Interpreting the Intentional Inaccessibility of the Early Modern Roman Catholic Church

Many may wonder why, in the modern day, the Roman Catholic Church continues to incorporate Latin, a now barely extant language, into its canonic religious rituals and public services. However, to understand whether there is a latently malicious intent lurking beneath this esoteric tradition, we must look back to the 1545 Council of Trent, in which these traditions were first canonized. This choice on the part of the Catholic Church helped incense the Protestant Reformation’s criticisms against the Church for exclusivizing the very religion its followers were practicing. This paper investigates the origins of the Catholic Church’s suppressive practices against the religious knowledge of the masses and how this tactic backfired on their intentions