Expert: J.M.J. West - 4/23/2008

Question
Hi!
Would you please inform me when the Latin was replaced by the English language in Catholic and Protestant Churches.
Thanks.
Farooq Ali

Answer
The Mass (the Catholic service at which the Eucharist is celebrated) has been around since the first century of the Church's existence, initiated by Christ and carried on in remembrance of him by his Apostles and those they ordained to succeed after them (the Bishops and Priests).  Where they went, they usually spoke the language of the people, and Latin was the most common language of most of the people, but often Greek was spoken too.  The original New Testament documents were written in Greek, and by the 3rd-4th centuries we see a move to translate them into Latin (cf. Jerome's Latin Vulgate) so that they could be readily used and understood in the Liturgy of that time.

"It is unclear when the language of the celebration changed from Greek to Latin. Pope Victor I (190–202), an African, may have been the first to use Latin in the liturgy in Rome. Others think Latin was finally adopted nearly a century later. The change was probably gradual, with both languages being used for a while." (1)

Latin was used pretty early on because Christianity was an amaizing success within the confines of the Roman Empire, which spoke predominately Latin (until the 4th century when Constantine moved the capital of Rome to Byzantium/Constantinople, and from thence the Eastern half of the Church became more Greek in language and style).  As such, the western half of the Church continued to use Latin regularly and it became the norm around this time.

When the Orthodox Churches split off in 1054, they retained their liturgical styles and languages, and Rome continued on in Latin, which was still generally the language of the people (though those languages were at this point changing into French and Spanish and Italian, etc).

500 years later the Protestant reformation split a number of people away from the Church and began to make "tradition" a bad word.  As such, there was from that point no single force keeping them from dropping Latin in favor of the common tongues of the people (which arguably helped them spread their cause).  At this time, Latin was still the chief academic language, however, so it was widely known still.

In the Catholic Church, it wasn't until another 500 years passed that Latin began to go by the wayside.  "After the publication of the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, the 1964 Instruction on implementing the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council laid down that "normally the epistle and gospel from the Mass of the day shall be read in the vernacular", and episcopal conferences were to decide, with the consent of the Holy See, what other parts, if any, of the Mass were to be celebrated in the vernacular." (2)

However, special permission was always given, and recently was re-emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI to say the 1962 edition of the mass as the extra-ordinary form.

I hope that helps.  I cited a few the two quotes below.  Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

Pax Christi,

-J.M.J. West

(1)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Tridentine_Mass
(2)  Ibid.