Lots of apologists insist that the Church of Rome is the one that Jesus Christ founded. That strikes me as a real slight to the Eastern churches and especially to the Church of Jerusalem where Jesus ministered. After all, Tertullian didn’t ask, “What Hath Rome to do with Athens?”

Now it turns out that the original language of the church that Jesus founded was not Latin but Greek:

First, we should know that the Apostles all spoke Greek in addition to their native Aramaic. It was the language of education and business. In Galilee (Galilee of the Gentiles as it was known in Palestine) a Jew had to know Greek if he wanted to talk to a gentile. Perhaps Our Lord Himself spoke Greek with the Roman centurion and Pilate. In the synagogues the Jews read from the Hebrew translation of the Greek translation (the Septuagint) of the Old Testament. Second, all of the New Testament — with the exception of Saint Matthew’s original Gospel which was written in Aramaic — was inspired in Greek. Third, when Saint Peter came to Rome the Jews residing there spoke Greek, the whole Mediterranean world did. Saint Peter offered Mass in Greek. Around his tomb, deep in the catacombs under Vatican hill (beneath Saint Peter’s main altar), the faithful who were buried all around the Apostle had “Peter pray for us” written in Greek on their own tombs. Fourth, the Roman Latin Rite grew slowly out of Itala Latin which was spoken by the gentile converts in Italy and North Africa and used in the liturgy sometime after Greek fell into desuetude in the West. Classical Latin (Ciceronian) was not used in the liturgy, but was used by the well-educated fathers, such as Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Augustine, in their writings. By the fourth century, Itala Latin, which was rather fluid, dominated in most of Italy and North Africa. Enter Saint Jerome (d. 420). His Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible facilitated the birth of what developed into “ecclesiastical,” Church Latin. Many Greek words found their way into Church Latin on account of their theological and scriptural importance. Ecclesia (church) is only one such word — there was no word in Latin adequate enough to convey such a Greek concept. By the sixth century, Latin became the standard for the Roman liturgy, as we see in the Leonine Sacramentary and later the Gelasian. By the time of Gregory the Great (d. 604) the Latin Canon of the Mass was fixed (canonized) with the addition of a number of Roman martyrs in the Memoriam and the Nobis Quoque Peccatoribus. The Roman Canon remained untouched for nearly fourteen hundred years.

If you want to be the Church that Jesus founded, shouldn’t you use the original language of the apostles you’re claiming to represent?

That’s not what Pope John XXIII thought:

Universal

Since “every Church must assemble round the Roman Church,”8 and since the Supreme Pontiffs have “true episcopal power, ordinary and immediate, over each and every Church and each and every Pastor, as well as over the faithful”9 of every rite and language, it seems particularly desirable that the instrument of mutual communication be uniform and universal, especially between the Apostolic See and the Churches which use the same Latin rite.

When, therefore, the Roman Pontiffs wish to instruct the Catholic world, or when the Congregations of the Roman Curia handle matters or draw up decrees which concern the whole body of the faithful, they invariably make use of Latin, for this is a maternal voice acceptable to countless nations.

Immutable

Furthermore, the Church’s language must be not only universal but also immutable. Modern languages are liable to change, and no single one of them is superior to the others in authority. Thus if the truths of the Catholic Church were entrusted to an unspecified number of them, the meaning of these truths, varied as they are, would not be manifested to everyone with sufficient clarity and precision. There would, moreover, be no language which could serve as a common and constant norm by which to gauge the exact meaning of other renderings.

But Latin is indeed such a language. It is set and unchanging. it has long since ceased to be affected by those alterations in the meaning of words which are the normal result of daily, popular use. Certain Latin words, it is true, acquired new meanings as Christian teaching developed and needed to be explained and defended, but these new meanings have long since become accepted and firmly established.

Non-vernacular

Finally, the Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular.

In addition, the Latin language “can be called truly catholic.”10 It has been consecrated through constant use by the Apostolic See, the mother and teacher of all Churches, and must be esteemed “a treasure … of incomparable worth.”11. It is a general passport to the proper understanding of the Christian writers of antiquity and the documents of the Church’s teaching.12 It is also a most effective bond, binding the Church of today with that of the past and of the future in wonderful continuity.

Tell me it’s not odd when you insist on a language that God refused to use when he revealed the gospel.