Latin Language

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday authorized wider use of the long-marginalized Latin Mass, a move that delighted Roman Catholic traditionalists but worried others who fear the erosion of important church reforms. Revival of the old service, which had been largely supplanted by the modernizing spirit of the Second Vatican Council, also angered Jewish groups because it contains a passage calling for the conversion of Jews.

I spent a bit of Sunday night helping my 14-year-old son study for an upcoming quiz in his Latin class. He's a freshman at a large and well-regarded school for boys. As a native Angeleno, he grew up speaking both English and Spanish, and I was interested and a little surprised that he and so many of his classmates elected Latin as their foreign language.

THE Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, who lived his short life in the tumultuous last years of the Roman republic, wrote some of the loveliest lyric poetry in the Latin language. Some of it was sweet and joyful, the rest moving and sad, singing to us of the poet's ancestral homeland; the love of a mistress; the death of a dear brother; the goddess Diana, revered by the Romans as the embodiment of hunting and healing.

Somebody stole his cloak, and Servandus was angry enough to curse. The resident of 2nd century Leicester, England, wrote out a curse, including a list of suspects, on a lead sheet and posted it on a temple wall. The curse tablet was recently unearthed by University of Leicester archeologists excavating the remains of the Roman-occupied city.

Conservatively dressed Roman Catholics packed into a tiny wooden church a few blocks from the sand in Huntington Beach on Sunday to pray and chant in Latin, and to celebrate the priest who delivered them from all that they believe is lax, laid-back and touchy-feely in their religion. They came to say goodbye to Father Daniel Johnson, the 75-year-old retiring priest who tripled the membership of this parish with his emphasis on the church's centuries-old traditions.

"Tempus fugit, carpe diem"--time flies, seize the day. The Latin phrases are written in big, bold letters on Joan Patakas' chalkboard. The sixth-grade teacher at Fairmont Elementary School in Yorba Linda comes to life when she talks about the significance of learning what many refer to as a dead language. "Some people say kids should learn what's functional," she said. "But guess what? If we learn only what's functional, we'd all be plumbers."

Latin will be offered but not required at Long Beach's Wilson High School, which has begun a four-year transition to a rigorous, all-academic curriculum. The curriculum will require four years of a foreign language; four years of science, math, English, history and humanities-fine arts, and three years of social studies, said co-principal Al Taylor.

"I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat." --Sir Winston Churchill * Reginald Foster is an American priest, a plumber's son with a pipeline to the Vatican as chief Latinist for Pope John Paul II. Foster also teaches the faded yet apparently immortal language of Cicero and Virgil and has a standard repudiatio for those who say Latin is too difficult to learn: "Every prostitute and bum in ancient Rome spoke it. . . ."

Below a quartet of almost life-size posters of Roman gods hanging high on the walls of Irvine teacher Martha Altieri's Latin class, a discreet sign sums up why most high school students study the ancient language: "Rise above the vulgar crowd, take Latin." A hubris-ridden sentiment? Perhaps. An esoteric bunch of kids? Certainly. An extinct language? Definitely not. In fact, Latin is alive, kicking and growing in California K-12 schools.

Below a set of posters of Roman gods hanging high on the walls of Irvine teacher Martha Altieri's Latin class, a discreet sign sums up why most of her students study the ancient language: "Rise above the vulgar crowd, take Latin." A hubris-ridden sentiment? Perhaps. An esoteric bunch of kids? Certainly. An extinct language? Definitely not. In fact, Latin is alive, kicking and growing in California elementary and high schools.