Vatican Latin Academy and Starfleet Academy 

The Latin Academy 

Latin lives! After all, the name of this website is Aeterna Latina, “Eternal Latin.” One of the most important preservers of Latin over the past two thousand years has been the Catholic Church. Not everyone, both inside and outside the Church, understands how important it is to keep that living support of the Lingua Antiqua strong. Because of that I’ve been posting a series of discussions (here, here, here, here) about the role of Latin in the life of the Church.

My last couple of articles on this topic have focused on the arguments Pope St. John XXIII made for preserving the use of Latin in his Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia. Along with emphasizing the importance of preserving the Latin language in the Catholic Church, Pope John also included some surprising directives. Among other things, he decreed that future priests should not only learn Latin, but that they study theology in their seminaries in Latin. Sadly, these and most of his other directives never came about, much to the detriment of the Church.

 A Fuller Understanding 

As I mentioned previously, however, one of Pope John’s decrees did come to fruition. He had also commissioned “the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities to set up a Latin Academy staffed by an international body of Latin and Greek professors.” He explained that the Academy’s principal aim would be , first,

. . . to superintend the proper development of Latin, augmenting the Latin lexicon where necessary with words which conform to the particular character and color of the language.

In other words, Latin would continue as the official language not just of liturgy but of Church documents, deliberations, and more. John XXIII wanted to ensure that any necessary additions didn’t detract from the dignity of the language.

To Impart a Fuller Understanding

Next, he decreed that the Academy would

. . .  also conduct schools for the study of Latin of every era, particularly the Christian one. The aim of these schools will be to impart a fuller understanding of Latin and the ability to use it and to write it with proper elegance. They will exist for those who are destined to teach Latin in seminaries and ecclesiastical colleges, or to write decrees and judgments or conduct correspondence in the ministries of the Holy See, diocesan curias, and the offices of religious orders.

Pope John wasn’t concerned with Latin alone. He also directed that “future ministers of the altar must be instructed in Greek in the lower and middle schools.” Understandably, the pontiff wanted priests and bishops to be able

. . .  to follow the Greek sources of scholastic philosophy and understand them correctly; and not only these, but also the original texts of Sacred Scripture, the Liturgy, and the sacred Fathers.

These were the worthy goals of the academy Pope John envisioned.

More Necessary than Ever 

Yes, The Latin Academy did come into being . . . eventually. But it was only almost half a century after the death of Pope St. John XXIII. Pope Benedict XVI finally commissioned the Pontifical Academy for Latin on November 10th 2012.

With characteristic clarity and precision, Benedict makes a good case both for the academy and Latin in general in his Motu Proprio Latina Lingua. As did Pope John before him, he cites the importance of Latin to the Church. He acknowledges that “Indeed the Church has spoken and prayed in the languages of all peoples since Pentecost.” At the same time, the Church has given special priority to Latin and Greek. Benedict points out that:

In our time too, knowledge of the Latin language and culture is proving to be more necessary than ever for the study of the sources, which, among others, numerous ecclesiastical disciplines draw from, such as, for example, theology, liturgy, patristics and canon law . . .

In addition, precisely in order to highlight the Church’s universal character, the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, the most important documents of the Papal Magisterium and the most solemn official Acts of the Roman Pontiffs are written in this language in their authentic form.

 An Ancestral Treasure 

Pope Benedict doesn’t confine his argument to the precincts of the Church, however. In preserving Latin, the Church is in fact performing a service for the entire world:

After the fall of the Roman Empire of the West, the Church of Rome not only continued to use Latin but, in a certain way, made herself its custodian and champion . . .

The Church has often been the preserver of even non-Christian cultural treasures. The Vatican Museums, for example, preserve countless precious works of art from the ancient world, including statues of pagan gods. All the great works of classical literature that we can enjoy today survive only because throughout the middle ages Christian monks laboriously copied them out in their scriptoria. The Latin language itself is likewise an ancestral treasure. It’s a gift from our distant ancestors that the Church has kept safe for us over two millennia.

 Culture Rooted in the Greco-Roman Heritage 

Latin language and literature is not simply a relic, however. It plays an important part in our world today.  Pope Benedict warns that

Yet in today’s culture, the danger of an increasingly superficial knowledge of Latin may be noted in the context of the widespread weakening of humanistic studies. This is also a risk in the context of the philosophical and theological studies of future priests. Moreover, in our own world, in which science and technology play such an important role, there is a renewed interest in the Latin culture and language and not only on those continents whose culture is rooted in the Greco-Roman heritage. This attention seems all the more meaningful since it not only involves academic and institutional sectors but also concerns young people and scholars from very different nations and traditions.

 Wisdom is from the Humanities 

Benedict’s assertion that the Latin language is inextricably bound to the flourishing of humanism reminds me of something I read over twenty-five years ago. A Latin teacher who had been corresponding with physicist and Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman shared a comment from one of his notes. Lederman had been one of the founders of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA). Lederman wrote:

I have always believed that knowledge, without wisdom is dry as dust . . . knowledge is from the SCIENCES and wisdom is from the HUMANITIES. So it was natural, when I was on the board, that the Illinois Math Science Academy, IMSA, would teach Latin and Greek.

Sadly, by 1999 when Lederman was writing the words above IMSA had already dropped Latin and Greek.  

Starfleet Academy 

It’s telling that Lederman, who was not a Christian believer (or a believer in God at all) could see the importance of the Latin language to the survival of the humanities. The creators of the Science Fiction series Star Trek seem to have agreed. After all, we know that Latin was among the subjects studied, excuse me, will be among the subjects studied at Starfleet Academy in the 24th century.

Which brings us back to the Pontifical Academy for Latin. Pope Benedict XVI sees the Academy as serving both the Church AND the wider world. It forms priests and ordinary Catholics in the sources with the same language that has shaped the Church over the past two thousand years. The Latin language has also been a powerful shaper of western culture and civilization as a whole. The preservation of Latin is a gift to us all.