It's all Latin to them.

I welcome Pope Benedict XVI's decision to loosen restrictions on the Latin Mass. Latin is the official language of the Catholic Church. It is a "dead" language, which prevents liberals from translating words into the vernacular using ambiguous terms that undermine church doctrine, such as inclusive language.

The universality of Latin makes it conducive to all believers experiencing more fully the mystery of the Mass. It also imbues a heightened reverence and sense of the sacred.

Paul Kokoski

Ontario, Canada

As a priest who will celebrate 50 years of ordination next year--as well as a proud graduate of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where all my theology courses were in Latin, and a happy camper with Vatican II and the Novus Ordo--I would like to congratulate you on the column "Semper ubi sub ubi" (The Examined Life, August). As you so rightly note, the liturgy expresses a way of being church, and the vernacular fosters far better the possibility of active and full participation than does the Latin.

Expressed in an incomprehensible language, neither can the presider proclaim the Good News nor the people hear it. Latin encourages a type of individualism antithetical to Christian community and celebration, for we read alone but we hear together.

One small correction: Archbishop Lefebvre was not Swiss but French. He was the archbishop of Dakar, Senegal before he was elected superior general of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit. He walked out of one of our general chapters when he could not get his own way, and, as we say, the rest is history.

David L. Smith, CS.Sp.

Via e-mail