The sense of touch should likewise be guarded, for St. Thomas says that
the sense of touch is the maintenance of the other senses (1 P. q. 76,
a. 75). And when the foundations of a house commence to fall asunder,
the walls, the frame and the roof totter and fall. So it is with the
senses; when the sense of touch is disturbed the other senses quickly
complete the ruin.

What knowledge is needed for the valid and for the licit recitation of
the Hours? Must the person know the meaning of the words read? No such
knowledge is necessary, for God hears the prayer of the ignorant and
illiterate and of the babes. To the chief priests and scribes, who
hearing the children crying out the Saviour's praise in the temple,
Christ said "Yea, have you not read 'Out of the mouths of infants and
sucklings thou hast perfected praise'" (St. Matth. xxi. 15-16), St.
Augustine defended from the sneers of the learned, those who prayed to
God in rude and barbarous words, or words which they did not understand.
"_Noverint non esse vocem ad aures Dei nisi animi affectum_" (_De
Catech._ Rud. C.I.). The Church has bound religious, both men and women,
to say the Office in choir, even though they may not understand Latin.
Nevertheless, it is highly desirable that those who understand Latin
should understand what they read daily in the Breviary. God, the Church,
the practice of the saints, our own intelligence, our spiritual
advantage, demand that every priest should read with knowledge so that
with more certainty he may read attentively and devoutly.

For (1) the Holy Ghost warns us to sing wisely, _Psallite sapienter_
(Ps. 46.8); (2) that priests may sing wisely, may say the daily Office
piously is the reason and end of liturgical studies of the psalms and of
the Breviary in theological colleges; (3) the saints who wrote so
piously and so learnedly on the psalms and on psalmody are for ever