Oh, for the days this was the norm! Today, Latin is not even taught in many Catholic seminaries. In 1785 when the Episcopal Church was founded, the requirements for ordination were, 1) be able to read the NT in Greek, and 2) write an exposition of one's faith in Latin.
From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
I happened, entirely by chance, to notice the following; it is part of a Publisher's blurb (CUP) dated 1965 commending a book (Golden Latin Artistry) published in 1963.
"[L P Wilkinson] addresses himself mainly to the ordinary devotee of Latin literature -- the undergraduate, the schoolmaster, the sixth-form boy, the civil servant on Sunday, the country parson on Monday, the critic of modern literature and, perhaps, the don in another department of classics."
Apart from the teensy-weensy dash of Tab pride at the end, isn't that totally, wonderfully, evocative?
When I sat the (C of E) General Ordination Examination in 1967, the Latin paper had already been made optional; I think it was in the 1960s that they removed the legal requirement for Anglican ordinands to be "learned in the Latin tongue."
The Set Book used to be a section of S Bede; it was possibly the only important and interesting examination prescription (remember what the Sixties were like?) that most seminarians were encouraged to study.
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