Saturday, March 6, 2010

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

Sorry, kids, but this is to be in Latin.

Many have perhaps become a bit bewitched with the mantra that everything in this modern era is to be in the vernacular.

Meanwhile, there is an outcry today of laymen asking for more Latin.

Teach your kids that the episcopal motto is to be in the Catholic language, Latin.

16 comments:

  1. That is the only episcopal coat of arms I've seen not in Latin. Who has that coat of arms?

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  2. He just turned 74!

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  3. I'm sorry to disagree with you, respectfully, but there is absolutely no rule, statute, regulation, etc. that dictates a motto on a coat of arms (episcopal or otherwise) must be in Latin. It is surely a custom and a tradition but that is all. I've spent the last 25 years studying ecclesiastical heraldry and I encounter episcopal mottoes in languages other than Latin all the time. Noted heraldic experts like Foppoli, McCarthy and, of course, the late great Bruno Heim acknowledge this as well. In fact Heim's seminal work, "Heraldry in the Catholic Church" contains examples of mottoes in Greek, Dutch, French and German as well as, of course, Latin. I don't think it can be attributed to wanting everything in the vernacular as much as it can be simply to personal preference. After all, mottoes are not even considered a necessary part of a coat of arms and Heim argues for leaving them out entirely!

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  4. Cardinal O'Connor of NY used English in his coat of arms.
    That's good enough for me.

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  5. True, yound people today are clamouring for Latin. Now with internet tech many are studying it and want to use it...No better place that Sunday Mass and seeing it on arms and such. Today Latin has a better chance than ever. We should not miss the opportunity.

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  6. Many episcopal mottos here in the US are in English. My bishop's motto is in Spanish, because of his heritage.

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  7. This is to be in Latin not because of law, but because of custom: consuetudo pro lege servatur (custom is held as law).

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  8. The foremost authority on heraldry in the Vatican has already stated that Latin is "best suited" for this sort of thing.

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  9. Common sense would dictate the prototype in Latin.

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  10. With respect, John, if you refer the matter to custom, then you should probably not have a motto on clerical armorials, as the motto was originally a specifically family element; and as priests, like Melchisedech, don't have families, it would seem to be in line with custom for them not to have heraldic mottos.

    And - for Anonymous - the 'prototype' of an armorial motto was much more likely to have been in Norman French or High German, as most of the earliest examples of achievements with mottos were from those countries, at least as far as I can recall.

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  11. Why don't we all just use aramaic instead? I mean if we want to be orthodox, then let us use the language used by The Savior? after all this is just a matter of semantics, not of faith.

    Tradition is good, this is the fount and source of our identity as catholics, but to be so strict on this particular issue is shallow. That said, and I hope you forgive me when I dont see anything wrong when bishops use the vernacular on their coat of arms.

    Otherwise, we'd all end up like the pharisees and sadducees, creating more laws and traditions, when in fact the only language more supreme than latin is love of neighbor.

    so let the bishop write his motto as he wish, latin or no latin.

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  12. Typical postmodernism - everything is a discourse (fluid).

    Tricky to get a consensus on anything Catholic these days for this very reason.

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  13. Dominic Mary, I don't agree with you. A coat-of-arms is as individual as a signature. It came about when knights had their own emblem on their armour so they knew whom they were fighting. If a younger brother of the eldest of the family who would have inherited the arms of his forbears, he would have had to have a distinguishing mark to make it different from the original arms that would have been conferred by a monarch. Unfortuneately with our tackey world one often sees people selling off 'Family crests' etc to people who may have the same name and roughly a similar province where their family may have originated. e.g. there are several coats- of- arms for the name "Smith'. It is seen mainly in colonial countries where there are no laws regarding the displaying of arms

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  14. Customs change, faith endures

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  15. Ah, nordic love for legality. The problem is that everything in the Catholic Church today must always be a scrupulous eclectic.

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  16. Cicero in the Brutus writes: Non enim tam praeclarum est scire Latine quam turpe nescire. (It is not so excellent to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.)

    Thanks, JP, for your promotion of the Catholic tradition and European culture.

    For the Latinity-deprived bishop, his motto might read: ad Dei populum reconciliandum.

    Honi soit qui ne latinise!

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