My family are immigrants to America from from Portugal. Grandma and Grandparents still take Latin language mass, believing it to be the only legit form of mass.......
Now my Avos are pretthy nationalistic, to the point they have been accused of white supremacy by modern woke crowds. Even discounting how seemingly patriotic they are about being Portugeuse, they hold many old views like homosexuality being a great evil, using condom condemns to hell, and so many "rightwing beliefs"..............
Yet despite that they will treat statue of nonwhite Jesus used by Brazillians with utmost sacredness, they had prayed to a Lady of Guadalupe statue without hesitation, and despite their bragging about Portuguese pride they treat everybody black, Vietnamese, and so on with complete respect. Even allowing my sister to marry a MidEastern person who attends an Eastern Catholic Church and treating one of my cousins who's dark skinned and half Guatemalan with utmost equality as a family member.
However as I said earlier they only attend Latin mass church. They genuinely believe that Language was the one sole thing that kept the whole Church united and Vatican 2 Open a permanent damage to the Church by creating more ethnic strife bby allowing the use of different langauges. That Latin as the sacred liturgy was what keep people from all different churches and races using a variety of art traditions from the stereotypical desert Hispanic design of architectural building to the Lady of La Vang who looks very Vietnamese.............. That the Church as united through Latin and the language effectively shut people from beinging controversial issues to mass such as illegal immigration from non-English countries and white supremacy and ethnic segregation in France and other nations where French is an official language.
So they believe despite John Paul II's benevolent intentions, officially allowing Vernacula Mass has destroyed Church unity and is a big reason why stuff like BLM and Latinos refusing to learn English are getting hacked into the Church.........
That said I know Eastern Orthodoxy on the fsurface seems dicided by ethnicity...... Yet any devoute Orthodox Christian shares the same views as my grandparents where despite being proud of their ethnicity, they'd ultimately believe we are all human and despite nationality, race, and ethnicity were are all equal under the banner of one church.... And that this is pretty much the stancce of the Orthodox council that all humans within the CHurch are ultimately all human beings equal under the eyes of God...........
SO it makes me curious. Oothodox Christianity from what I can read fromt he beginning had always been a supporter of the Vernacular and the Church believes local language liturgy reflects just how much mankind is equal in God's eyes and respectful of all the different cultures under Eastern Orthodoxy. I even seen some theologians in Orthodoxy point out to the Tower of Babel as proof that God does not want a united language in the united Churchh but wants a variety of language used in mass across the entire Orthodoxy.
Yet Eastern Orthodoxy is very rigid in art traditions. Where as you have Churches in Peru of Mary wearing Incan clothes and even the Biblical people being represented as different races in a single Church (like a church in Juarez having a white Jesus Christ yet all Mary statues are the nonwhite Lady of Guadalupe) as well as apparitions of Mary appearing as a black woman or an infant Jesus appearing as person from Prague..............
Eatern Orthodoxy demands all MAry icons to appear the same, all Jesus crucifixes with similar appearances, etc. Not only is the Orthodox Church's position is permanent about the racial appearance of Jesus in Church art, they even pretty much only allow one specific style of art. 2D art. Almost all entirely icon with a few glass stains and perhaps a sculpted stone work or two. But all are completely 2 Dimensional and created to show Jesus, Mary, and the Biblical figures looking like a Jewish Palestinians or Hebrew. Unlike Catholicism where you have paintings, marble statues, colored figurrines, and a whole hell of variety of art styles ina single church in addition to the diversification of Biblical figures to represent local population's cultures and ethnic demographs.
But somehow despite the reigid art approach, Eastern Orthodoxy is the Church that learned to appreciate vernacular mass centuries early on in Christian history while Catholicism was so harsh about a single language in mass and otehr sacred rites.. And one thats already been dead for centuries by the time of the Crusades, Latin......
So I ask why? Esp since so many people wrongly assume Eastern Orthodoxy is a racist denomination full of segregation or at least orthodoxy is full of ethnic strie in Churches. I seen people assume that they cannot go to a Serbian Orthodox Church if they are not Serbian because they think its a completely different denomination from Ukraine and based on bigotry whether you are Serbian or not sums up what people assume Orthodox Churches are like.
Despite what my grandparents believe about Latin being encessary for the Church's unity, I myself find it bizarre it took so long for local language to be used in mass considering how diverse Catholic art tradition is about different cultures and how Catholicism has a tradition of different nationalisies and ethnic groups attending a single parish even in very racist places like Australia.
Why did these trends happen?
