Review of Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins
Friday, June 8th, 2007
This book is logically set out and is complete with lexica and indices.
In case you have already studied Latin, and don’t want to switch the way you go through your declension paradigms, Collins uses the following order: NGDAA - Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative. That’s the way I personally prefer it, as I did Greek that way, except that in Greek there was no Ablative, but a Vocative in its place.
For those of you, like myself, who hold to a reformed faith, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and forget about Latin. Remember, all of the reformers knew Latin, and that doesn’t make them papists by any means. Furthermore, logically, isn’t knowledge better than the lack of knowledge?
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Mass” in his book Fates Worse than Death. In an appendix at the back of that book is John F. Collins’ Latin translation!
It’s a shame this book didn’t come with its own answer key in the back. Honestly… it took another author to write one, which has recently been released.
