It is (or used to be) a common feature in newspapers to have a regular item on tips on English for people learning the language, such as this one by the BBC.
It is in this spirit that I'd like to make it a regular thing to post about Latin, since Pope Benedict has been working on getting it back into use. You have heard, perhaps, that he now regularly leads the Wednesday Angelus in Latin, with the words on the big screens to help people who don't have it memorized, and has directed that the regular weekday Masses be celebrated primarily in the sacred language, not just the ones on special occasions. And Cardinal Arinze, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, has recently challenged us to "take Latin out of the refrigerator."
If you read the Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, you know that the Council called both for full, conscious, and active participation by the laity AND for Latin to be retained even while people's native tongues be given a place in the celebration. So far the reforms of Vatican II have only been partially realized. If you are like me, you have found the Mass in English to be very helpful in your spiritual life, and yet you would like to realize the fullness of Vatican II spirituality, rather than a partial (or worse yet, distorted) version of it.
I have found that to enjoy full, conscious, and active participation in the Church's own tongue, you do not have to be a genius in Latin or memorize tons of grammar - only a very basic working knowledge of it will afford you as much understanding as you are getting right now from the English translation. Nor do you need to learn an entirely new vocabulary - with a Latin vocab of only 300 words (I have probably used well over 300 different words in this post) you can understand 95% of everything that is said (believe me, I counted). Better still, you do not need to learn these words from scratch, because about 2/3 of English words come from Latin either directly or through French.
In these posts I do not plan to dwell on niceties of grammar; if I do, I will put that part in the extended post so that those who are interested can check it out. Rather I will focus on immediate understanding and expanding the Latin you "already know" with an eye toward understanding the Mass. My plan, at least initially, is to do an overview of the Order of Mass from beginning to end.
I am not a huge expert, but I am happy to share what I know. If there are very knowledgeable people out there who can provide further insight on the nuances of words, please comment and share what you know.
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