LET'S READ LATIN TRADITIO Traditional Roman Catholic Internet Site E-mail: traditio@traditio.com, Web Page: http://www.traditio.com Copyright 1995 CSM. Reproduction prohibited without authorization. LET'S READ LATIN: INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF THE CHURCH By Ralph McInerny Copyright 1995, 170 pages paperback, one 60-minute audiocassette, Dumb Ox Books, South Bend, Indiana, (800) 234-2726 ISBN 1-883357-25-X $29.95 "Among the unintended effects of Vatican II has been the almost complete disappearance of Latin. Once we spoke of the Church of the Latin Rite. Now it is as if something is wrong with Latin.... It is clear that without a knowledge of Latin, much of the Catholic patrimony will be closed off to the present generation." Thus does Prof. Ralph McInerny, a Thomistic scholar (and author of the Father Dowling mystery series), preface his new book on learning Latin. Although other introductory books exist for ecclesiastical Latin, such as the venerable Scanlon and the newer Collins, this book has the specific purpose of allowing the self-taught student to "plunge immediately into prayers and scriptural and liturgical passages" with the ultimate goal being the reading of a passage from the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. For this purpose the book takes an "inductive" approach to ecclesiastical Latin. That is, rather than teaching the principles of Latin granunar and syntax first, then setting passages that illustrate them, this book presents the Latin text first with a line-by-line commentary and teaches the principles illustrated by it with a very light grammatical touch. Such an approach is quite servicable in giving the Catholics some sense of the Latin texts quickly. However, those students who would like to do more than skim the surface of Latin should then move on to Scanlon or Collins -- or the venerable Wheelock, for classical Latin. This practically-designed introduction to the language of the Church plunges the student in medias res (into the middle of things) with the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Magnificat, Symbolum Apostolorum (Apostles , Creed), Salve Regina, and Te Deum. Thus the Catholic learns right at the beginning the prayers that will allow him to say the Angelus and the Most Holy Rosary in Latin. The book is divided into 21 lessons that cover, in addition to the basic prayers, three psalms, ten readings from the evangelists and St. Paul, three canticles, eight sermons of the Church Fathers, and, finally, the passage from the Summa. A grammatical appendix and a vocabulary complete the book. All in all, the book is a gentle introduction to Latin that gets the Catholic reading, at least at a superficial level, the wonderous variety of Latin contained in the Church's 2000-year treasury. It is regretable, however, that the author has chosen to use, for the Scriptural passages, the Latin of the New Vulgate of 1979 instead of St. Jerome's official Latin Vulgate of the fourth century, which has always been the Church's authentic version and the basis of the Gregorian chant texts. The accompanying audiotape, in which the author reads passages from the book to illustrate aurally the pronunciation of Latin, falls far short of teaching the student the proper ecclesiastical pronunciation. The Latin is read in a very casual way, with little attention given to a proper ecclesiastical pronunciation of vowels and consonants. Several times, in fact, the wrong vowel is pronounced in the inflected endings that are so important to the meaning of Latin. Also, an incorrect version of the Gloria Patri is read.