I can’t remember the last time the editorial pages of a major American newspaper weighed in on the liturgy of the Catholic Church. It’s almost unheard of. But now comes the Chicago Tribune, with a surprisingly heartfelt editorial on, of all things, the Tridentine mass:

Pope Benedict has long admired the so-called Tridentine rite that his church had used since the 16th Century. He’s been incorporating Latin into masses at St. Peter’s Basilica. And in a recent document he urged seminarians and lay Catholics alike to learn Latin prayers.

That’s his business: This page generally doesn’t opine on the beliefs or practices of organized religions, provided those internal matters don’t affect the public realm. Suffice it to report that some Catholics see wider use of Latin as a return to more respectful and contemplative worship. Others, though, fear that it portends an official distancing from the essentially liberalizing changes of the Second Vatican Council.

What it unarguably portends is at least some familiarity with Latin among hundreds of millions of people who’ve heard only snippets — a Dominus here, a persona non grata there.

The pope’s forthcoming statement likely will articulate how broad, or narrow, he expects the use of Latin to be. In recent decades, priests have needed to obtain permission from the local bishop to conduct mass in Latin. Most haven’t bothered. These dispensations are called indults — a term, Webster’s attests, drawn from the Ecclesiastical Medieval Latin word indultum, from earlier Latin for indulgence or favor.

But does anyone care? Well, some among us studied Latin for years, and boast the SAT scores or biology doctorates to prove it. Others among us missed the point, and didn’t get past making sophomoric language puns (“Semper ubi sub-ubi!” — “Always where under-where!”).

A papal edict will encourage at least some of those 1 billion Catholics to learn elements of a splendid language mistakenly given up for dead.

The Archdiocese of Chicago, we should point out, has one of the largest and most energetic Catholic populations in America — and the greatest number of permanent deacons in the world, 624. The deacons even have their very own website: The Chicago Deacons.