The Voice of the Church at Prayer

By Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, Reflections on Liturgy and Language. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council permitted a wider use of the vernacular at Mass while holding that Latin should keep pride of place in the Roman Rite. What actually followed was different: modern translations replaced the Latin prayers almost entirely.

This is a historical and theological study of how that happened, and of the much longer story behind it — how a sacred liturgical language forms in the first place, what it does that ordinary speech does not, and why the question mattered so much to Pope Benedict XVI.

Fr. Lang holds a doctorate in theology from Oxford and is a priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London.

225 pages, paperback. Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-1-58617-720-1.