Category Archives: WDTPRS

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  The 1st Sunday of Advent ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2004 This is the first offering of the fifth year of WDTPRS.  We begin anew.  In this series we have been examining the … Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  1st Sunday of Advent – Roman Station: St. Mary Major ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005 These WDTPRS articles carefully explore week by week what the Latin prayers of Holy Mass really say.  … Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  1st Sunday of Advent – Station: St. Mary Major ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2006 Advent marks the beginning of a new liturgical year.  We prepare for the coming of the Lord with … Read More →

EXCERPT:
The first objective of our participation in the Church’s sacred rites is to praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and give God glory. Liturgical and Biblical Latin is rich with words and phrases which exalt and express praise of God. In fact, the concepts of “glory” and “majesty” are nearly interchangeable in this light. We, on the one hand, render up honor and glory to God in a way external to God. On the other hand, glory and majesty are also divine attributes which we in no way give Him, which He has – or rather is – in Himself by His nature. When we come into His presence, even in the contact we have with Him through the Church’s sacred mysteries, His divine attribute of splendor or glory or majesty, whatever you will, has the power to transform us. His majestic glory changes us. So, it is right to translate these lofty sounding attributions for God when we raise our voices in the Church’s official cult. Read More →

I found a rather funny comment on the site of The Remnant (emphasis mine): For traditionalist Catholics nothing is more symptomatic of the crisis in the Church than the deliberate mistranslation of pro vobis et pro multis—for you and for … Read More →

I learned about something at The Undercroft, stemming from something else at Valle Adurni … something rather serious. I am obliged to add additional information to put things straight. Some folks have incorrectly speculated that the late Pope John Paul … Read More →

… "consubstantialem Patri"?

You have read the news from CWN about the pro multis decision.  I reported this a long while back, but it is nice to have additional confirmation… this time from His Eminence Card. Arinze himself.  I have no words to … Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003 DW of CA writes via snail-mail: “Thank you for your weekly column which gives any would-be Latinist a brisk turn around the … Read More →

EXCERPT:
Step into the Twilight Zone for a moment and picture, if you will, someone being admitted to, say, graduate school for a Ph.D in French Literature without knowing how to read any French. Make sense? Imagine a medical school admitting someone who never studied biology. Crazy, right? This is going on everywhere in the Church’s institutions of higher learning today, and the missing indispensable key is Latin. Personal anecdote: years ago a doctoral student in theology paid me to translate sermons of a mediaeval theologian found only in a volume of the Patrologia Latina. Why? He was writing his doctoral dissertation on the fellow’s theology but couldn’t read Latin. Get it? He was writing his thesis on something he couldn’t read. How does that work? Read More →