Foster condemned what he saw as a decline in Latin teaching; his effort to revive the language is the subject of a chapter in Alexander Stille's book "The Future of the Past", where he is described as "a one-man Audubon Society for the Latin language, determined to save it from extinction." However, he was against returning to the Latin liturgy, saying that it "makes the Vatican look a bit medieval"; Foster instead thought that a better example would be for Benedict XVI to announce that he would read Latin in his Vatican quarters.