Some years ago, I posted a hilarious audio recording of Archbp. André-Joseph Léonard of Mechelen-Brussels and Primate of Belgium, sadly replaced by mere shadows. In this recording, which had to have been with French speaking priests and seminarians, Léonard gave a short after dinner talk about the different ways in which his profs back in the day spoke Latin in their courses at the Gregorian University, French, German, Italian, American, with funny anecdotes.
That speech was on YouTube and then it disappeared.
I thought of it today because I heard the first part of a podcast by Anne Barhardt in which she and her interlocutor chat about understanding Latin during Mass. Their idea being that you don’t have to grasp Latin so well that you can speak it. You get to know the texts of the Mass, over time, so well that you simply know what they say without having to translate them any more. Perfect fluidity isn’t necessary for priests, either.
I’ll add a point on that. When Summorum came out and bishops sought to close it off by testing priests on their Latin, the late Card. Egan – NOT a friend of the Traditional Mass by any stretch of the imagination – clarified that for a priest to be ideoneus (suited) to celebrate the TLM he had to be able to pronounce the words properly. Compression was not required. In law, the minimum suffices because of the principle odiosa restringenda: the law must be interpreted strictly, not widely, so as to favor the people upon whom an obligation has been lain.
I digress.
I thought of Bp. Léonard’s Latin speech and sought it out. Sure enough, one of my own posts came up in which, unbeknownst to me, back in the day a reader had downloaded Léonard’s talk thinking that – because it was good – it would someday be squashed. Yup. He reposted it and I recorded the audio and… HERE IT IS.
I don’t know the year. However, Léonard was probably still Bishop in Namur. Also, he mentions some profs by name, only one of whom I met in life, Fr. Fuchs.
It helps to know French. And Latin, of course, since he speaks mostly in Latin. But you can tune your ear for the accents and get the gist.
BTW.. at the end, Léonard tells a variation of the old clerical sacramental moral theology problem of what a priest is to do if a mouse runs across the altar and carries off a consecrated Host. (My answer is, I think, better.) Also, what to do when distributing Communion if the Host is dropped a woman’s ample exposed cleavage. De defectibus deals with this. There was actually a funny video of this, HERE. PROOF: These things happen.
I digress.
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Hugely funny! Thank you so much! I thought I had forgotten most of the Latin I had learned, but in fact, was able to follow about 80% of the sketch!
Thanks! i was quite pleased at how much i understood both of the French and the Latin.
“Pope Michael” of happy memory had a nice Kansan twang to his Latin that I always found pleasant. Here’s a video of him saying the creed at Mass. https://youtu.be/J10p4HayO5M
Fr Z, you’ve left us hanging! What is your answer to what the priest ought to do if a mouse purloins a consecrated Host?
And is reaching in to get the Host from a woman, as the priest started to do in the video, the correct thing to do? It’s awkward all around if course, but what’s the right answer for that?
Of course, the Italianate pronunciation of ecclesiastical Latin is the standard, but I’ve certainly noticed regional variations throughout (formerly Catholic) Europe, e.g., in the Teutonic lands: “Pater noster qui es in ‘sell-iss'”
So glad you found this again !!
Very amusing, and impressive that he includes regional French accents too (and Chinese philosophy!). I liked the ironic reference to students quoting John chapter 6: “This is a hard saying and who can understand it?!” Actually, I found most of his sketch surprisingly easy to follow. I suppose it was much the same at the height of the Roman empire. I read somewhere that British Latin speakers typically turned the letter C into soft S sound. And I think St. Augustine somewhere mentions pronunciations that were particular to his native North Africa.
I love this!
Hearing the different accents and the laughter of clerics brought back fond memories of better, clearer, happier times. Those were sunnier times when Benedict XVI still reigned supreme and the most controversial part of the day concerned the spoon’s meaning at pranzo.
— sigh
This is hilarious.
Note that until the late 19th century, it was standard for Latin simply to be pronounced following the phonological norms of the vernacular. My understanding is that the imposition of the Italianate pronunciation as the standard for ecclesiastical Latin was part of the revival of Gregorian chant resulting from the scholarship undertaken at Solesmes Abbey. The first edition of the Liber usualis, in 1896, contains a pronunciation guide which follows the Italianate norms, and by 1912 Pius X was able to write to Abp Dubois of Bourges that he was happy to learn that, “since the promulgation of our Motu proprio of the 22nd of November, 1903, on sacred music [ie, Tra le sollecitudini], great zeal is deployed, in various dioceses of France, in ensuring that the pronunciation of the Latin language gets ever closer to that used in Rome” (http://liberius.net/livres/Actes_de_S._S._Pie_X_%28tome_7%29_000000914.pdf, p. 170).
For an example of the 17th-century French pronunciation of Latin, you can listen to performances of French Baroque music under the direction of the restorationist conductor William Christie, such as this beautiful rendition of Charpentier’s Te Deum: https://youtu.be/MxZQ1ODN1iU?si=I2QAPHZqpKMc5hZf&t=105
Of course, despite the attempt to standardise on the basis of the Italianate pronunciation, national particularities remain, either due to phonetic difficulties (the trilled R is foreign to the modern French language) or due to persistent custom (as in Germany, notable for example in the recordings of the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz; I’ve also noticed that in France, at the end of the Salve regina, “clemens” is still nasalised).
PS: how do I make proper paragraphs?
PPS: oops, didn’t realize that contrary to the preview, the line breaks would generate proper paragraphs on submission. Ignore my question.
Part of the fun of this seems to be the impression that such Latin speakers are not ‘divided by a common language’ but mutually intelligible despite the mother-tongue effects on pronunciation, syntax, word-choice, etc.
In response to Herman Joseph on the problem with bosoms:
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, they say. Thus the paten, which I would think also protects the priest from distraction, as they are tempted unbelievably more strongly than the rest of us.
Unfortunately, I am completely illiterate when it comes to Latin – I’m new to the TLM, so the humor would go way over my head. However, it would be amusing to hear the comparison of people from the deep South, New York / New Jersey, Boston (New England), Wisconsin / Minnesota, France, England, Scotland, Italy, Germany, and Poland speaking Latin! “et tu spiritu tuo, y’all!” (OK, I do know a LITTLE Latin)!
Also, as Herman Joseph said – YOU’RE LEAVING US HANGING!!! On both the mouse and, ahem, “other issue”.
Finally as Katrinka said “they are tempted unbelievably more strongly than the rest of us” – after all, they ARE human and NOT superhuman!
As far as the mouse scenario is concerned, you have to have a foundational principle. Things which are consecrated, and then need to be disposed of, are usually burned and the ashes either put into the ground, running water, or down the sacrarium (a sink in the sacristry that goes into the earth, not sewer). Once you get the basic principles (with just about everything wound up burned and going down the sacrarium), you can extrapolate all sorts of solutions to scenarios not covered in the Missal. At a very clerical supper one night we mused about the possibility of a mouse dashing across the altar after the consecration and making off with a Host, just as Bp. Leonard entertained. Our solution was to bless a cat, put a white stole on it, send it after the mouse, and when the cat came back, burn the cat and put the ashes down the sacrarium.
“…but there are nooo cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese….”
Hmmm.
More seriously, best make sure that cat is a stray. I don’t expect many cat owners will be willing to sacrifice their pets….