“In Praise of the Tridentine Mass” : Essays of Fr Spataro from Angelico Press

We are pleased to let our readers know that Angelico Press has just published Fr Roberto Spataro’s collection of essays “In Praise of the Tridentine Mass and of Latin, Language of the Church.”As described on their website, “In this new work, Roberto Spataro shows how Pope Francis’ call for ‘joyful evangelization’ finds a ready answer in an unlikely place: the august forms of the ancient Latin liturgy and the unchanging character of the Latin language. He shows how Latin, with its concise formulae and rigorous precision, has been the medium of Catholic—and indeed Western—intellectual life in the past and retains the power to bring unity and coherence to Catholicism in the future. With colorful images and copious examples, Spataro argues that the Latin Mass and its handmaid, the noble Latin language, which have served missionaries in the most varied and dire circumstances, might again be the most effective tools in the Church’s workshop for reevangelizing a fragmented world. In his foreword, Cardinal Burke notes that Latin is the key to an adequate knowledge of Roman Catholic history, liturgy, theology, and canon law. Also included is a detailed introduction by the renowned Latin educator and lexicographer Patrick Owens.”

Fr Spataro is a professor of ancient Greek Christian literature on the faculty of Christian and Classical Literature at the Pontifical Salesian University, and secretary of the Pontificia Academia Latinitatis. He has licentiate and doctoral degrees in dogmatic theology from the same university and has published in the fields of Patristics (especially Origen), Mariology, and Latin history, linguistics, pedagogy, and liturgy.

The translator of this collection is also one of NLM’s frequent guest contributors, Mr Zachary Thomas, who earlier this year shared two of the essays in this collection with us, “The Vetus Ordo Missae for a ‘Church Going Forth’” and “Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization.”