Article: "Bringing Back Latin" (Homiletic & Pastoral Review)

Dr. Mark J. Clark has written an article in the December 2009 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review (HPR) entitled "Bringing Back Latin."  Here is an excerpt from the beginning:

When [the Council Fathers] ultimately decided to endorse the use of the vernacular in the Mass it doubtless never occurred to them that the facility in Latin that they took for granted—Latin, after all, was an integral part of their own intellectual patrimony and would remain the official language of the Church—would largely disappear within half a century.

Yet disappear it did, and quickly. How and why merits our attention, as does the question of what can be done to revivify the tradition of living Latin within the Church. For if living Latin dies, the consequences for the Church are grave. What is significant about the fact that the Fathers of the Council spoke readily in Latin is that they thought in Latin, which gave them easy access to the length and breadth of the Catholic tradition. The Church’s treasury of writings spanning the centuries is like a large chest in the attic, to which Latin is the key.

I suggest you read the whole thing.

Here is the prayer mentioned at the end and my attempt at rendering of it into English:

Actiones nostras, quaesumus, Domine,
aspirando praeveni, et adjuvando prosequere,
ut cuncta nostra oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat,
et per te coepta finiatur.

Precede our actions, we beseech You, Lord,
with Your inspiration, and accompany them with Your aid,
that our every prayer and work may always begin in You,
and through You find completion.

[H/T: Ignatius Insight Scoop]