6 ms·
The Vatican's Website in Latin
- zdragnar 6mo agoI'm somewhat surprised it's still up, given the rather firm refusal by Francis to allow the Latin mass at churches that wanted it in the States.
- bombcar 6mo agoThe official version of that document is in ... Latin.
- edflsafoiewq 6mo agoThat isn't because of a general opposition to all uses of Latin.
- reaperducer 6mo agoI'm somewhat surprised it's still up, given the rather firm refusal by Francis to allow the Latin mass at churches that wanted it in the States. Maybe because a web site isn't holy Mass?
- wahern 6mo agoThe term "Latin mass" confuses two distinct aspects. Colloquially it refers to celebrating the Tridentine Mass in Latin. But the Tridentine Mass was already celebrated in the vernacular years before Vatican II, though it was optional and I don't know how widespread it was. The Vatican II reformed mass was expected to use the vernacular in most parts, but it can also be given in Latin, and Latin is the canonical form against which translations are made. I've been to a Latin mass a couple of times, specifically a sung (aka high) Latin mass. I see why so many people prefer it. But the Novus Ordo can also be sung. Latin masses also tend to use incense, etc, which also used to be more common in the Norvus Ordo. The real division is between parishes and priests with the energy to put into the mass, versus those that fall into the habit of doing the bare minimum. The "Latin mass" just happens to be a convenient mechanism that bifurcates the two groups. Relatedly, I read a argument somewhere that the current state can be traced back to the proliferation of Irish priests. In Ireland the low (unsung) Latin mass had apparently been for centuries the predominate form even on Sundays. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but reading various sources it does seem that in various parts of the world the sung mass had already been in a long decline at least since the 1800s. And I think the Norvus Ordo was intended to simplify things in the hopes of reviving the energy in the mass, but instead it just created a lower floor.
- mcookly 6mo agoI've heard the same re. the Irish. Regarding the Novus Ordo, I believe that the key document from Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium) still preferred Latin as the dominant language in liturgy, while readings etc. stayed in the vernacular, but clearly that is not what happened. There's been an uptick in numbers for Tridentine Rite, so tides might shift back as Catholics realize the wealth of their liturgical tradition.
- stephenhuey 6mo agoHe had specific reasons for not wanting it in mass: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/07/19/latin-mass-pope-francis-james-martin-241078/#:~:text=For%20many%20Catholics%2C%20the%20Holy,a%20surprise%2C%20even%20a%20shock. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/07/19/latin-mass-...
- b00ty4breakfast 6mo agoLatin is still the official language of the Catholic Church. The meaning of words in dead dead language like Latin don't change much and so a document written in Latin is likely to be easily understood in 4-500 years (for people who can read Latin) and used for translations into the local vernacular. Whereas a language like English is constantly evolving and so the version of some words in, for a relevant example, the original King James Bible, do not mean the same thing in modern English that they did in the early 17th century. The hulabaloo about the Latin or so-called Tridentine Mass is a cultural issue that is mostly about shifting societal norms and only incidentally about it's being in Latin. This is evidenced by the fact that the current form of the Mass, the Novus Ordo, is written in Latin then translated into the vernacular, and it can still be validly performed in Latin without special dispensation from the Vatican.
- dyauspitr 6mo agoIt very quickly turns mass into just repeating sounds without any way to internalize any of what you’re saying. There’s a bunch of stuff about humility, contrition, gratefulness etc that they want people to internalize.
- zdragnar 6mo agoI don't think any of the churches wanting to do the Tridentine Mass in Latin exclusively, they just wanted to offer it occasionally (the ones I recall anyway). Going to Mass isn't something you just do for yourself. You do it to give glory to God, in remembrance of Jesus, and participate in communion with the Holy Spirit. The Tridentine Mass in Latin is a way to reconnect with the apostolic lineage of the Church, the saints and the generations who came before. I can say with certainty that even modern mass in vernacular is nothing more than a bunch of mumbled repeating sounds to most people in the pews who zone out while they attend once or twice a year for Christmas and Easter. If you've been to an Assyrian Orthodox mass, you might hear part or all of it in Aramaic. It's quite the experience, especially with the icons of the saints surrounding the community, adding a bit of a transcendental nature that is sorely missing in more "modern" church experiences.
- dyauspitr 6mo agoYes, I get that but most people are honestly atheist, including I believe a huge majority of Catholics and they go to mass for the community, connections and as a weekly family ritual. From that perspective, what you’re saying maybe makes sense and that people aren’t really there to internalize the message, but are there for a spectacle. When my parents were growing up until about the 1960s or 70s, I believe all masses all over the world in Catholic churches were all done in Latin.
- karel-3d 6mo agoRoman Rite liturgy wars? On Hacker News? More likely than you think.
- red-iron-pine 6mo agoas likely as centipedes in genitals
- mrKola 6mo agoIt has to be there for the aliens.
- jdw64 6mo agoI used to think the Vatican would be old-fashioned, but the writing on its site is more readable than I expected. In particular, while reading the section “Development: Humanism and Posthumanism,” I found it interesting to compare the religious worldview of the West with my own more humanistic worldview. This passage especially stood out to me: > At the application level, AI in the strict sense raises questions about the reliability of data and the criteria by which programmers process it so as to make it available. It is unclear what biases or power systems influence the work. In particular, serious doubts arise regarding automated, AI-based decision-making processes in sensitive areas of human life: when deciding whether to provide medical care or grant loans or mortgages or insurance, or when prosecuting criminal cases in court or assessing the conduct of prisoners and the likelihood of reoffending with a view to reducing sentences, or when deciding on military attacks or law enforcement interventions. It is funny because this almost feels like a complete summary of recent Hacker News debates in a single paragraph.
- jquinby 6mo agoThere is an AI working group in one of the dicasteries that has produced two excellent publications: Encountering Artificial Intelligence (https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anthropological-investigations https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-art...) Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/154545-reclaiming-human-agency-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/154545-reclaiming-huma...)
- jdw64 6mo agoI think I will read this while running my agents in parallel. Thank you, my friend. The writing is genuinely excellent. In tech communities, we often talk about how many times productivity will increase, or whether AI has consciousness. But in religious documents, the focus is often on how the problems of the vulnerable and the community will change. That is interesting to me. The worldview is Western and religious, so it feels somewhat unfamiliar, but at the same time, it seems useful as a way to rediscover values that we may have forgotten.
- efskap 6mo agoIf anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
- mcookly 6mo agoThanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources. We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.
- kevin_thibedeau 6mo agoDuolingo has a Latin course.
- morcus 6mo agoDuolingo has a tenth of a Latin course. Source: I did the whole thing before I learned Latin from a different course. Duolingo's is unfinished.
- cwnyth 6mo agoDo avoid.[1] 1: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/11413/is-duolingo-good-for-latin https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/11413/is-duolingo-...
- aidenn0 6mo agoAfter trying Duolingo a bit myself and seeing my family members try it, I've become convinced that Duolingo is worse than doing nothing, because it does a much better job of convincing you that you're learning than it does actually teaching you.
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- user3939382 6mo ago[flagged]
- atleastoptimal 6mo agolorem ipsum
- dlt713705 6mo agoHow do you say "click here" in Latin ?
- Theodores 6mo agoMy thoughts too, however, has that fad not passed? I always found designs worked better without lorem ipsum, for example, if building a website for a T-shirt company, you might as well use their existing descriptions to see if the content actually fits the layout. Plus you can model real world things, I remember many a lorem ipsum design just falling apart because things like product names were longer than 'lorem ipsum'. Yes I get the idea of lorem ipsum but I always found we wasted time, insulted the client and just created problems for ourselves, just to accomodate a designer that only ever saw text as shapes on a page.
- tempaccountabcd 5mo ago[dead]
- dlt713705 6mo agoHow do you say "Click here" in Latin ?
- Svoka 6mo agoprobably same as "press here"
- s20n 6mo agoClickus Hereus
- gedy 6mo agoBigus Clickus
- ks2048 6mo agoAccording to google, "preme hic". ("press here")
- schoen 6mo agoGoogle Translate suggested "preme hic" which is plausible to me (I've spent a lot of time with Latin but haven't thought of this particular question before). It literally means "press here".
- nullhole 6mo agoWell at least the spelled 'appendix' correctly
- DavidSJ 6mo agoLittle changed in 18 years: https://web.archive.org/web/20080511133831/https://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20080511133831/https://www.vatic...
- jeffrallen 6mo agoLittle changed in 500 years: https://web.archive.org/web/15080511133831/https://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_index.html https://web.archive.org/web/15080511133831/https://www.vatic...
- pixel_popping 6mo agoI bet the Vatican is using AI like crazy now, that's probably the real change :p
- xaxfixho 6mo agoSame Latin landing page with a "Donate" button. Still buying your way out of 666 with crypto. Eternal scam, zero evolution.
- ks2048 6mo agoI don't see in lang="la" in their HTML. (Not surprising, with this old-looking design).
- ks2048 6mo agoThey have 10 languages linked from their home page (https://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html https://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html). Latin and Chinese are the only two that don't have the home page same design. Maybe they've laid-off some of their translators.
- nephihaha 6mo agoI'm surprised Russian isn't on there.
- Vaslo 6mo agoWhy? Most Russians are Orthodox, not Catholic
- nephihaha 6mo agoMost Arabic and Chinese speakers are not Catholic either. The Vatican has shown a persistent interest in Russia, and yes, there is a significant Russian speaking Catholic minority, as well as a potential convert base. If I remember rightly, Russia (or the USSR) gets a prominent mention in the Fatima narrative. Russian has declined a lot in importance over the past thirty years, but it is still a major world language in terms of its spread. It is a surprising omission.
- easyKL 6mo agoEgyptian copts and XuJiaHui cathedral attendants would like to have a word with you.
- nephihaha 6mo agoI'm already aware of them. They are minorities, as are the Marionites. The Copts are not Roman Catholic. They are long established minorities as are Russophone Catholics who date back over two hundred hers. The Vatican cannot operate officially within the PRC, but I appreciate the real situation is more complex.
- Jakob 6mo agoMy partner and I are from two different European countries that speak different languages. When we wanted to marry in the country of my partner, both our (catholic) churches needed to sync. They did so in their common language: Latin. That was a fun surprise.
- sebmellen 6mo agoThat’s pretty cool. What kind of things were your respective churches communicating about?
- Jtsummers 6mo agoAssuming they're Roman Catholic, to get married in the Church at least one of the couple needs to be Catholic and records of their baptism, confirmation, etc. would be shared between the individual's church and wherever they're getting married. You also run into this if you move around a lot, not just for marriage. If you want to be confirmed, you need to be baptised. Your baptismal records may be in another state or country and would need to be shared with your confirmation church.
- dhosek 6mo agoIn fact, the baptismal parish is the official keeper of your sacramental records, so when you’re married, the marriage is communicated to that parish and added to your sacramental record (likewise for confirmation if it doesn’t happen at your baptismal church, and, less commonly ordination will also be communicated there). When parishes are closed or consolidated, the bishop will indicate what parish becomes the new keeper of sacramental records for the closed parish.¹ ⸻ 1. This is one of two significant cases that impact some of the two-church parishes that are part of the last decade of reorganization in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Sacramental records will be kept at only one of the churches. The other situation reflects Holy Thursday and Easter Vigil Masses. A parish is only allowed to have one Mass on Holy Thursday and on Easter Vigil, so the two-church parishes will only celebrate at one of the churches even if they had sufficient clergy to have those Masses at both locations.
- DeathArrow 6mo agoI imagine a parallel universe where Latin is used as lingua franca instead of English. If you squint enough you can see English as a barbarised form of Latin.
- riffraff 6mo agoIt'd be more a return to the past, we still had a lot of latin in science a couple hundred years ago. One very fun thing I discovered recently is that Dante (and presumably other people in the middle ages) thought that Latin was a constructed language designed to go over linguistic differences, and that's why it had a proper grammar, unlike romance languages :)
- TonyStr 6mo agoThat is very fascinating. Do you have some source on this that you could share? IIRC Dante wrote in vernacular Italian which was uncommon at the time, presumably to make his texts more approachable by common people?
- gattilorenz 6mo agoIf I had to take a guess, I would say he heard it in a lecture by Prof. Alessandro Barbero, same as I did :) But I think the source is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_vulgari_eloquentia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_vulgari_eloquentia In the Italian Wiki page, the "constructed nature" of latin is hinted at; it doesn't seem to be present in the English wiki. Update: It's indeed in the book, at the end of the 1st chapter of the 1st book: 3 There also exists another kind of language, at one remove from us, which the Romans called gramatica [grammar]. The Greeks and some - but not all - other peoples also have this secondary kind of language. Few, however, achieve complete fluency in it, since knowledge of its rules and theory can only be developed through dedication to a lengthy course of study 4 Of these two kinds of language, the more noble is the vernacular: first, because it was the language originally used by the human race; second, because the whole world employs it, though with different pronunciations and using different words; and third because it is natural to us, while the other is, in contrast, artificial. Here, vernacular refers to "italian" or whatever dialect, while "gramatica" is latin - the artificial one :)
- hulitu 6mo agoThe 404 page is in English. ;(
- whyage 6mo agoProfessor Dave Explains has a great series for those interested in learning Latin: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybg94GvOJ9EcIVsQMJOjuOWgUKHBiSkq https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybg94GvOJ9EcIVsQMJOj...
- jll29 6mo agoLatin is the Web's primary language: In the beginning, there was index.html ("index", Lat. "one who points out").
- pluc 6mo agoTables and Image Maps actually predate Latin
- iberator 6mo agoLatin might be useful if AI is gonna be finally destroyed and the Emperor will rise. (wh40k)
- phplovesong 6mo agoIts not even using reiiiiact! what a noob site /s
- karel-3d 6mo agoI don't speak latin, but people that do say, that Vatican's X posts in Latin are in a really bad Latin. https://x.com/Pontifex_ln https://x.com/Pontifex_ln
- raverbashing 6mo ago(Probably not written by HHH himself, unless someone wants to compare it with the previous occupants - apparently Benedict XVI had the best Latin of the recent Pontificis)
- reconnecting 6mo agoSolid design, built to last centuries. <body background="/img/sfondo.jpg" text="#000000" alink="#000000" vlink="#000000" link="#663300" topmargin="0" marginwidth="1" marginheight="1" leftmargin="0">
- red-iron-pine 6mo ago"blessed in its simplicity" -- looks like it's geocities