Di-anthos - Esnupi

actually having the biggest fomo about the national Eucharistic congress

How much Latin should a Catholic know? For example, should one know Our Father? Hail Mary? The whole rosary? Entire Creeds? None? Would love your opinion/scholarly analysis! Always appreciate you, God bless

I don't think there is a cookie-cutter answer for this. If I had to give a no-nuance answer to the minimum amount of Latin an individual Catholic should know, I'd say "the amount of Latin used in your region's average Novus Ordo Mass."

That being said, I am never going to advocate against learning a language. I think there are a lot of benefits in learning and studying a given text in its original language (or, in the case of the Creeds and the standard prayers, in the language through which the Latin Church Fathers interpreted them).

To use one example: in the United States, the English translation of the Nicene Creed used in the Roman Rite uses the phrase "I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." But if you look at the original ("original"; bear with me) Latin, there is no "I believe in," but "I believe." (Credo in unum Deum […] Et in unum Dominum […] Et in Spiritum Sanctum […] Et unum, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam). This linguistic construction was considered very important to the Latin Fathers; you "believed in," you placed your faith in, the three Persons of the Trinity in a way you didn't "believe in" the Church. You simply believed the Church in what She said about the God who established Her. This is a nuance that is lost in our English translation.

To be quite honest with you, I pray purely in the vernacular. English is the one and only language that I feel comfortable inhabiting enough to speak to God in. (Hopefully someday soon I will add Swedish to that list, but for now I am a living American stereotype). But if you look at the Pater Noster, or the Ave Maria, or the text of the Missale Romanum, you know, you potentially learn to look at these prayers in a new way.

So the short answer, really; you shouldn't feel obligated to know Latin, but learning Latin might help you gain further insight into the prayer life of the Latin Church.

i hate nonchalant people. i could never be nonchalant. in fact i am very chalant. about everything all the time

Cornelis Kick (Dutch,1631-1681)

Still Life with a Lemon and pink Roses

Oil on canvas