Whatever happened to Latin?

I was paging through a college Philosophy text the other day, and I came to the section on logical fallacies. As I was skimming, I realized something was missing. Where had my old favorite – Reducto ad Absurdum – gone off to? Where was Argumentum ad Baculum or Argumentum ad Hominum? They were all written in English.
It seemed like a good idea when John XXIII tossed Latin out of the Catholic Church back in the early 1960s – but I miss it. Reciting, “I believe in God the Father almighty” will never have the solemnity and awesomeness of “Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotatem” sung by a cleric with a good voice. But that’s no doubt gone forever.
With it has gone Latin phraseology in all sorts of places – text books, legal terminology, off-hand comments. It’s no longer recognized by students; it’s no longer used.
Do you remember the “Tonight Show” when Truman Capote called Johnny Carson, “Sui generus”? Has a nicer feel than “one of a kind”, doesn’t it? Or, when a playwright cheats and gets his plot moving again with something that just doesn’t fit – would you call what he used a “Deus ex Machina”? Then again it could just be a “god from the box” (or machine), couldn’t it?
Do you remember when almost any school kid could translate Caesar’s summation of his wars: “Veni, vidi, vici”? “I came, I saw, I conquered.” How many kids talking American history can translate the national motto: “e pluribus unum”? Can you?
How about one of your most precious legal rights – the right not to be thrown into prison and left there without a charge or a trial? “Habeas corpus” (“let’s have the body!”) sounds better in Latin. Ever since I sat through some law school courses, “Res ipse loquitur” (“the thing speaks for itself”) has been a favorite expression of mine.
There is so much Latin that became part of everyday English – “ad hoc”, “et cetera”, “non sequitur”, “vox populi, vox dei”, “de facto”, and “vice versa”, to name a few. I’d hate to see them go the way of the Latin Mass. “Ita Missa est”? (“Go it is the dismissal”, or the end of the mass)
When William Shakespeare’s competitors wanted to insult him, they would sneer that the Bard was a man of “little Latin and less Greek”. In terms of the Sixteenth Century, he was considered uneducated. Perhaps we can say of modern American students they have “little English and less Latin”. The two may very well go together.
They wouldn’t let me out of high school without taking a year or two of Latin.
(I got sick of commenting on Wall Street and the floundering bail out. Everything has been said about that silliness that can possibly be said – until more consequences become apparent. As to the political campaign, that passed mere tedium long ago. Again, we must wait for consequences.)