Restoration of the Latin Mass!
It’s been a long time coming.
Latin Masses have become exceedingly popular among younger Roman Catholics, and the Extraordinary Form is popping up in RC dioceses everywhere, even as gray-haired boomer pastors and lay people continue trying to reach “the youth” with acoustic guitars and St. Louis Jesuits songs from the Woodstock era.
Latin has seen more use in worship in the LCMS, as classical schools and groups of seminarians have been known to sing Matins, Vespers, and Compline in Latin. When I was teaching middle school Latin, my classes would begin by praying parts of the Small Catechism texts in Latin.
I have read that the ELCA liturgical scholar Frank Senn wrote that the 1539 Church Order of Saxony’s Latin Evangelical (Lutheran) Mass was still in use in some areas of Germany as late as the 19th century. And while Latin is hardly common in Lutheran Divine Services these days, we do sing a bit of it for Christmas.
So it is fitting that the LCMS is embracing Latin once again.