In fairness to Quartz, he was talking about a particular Latin mass he attended, not all Latin masses.
I must have been smoking crack when I wrote this. The final chord is major, but it’s the I (D Major), not the V, which is a cool trick, the minor-major tonality switch at the end.
Is that meant as a counterargument, or an example? 
See my follow-up post.
Put me down as another guy who also associates the tune with Boorman’s outstanding Excalibur. It perfectly fit that scene, with King Arthur and his knights galloping through the trees as they burst forth in flowers.
Not scary at all in that context, but exuberant, celebratory, and uplifting.
Good stuff.
After having thought about this for a few days, I’ve come to a slightly different conclusion.
Sung Latin is not always creepy. Sometimes it’s extraordinarily beautiful. It makes for great church music, because it, for some reason, has an almost etherial and sacred quality. Think of the beauty of the Madonna.
Now think of the beauty of the Madonna profaned. Think of the ugly and sick jokes you can make of her. Madonna as whore, as a mockery of herself, as ultimate vile sinner. It’s a horrifying thing, even to those of us who did not grow up with the Catholic tradition. Now think of Latin vulgarized. The sacred beauty of the language used in a vile and brutal way can have some very powerful implications, even if only subconsciously.
That’s my theory, anyway.
With multiple gold albums, sold-out world tours, and two documentaries and a coffee-table book about her sex life! 
shudder
Looks like this atheist will be saying a lot of Hail Mary’s tonight.
Personally, I’m going to be associating Carmina Burana with this thing for a while…
(Warning: applet, plays movie with sound. Worth it, though.)
Which, I think, is part of the point. If you use a language that nobody knows, it sounds arcane. It’s the same reason, I imagine, that most of the spells in the Harry Potter books are Latin-based.
Nonsense. The only thing guaranteed by using a language nobody knows is that the meaning of the words is irrelevant. The spells in Harry Potter sound Latin-ish because all fictitious spells sound Latin-ish.
Pulykamell is the only person who’s talked any sense in this thread - it’s about the music, and about the external associations we bring to it.
Carmina Burana sounds ‘scary’ because it is the archetypal ‘scary music’ cliche. It’s circuitous, yes, and it doesn’t say why it acquired that status, but it answers the immediate question. (Actually, my snippy answer would be 'Because it sounds a bit like the Verdi Requiem. But that would get us further bogged down with the distractions of Latin stuff.)
Three of the songs of Carmina Burana are in German.
Heck, I’m old enough to have memorized the Mass in Latin as an altar boy.
It inspired me to get books on Latin to try to understand what I was saying, and to later go on and study Latin in High School.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here – not all fictitious languages and incantations sound like Latin just because they’re unfamiliar. Rowling has certainly tried to make her spells sound like Latin by putting all those “-us” endings on the words, and using latin roots. They’re not really Latin, but they sound like it. Tolkien’s Dwarfish is a made-up language that doesn’t sound at all like Latin.