Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Praying the Rosary in Latin

As far back as 2018, when I was no longer an atheist but had not yet returned to Christianity, the synchronicity fairies were directing my attention to the Holy Rosary.

My father was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Mormonism before I was born, and my experience of Catholicism has been pretty much limited to attending funerals and reading. Until a month ago I had never so much as laid eyes on a rosary. Nevertheless, the nudges continued, and on May 29 of this year, I walked into a Filipino-run chapel and asked where I could get -- well, I only knew the Chinese for Buddhist mantra beads, but they figured out what I meant. Only later did I realize that I had bought it on a Sunday, breaking the Sabbath.

Once I had my rosary, I tried praying it a few times but kept getting hung up on doctrinal snags. Can I recite the Apostles' Creed if I'm agnostic about the Virgin Birth and the Second Coming? Doesn't thy kingdom come imply a Synoptic worldview I do not share? And do I have any reason to think that Jesus' mother really has any of the goddess-like qualities ascribed to her by tradition?

(I had similar issues with the Pledge of Allegiance as a schoolchild. Surely my allegiance is to the country itself, not the flag; history makes it hard to believe any nation is "indivisible"; and "liberty and justice for all" are obviously ideals, not realities. In the end I whittled it down to "I pledge allegiance to . . . America . . . under God" -- remaining silent for all the rest.)

The Spirit kept nudging me to pray the unmodified Holy Rosary, though, and in the end I just asked God point-blank how I was supposed to do so in good conscience. Three very clear communications appeared in my mind:

1. Don't worry about doctrinal quibbles. It's supposed to be like singing a hymn, not writing a theological treatise.

2. Recite it in Latin. That will help bypass the discursive side of your brain.

3. How is it that you've never read Histoire de la magie?

So I printed out the Rosary prayers in Latin, brushed up a bit on church-Latin pronunciation, and prayed the Rosary in Latin. I was surprised at how easy it was, how readily I took to it, and how rapidly and fluently I was able to pray. As promised, the change from Latin changed the mood from one of doctrinal nitpicking to pure devotion, and that in me which had considered the Hail Holy Queen just a bit much was somehow able to pray the Salve Regina with sincere fervor. Not for the first time, Latin has proven to be almost magical. Latin! The mundane, no-nonsense language of the Roman Empire -- but Virgil transfigured it, and so, apparently, has the Church. I suppose this is something like Sheldrake's "morphic resonance," and that reciting fixed prayers in their original language allows one to tap into the faith of all the other Christians through the ages who have uttered those same words.

Speaking of magic, I downloaded A. E. Waite's translation of Éliphas Lévi's Histoire de la magie -- which, surprisingly, I really had never read before -- and started on it. At first it wasn't at all clear what it had to do with anything, but eventually I came to this passage:

[T]he popular forms of doctrine . . . alone can vary and alone destroy one another; the Kabalist is not only undisturbed by trivialities of this kind, but can provide on the spot a reason for the most astonishing formulae. It follows that his prayer can be joined to that of humanity at large, to direct it by illustrations from science and reason and draw it into orthodox channels.

If Mary be mentioned, he will revere the realisation in her of all that is divine in the dreams of innocence, all that is adorable in the sacred enthusiasm of every maternal heart. It is not he who will refuse flowers to adorn the altars of the Mother of God, or white banners for her chapels, or even tears for her ingenuous legends. It is not he who will mock at the new-born God weeping in the manger or the wounded victim of Calvary. . . .

[A]ll that is expedient and touching in beliefs, . . . the splendour of rituals, the pageant of divine creation, the grace of prayers, the magic of heavenly hopes -- are not these the radiance of moral life in all its youth and beauty? Could anything alienate the true initiate from public prayers and temples, could anything raise his disgust or indignation against religious forms of all kinds, it would be the manifest unbelief of priests or people, want of dignity in the ceremonies of the cultus -- in a word, the profanation of holy things. God is truly present when He is worshipped by recollected souls and feeling hearts; He is absent, sensibly and terribly, when discussed without light or zeal -- that is to say, without understanding or love. . . .

Every definition of God hazarded by human intelligence is a recipe of religious empiricism, out of which superstition will subsequently extract a devil.

I’ve been praying the Rosary in Latin once or twice a day for about a week now -- I started on June 23 -- and I can report that it's doing me good. I know that some of my Romantic Christian associates will dismiss this as an atavistic behavior, a futile attempt to return to a less-conscious form of Christianity. Against this I can only report my direct experience so far: that 20 minutes spent reciting the Rosary prayers is 20 minutes spent in the presence of Christ. Yes, presence is precisely what I get from this. It is not really a form of communication with God, nor is it really meditation. It is something else, something that I needed, and the various spiritual agencies that have guided me to it were right to do so.

Your mileage may vary.

6 comments:

S.K. Orr said...

I have not learned the Rosary in Latin, but I do sometimes recite it with the Latin text before me, just as I recite the Latin of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The rhythm and pulse of the Latin is a sort of engine in my devotions, and frees my mind to follow the flow of what I am trying to do, which is express my inner groanings in a disciplined, formed manner.

When I was a young Marine, we used to pack our parachutes while reciting various military things we learned by rote study. I wish I could remember what this technique was called...it was _____ thinking, according to one of the jump school instructors. Your hands take over the job of folding and packing the chute, while your mind is searching for that next paragraph to recite. It becomes something of the Japanese mushin (no mind) and is helpful to me personally.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I know the main prayers (Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Gloria Patri) by heart but still have to read the Symbolum Apostolorum and the Salve Regina.

Anonymous said...

I'm really happy for you that you are praying the Rosary. I got drawn to it maybe ~7 years back and I similarly found it wasn't just me taking some interest in it but the Spirit being at work. The Rosary convinced my heart to be Christian and Tomberg convinced my mind. When I finally made it to the end of Meditations on the Tarot and saw what he said about the Rosary it was a pretty cool union of the two strands. It's deceptively (or optionally) simple, when you start meditating on the Mysteries while reciting it can take you a lot of places. If you start praying it every day, no pressure, you get a good cadence going with the Mysteries. As a platform for prayer it's also very extensible.

I started praying the Sacred Heart chaplet over like the last year and have found it to be a good way to get to know Jesus better as well. Straying into schizo territory, I sometimes think that the Sacred Heart could serve as a vehicle for people burned by the vax to undergo some healing and/or spiritual correction -- you had that post about spiritual disconnection post-vax and heart troubles seem to be one of the main side effects. I go to an Orthodox church but I have found that Roman devotions have a simplicity and clarity that make them very effective.

All the best and I hope the Rosary keeps taking you good places.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

@Anonymous (Please use a name!)

So far I haven't been able to achieve any depth of meditation. Concentrating on one thing while reciting something else is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your belly. Basically all I can manage is to hold a mental image in my mind -- usually derived from religious artwork -- as I pray. So I get a sort of mental slide-show of the lives of Jesus and Mary, which is not nothing, but it's not exactly meditation because there's no depth to it. And there's no depth to it because I'm constantly distracted by the words of the prayers themselves.

I assume this will improve with practice. I used to be able to achieve deep meditative states while performing the rote actions and reciting the rote formulas of the Mormon temple ceremony, so perhaps I will be able to do something similar while praying the Rosary once I have attained a comparable degree of familiarity with it.

cae said...

William, I've been struggling the past four days to respond to this post (and by "this", I include your 2018 post linked in the first sentence, as the Tomberg quotes are so relevant here).

From the first reading (and I'm up to 5 or 6 now), I found this post sooo 'striking' - I mean like a huge gong being struck deep within and resonating through me...
...especially the part where you "asked God" and then received the "very clear communications"!
I used to have such experiences, but it's so long ago now that I had begun to wonder if they had merely been imagination...so it means a lot to read of your experience, because my faith was so hard won, and yet for the past several years it has become such a battle holding on to it.

Also, I want to say that, in regards 'Romantic Christianity', I don't think your praying the Rosary (given the context in the post) is at all "atavistic" - you were clearly very 'presently aligned' with God in your thinking, so it behooves you to be doing as 'instructed'. ;^)

While composing that last sentence, something popped into my head - Dr. Charlton did a post fairly recently to do demonic 'forces' attempting to 'breech' people's minds (and succeeding in a great many cases)...
...and I have often thought over the past several years that these 'forces' put a sort of spiritual 'pollution' all around the world, which I think actually can at times interfere with 'communications' both to and from Heaven/God...
...so, it occurs to me the 'instructions' to pray the Rosary might be in order that the repetitive prayers sort of 'take up space' in your conscious mind - allowing The Holy Spirit to 'speak' more freely to your intuition.

(Okay, those are the words that I managed to 'distill' the whole of what "popped into my head" down to, maybe you can sort of mentally elaborate to get the full concept)

Right...that's me 'done' composing & typing for today!!
Just, wanted you to know that I greatly appreciate this post, as it is (along with J. Fitzgerald's latest essay) one of the best 'Romantic Christian' writings I've read for some time!!
Carol

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Very interesting comment, Carol. "Spiritual pollution" is a useful concept. It does feel as if we are in a sort of miasma sometimes, and that the Rosary has the effect of "clearing the air."

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