On the other hand, it just occurred to me that I had almost exactly the same reaction once I finally read “Ecclesia Dei.”

After several years of hearing fellow Trads gush over that document and how JPII guaranteed our right to the Traditional Latin Mass, I was non-plussed at the tepidity of the late pontiff’s words there.

Each year his parish’s Social Justice Committee made a “Rerum Novarum” award to some suitably lefty local. However, he recently confided to me that after all these years, he’d stopped to read the actual encyclical, and “you know what? It wasn’t all that great.”

Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

I am offended, on behalf of my hero, Leo XIII, that he, the last pontiff of noble blood, should today be known as the “Patron of Working Men.” I spit in disgust. If any of these moronic liberals had ever bothered to read Rerum Novarum, I can’t see how they could be in such hysterics over it.

Basically, it says that the wealthy should treat the poor with kindness and pay them enough to raise Catholic families and give them enough holidays to observe all the holy-days of the Church. The poor and laboring classes, in turn, should know their place, treat the ruling classes with respect, not revolt, etc. Okay, so I exaggerate a little, but Rerum Novarum is far from being the Magna Carta of the peace and social justice movement, as the encyclical is known today.

All of which leaves aside the more important point which is that Leo wrote so many glorious encyclicals (in glorious Latin prose) which these stain glass boneheads would never deign to touch. If they knew of anything else he wrote, they would be so disgusted that they would give up Rerum Novarum in a sort of guilt by association.

Which is why I can only hope that his encyclicals may be more widely read so that they stop swooning over a single encyclical only of his, which they have clearly misuderstood.

I learned it as “De gustibus non disputandum est”

Is there really that much of a difference between “church” Latin and Vergil’s Latin? Sounds like an interesting topic for further comment.

Because bad translation and bad artwork seem to go hand-in-hand.

The cardinal’s name and title are properly rendered, “Sean Patrick Cardinal O’Malley.” The cardinatial title should immediately precede the surname. See, for example,

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bomalley.html

and every other cardinal listed in that site.

See more of the remarkably nice pictures of this brand-new church here

However, I do get the impression that finding good stained-glass artists these days is fairly near impossible. From an economic standpoint, it seems that demand has all but dried up, stifling supply. The craft is unknown because, frankly, it is generally unused. Terribly, terribly sad.

Of course, I’m no expert on such things. This is just what I have heard from those who know more than me.