Vatican Latin Quotes

It’s a Latin mnemonic invented by the Vatican in the Middle Ages to remind Christians of the Seven Deadly Sins. Saligia is an acronym for: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, and acedia.

She blamed Vatican II for her lack of enthusiasm, said it wasn’t the same since they abolished the Latin Mass;

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

It is hard to believe that many of those now exercising authority in the Church appears to have as their dearest ambition the obliteration of the most Sacred Prayer [1962 Latin Mass] from the face of the earth - and would it be too outrageous to suggest that where they do manage to obliterate the Sacred Prayer, the sacrifice which it enshrines may vanish too?

books that Uncle bought in Odessa or acquired in Heidelberg, books that he discovered in Lausanne or found in Berlin or Warsaw, books he ordered from America and books the like of which exist nowhere but in the Vatican Library, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, classical and modern Greek, Sanskrit, Latin, medieval Arabic, Russian, English, German, Spanish, Polish, French, Italian, and languages and dialects I had never even heard of, like Ugaritic and Slovene, Maltese and Old Church Slavonic.

Vatican II famously threw open the windows of the Church, seeking greater interaction with, and influence on, secular society. In Latin America a number of theologians began to work out how the teachings of Vatican II should be applied on the ground.

After Pope John Paul II permitted limited use of the Latin-only Tridentine Mass, which was banned by the Second Vatican Council, the elder Bannons became Tridentine Catholics. “When [the Roman Catholic Church] first started allowing it in the mid-eighties,” Steve Bannon recalled, “we left our parish that we’d been in for years and went and joined St. Joseph’s in Richmond, which offers a Tridentine Mass.

Urged by the Vatican, the Catholic nations of Latin America had made it clear to the Jews that the price of their votes for the plan to partition Palestine would be the internationalization of Jerusalem. Without them, the Jews had no hopes of mustering the ballots needed to pass partition. With a heavy heart, they had yielded, and Jerusalem's loss was the measure of the price they were willing to pay for a Jewish state.

Vatika has several other related meanings in ancient Etruscan. It was the name of a bitter grape that grew wild on the slope, which the peasants made into what became infamous as one of the worst, cheapest wines in the ancient world. The name of this wine, which also referred to the slope where it was produced, was Vatika. It was also the name of a strange weed that grew on the graveyard slope. When chewed, it produced wild hallucinations, much like the effect of peyote mushrooms; thus, vatika represented what we would call today a cheap high. In this way, the word passed into Latin as a synonym for “prophetic vision.” Much later,

Vatika has several other related meanings in ancient Etruscan. It was the name of a bitter grape that grew wild on the slope, which the peasants made into what became infamous as one of the worst, cheapest wines in the ancient world. The name of this wine, which also referred to the slope where it was produced, was Vatika. It was also the name of a strange weed that grew on the graveyard slope. When chewed, it produced wild hallucinations, much like the effect of peyote mushrooms; thus, vatika represented what we would call today a cheap high. In this way, the word passed into Latin as a synonym for “prophetic vision.” Much later, the slope became the circus, or stadium, of the mad emperor Nero. It was here, according to Church tradition, that Saint Peter was executed, crucified upside down, and then buried nearby. This became the destination of so many pilgrims that the emperor Constantine, upon becoming half-Christian, founded a shrine on the spot, which the Romans continued to call the Vatican Slope. A century after Constantine, the popes started building the papal palace there.

Confiteor - Pre-Vatican II Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, beato Michæli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistæ, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, et omnibus Sanctis, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michælem Archangelum, beatum Ioannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, et omnes Sanctos, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum. Amen.

Dear Alessio, yes, I was an altar boy. And you? What part among the altar boys do you have? It’s easier to do now, you know: You might know that, when I was a kid, Mass was celebrated different than today. Back then, the priest faced the altar, which was next to the wall, and not the people. Then the book with which he said the Mass, the missal, was placed on the right side of the altar. But before reading of the Gospel it always had to be moved to the left side. That was my job: to carry it from right to left. It was exhausting! The book was heavy! I picked it up with all my energy but I wasn’t so strong; I picked it up once and fell down, so the priest had to help me. Some job I did! The Mass wasn’t in Italian then. The priest spoke but I didn’t understand anything. and neither did my friends. So for fun we’d do imitations of the priest, messing up the words a bit to make up weird sayings in Spanish. We had fun, and we really enjoyed serving Mass.

Vae victis,” he said, a Latin adage, offered with a shrug of the shoulders. Buko looked at us knowingly. Woe to the vanquished, to the victor the spoils.

Kabbalah (in Hebrew, literally “receiving”) refers to the mystical traditions that encompass the secrets of the Torah, the esoteric truths that reveal the most profound understanding of the world, of humankind, and of the Almighty himself. Philo was a Jewish mystic in Alexandria, Egypt, who wrote dissertations on the Kabbalah in the first century of the Christian era. He is commonly considered the central link between Greek philosophy, Judaism, and Christian mysticism. His triangles point either up or down to show the flow of energy between action and reception, male and female, God and humanity, and the upper and lower worlds. In fact, the Latin name for this kind of mosaic decor is opus alexandrinum (Alexandrian work) because it is filled with Kabbalistic symbolism originally taught by Philo of Alexandria.

THE VATICAN The very name Vatican comes from a surprising source. It is neither Latin nor Greek, nor is it of biblical origin. In fact, the word we associate with the Church has a pagan origin. More than twenty-eight centuries ago, even before the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, there was a people called the Etruscans. Much of what we think of as Roman culture and civilization actually comes from the Etruscans. Even though we are still trying to master their very difficult language, we already know a great deal about them. We know that, like the Hebrews and the Romans, the Etruscans did not bury their dead inside the walls of their cities. For that reason, on a hillside slope outside the confines of their ancient city in the area that was destined to become Rome, the Etruscans established a very large cemetery. The name of the pagan Etruscan goddess who guarded this necropolis, or city of the dead, was Vatika.

In fact, the Latin root of the word literacy is the same as for the word intellect: leggere, “to read.” The source for the word intellectual also gives us its true meaning: inter-leggere, “to read between.” An intellectual is defined by an ability to read between the lines, to analyze and to think critically, to understand things on many levels at the same time.

Much water has flown under Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendour and mystery from Rome, since the pontificate of Pius XII. The essentials, I know, remain firmly entrenched and I find the post-Conciliar Mass simpler and generally better than the Tridentine; but the banality and vulgarity of the translations which have ousted the sonorous Latin and little Greek are of a super-market quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand-shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies; kneeling is out, queueing is in, and the general tone is rather like a BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots (so however will they learn to put away childish things?) The clouds of incense have dispersed, together with many hidebound, blinkered and repressive attitudes, and we are left with social messages of an almost over-whelming progressiveness. The Church has proved she is not moribund. ‘All shall be well,’ I feel, ‘and all manner of things shall be well,’ so long as the God who is worshipped is the God of all ages, past and to come, and not the idol of Modernity, so venerated by some of our bishops, priests and mini-skirted nuns.

In the 1600s,” he said, talking faster now, “English was one language the Vatican had not yet embraced. They dealt in Italian, Latin, German, even Spanish and French, but English was totally foreign inside the Vatican. They considered English a polluted, free-thinkers’ language for profane men like Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Few would maintain that the self-consciously “Vatican II” churches built since the 1960s are an improvement on the architecture of traditional churches designed to house the Latin Mass.

I am asked how it is that I can refuse orders which come from Rome. Indeed, these orders do come from Rome, but which Rome? I believe in the Eternal Rome, the Rome of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Rome which dispenses the very life of the Church, the Rome which transmits the true Tradition of the Church. I am considered disobedient, but I am moved to ask, why have those who are issuing orders which in themselves are blameworthy been given their authority? The Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the priests have been given their authority for the purpose of transmitting life, the spiritual life, the supernatural life, eternal life, just as parents and society as a whole have been given their authority to transmit and protect life. The word "authority" itself is from the Latin, "auctoritas', and "auctor" which means "author", author of life. We have authority insofar as we transmit and sustain life. We are not authorized to transmit death, society is not permitted to pass laws which authorize abortion, because abortion is death. In like manner, the Pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the priests exist as such to transmit and sustain spiritual life. Unfortunately, it is apparent that many of them today no longer transmit or sustain life, but rather authorize spiritual abortion.

Gregorian chant, the music “specially suited to the Roman rite,” which “should be given chief place [principem locum] in liturgical services,” as Vatican II stated, consistent with what all the preconciliar popes had encouraged.

I had spoken about the dogma of Faith being under attack even from within the Church, and I had made reference to some examples of Church teachings which were losing acceptance among many "Protestantized" Catholics. One of the seminarians of this group brought that point up again and told me that he, for one, did not believe in what I had said was the Church's teaching. It was enough for him to know that a certain Cardinal had said the opposite. "I follow the living magisterium," this seminarian told me! I could hardly believe my own eyes and ears. This was a seminarian who was preparing to become a priest to say only the traditional Latin Mass, and who had supposedly had a traditional seminary formation. As best I could tell from the discussion that followed, the superior of the group shared this seminarian's understanding of the Church's Magisterium - basically, that a "magisterial teaching" is whatever happens to be the latest word from Vatican officials, no matter how contradictory this might be to the prior constant and defined teachings of the Church!

Sun gods and gods of light were popular among Roman emperors. When Christianity turned up, classical critics saw it as an unremarkable continuation of this; indeed there was so much sun imagery in early Christianity that one Christian author would feel the need to defend Christians from accusations that they were merely sun worshippers, what with their Sunday (in Latin, dies solis – the ‘day of the sun’) worship and their tendency to pray towards the east.26 Sometimes even Christians themselves seemed a trifle confused. A remarkable third-century mosaic discovered in the Vatican Necropolis shows Jesus represented as the sun god Helios, with that god’s typical rays coming from his head, riding on his chariot.

Interestingly, Dominus Iesus, following the Letter Communionis Notio of 1992, did, in fact, attribute the title “particular churches” to the Local Orthodox Churches. Ocáriz’s explanation of what this attribution means shows even more clearly the divergence that exists between the two views of the Church. He claims that this attribution is based not upon the real, Eucharistic presence of Christ but upon “the real presence of the Petrine Primacy (and of the Episcopal College) in of the ‘one and undivided’ episcopate—a unity that cannot exist without the Bishop of Rome.” Further, he writes: "Where, on account of apostolic succession, a valid episcopate exists, the Episcopal College with its Head is objectively present as supreme authority ( even if, in fact, that authority is not recognized ). Furthermore, in every valid celebration of the Eucharist, there is an objective reference to the universal communion with the Successor of Peter and with the entire Church, independent of subjective convictions." As the supreme and final criterion of full ecclesiality the Pope is seen not only to supplant the Eucharistic Presence of the Lord Himself, but to be present as “supreme authority” in the Eucharistic Synaxis of those not in communion with him, even if this is against their will. Whereas, for the Orthodox, the ever-present and existential reality manifested by the Holy Spirit at every Eucharistic gathering is dogmatic truth and a unity in truth freely espoused, for the Latins it is the “objective reference to the universal communion” with the Pope “independent of subjective convictions.

This is the religion that, inside the walls of the Vatican, even now keeps Latin going as a living language, translating such words as “computer,” “video game” and “heavy metal” into Latin, over a millennium after the language ought to have died a natural death.

Latin was the language of science, technology, medicine and law, apart from, of course, classical literature. It was also the language in Europe of international communication, scholarship and diplomacy. Since some of those countries which speak languages derived from Latin and value it as an ancient and classical language and the repository of much wisdom, were also ruthless colonisers, does that make Latin only a language of exploitation? Are the Vatican and the Pope only ‘colonisers’, since Latin is still the official language of the Holy See? It is a moot point whether Sheldon Pollock would agree to see Latin only from such a narrow perspective. Why then does he not have the same approach to Sanskrit? Rajiv Malhotra makes a spirited critique of these kinds of double standards, and confuses it with a new Orientalism in some sections of American Indology. He accepts that Sanskrit was more a preserve of the elite and that some sections of its corpus do contain prescriptions for social and gender exclusion. But, it is essential that, as with other classical languages, a narrow dismissal is tempered with the right balance and judicious appraisal. Sanskrit, Rajiv Malhotra strongly argues, was also the ‘repository of philosophy, art, architecture, popular song, classical music, dance, theatre, sculpture, painting, literature, pilgrimage, ritual and religious narratives. It also incorporates all branches of natural science and technology—medicine, botany, mathematics, engineering, dietetics etc.’25 More than anything else, it was the vehicle of the great spiritual, philosophical and creative wisdoms distilled over millennia. Malhotra adds that it was not just a communication tool, but also a vehicle for ‘enduring sacredness, aesthetic powers, metaphysical acuity, and ability to generate knowledge in many domains’.