The second time was in the 16th century when the Gutenberg presses cranked out so many books in the vernacular that the classics were ‘remaindered’. Happily, he concludes at the end tof the book that when Latin died, it went to heaven. And everyone knows there’s a lot to learn from that source!
Did Latin really die, or has it undergone multiple metamorphoses? What are the Romance languages but various versions of Latin?
If Latin died in the 16th century on the basis of 15th century publishing, why was Cromwell using the greatest living English poet to justify the Commonwealth in Latin letters and treatises?
Please forgive the lack of unique Catholic perspective. Maybe I should add that Latin, like most other things, lives as it proves useful, and there ought to be some Catholic discussion of its usefulness, beyond a way of making some of us feel good.
For instance, when I pray in Latin, publicly or privately, am I doing something unique or additive in my (rather mediocre) prayer life, or am I merely finding pleasure or gratifying my ego?
” .. those who were left no longer remembered just how bad so much of the Latin masses of the 50′s and 60′s were. ”
There are still some of us around who remember how really bad most of them were, particularly the 20 minute “low” (VERY low!) Masses.
Anyone who was an altar boy (no girls, then!) during those days, as I was, remembers all too well that your role was to ensure that the priest got the attendees in and get out as quickly as possible.
I have a report up about Fr. Foster’s talk at Notre Dame this past Thursday.