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Catholic priests could return to Latin Mass |
Changes may
be coming in the celebration of the Mass in Catholic churches. Pope
Benedict XVI is said to be close to release a document allowing
priests to once again celebrate Mass in Latin.
Current policy requires priests to seek permission from their
bishop before celebrating Mass in Latin instead of the vernacular.
Father James Nibler of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Newberg said
he hadn’t received any requests to celebrate Mass in Latin. He did
say there are “a few people here in Oregon who would prefer Mass in
Latin.”
Nibler said the Latin Mass is an older version of prayer than the
one regularly performed in English. It comes from the council of
Trent in the 16th Century and is referred to as the Tridentine Mass.
“The prayers were in use for a long time. They remember it fondly,”
he said of older parishioners who attended church before the change
took place. Nibler admitted he isn’t very conversant in Latin. Were
he to be called to celebrate Mass in Latin he would simply be using
the current set of prayers while the Tridentine Mass uses a
different set.
The change from Latin to local idioms happened in the early 1960s
during the second Vatican Council. The purpose was to make the
church’s message more accessible to the nearly one billion
Catholics, a majority of which didn’t understand Latin. |
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From
June 30, 2007, Newberg Graphic
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