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Just a reminder for all those in and around South Bend: Reggie will be speaking there today at 4:30PM. My family and I are about to hit the road.
Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D., will be speaking in South Bend, at Notre Dame’s Law School, Room 120, 4:30PM, on the following topic:
Is Latin Really Dead?
Why the Academy and the Church Should Preserve the Latin Language
If you’re at all interested in Latin, I highly encourage your attendance. Reginaldus is guaranteed to be an interesting, even entertaining, speaker. He may say some things which offend traditional (and traditionalist) sensibilities; he may use some coarse language; but he will most certainly excite in his audience a love for and a desire to preserve this language.
For those of you who don’t already know, Fr. Foster (he prefers to be called Reggie or Reginaldus - some people compromise and call him Fr. Reggie) is one of the Latin secretaries, working in the Secretariat of State, for the Vatican. During the summer, he teaches a world famous eight week course in all things Latin, in a little school room across the street from his residence, the Teresianum. I expect any number of alumni in attendence at this upcoming talk.
The great thing about Reggie’s approach to Latin is that it is not limited to some period of time or to some supposedly pure style found in the most polished pieces of Cicero. No, for Reggie, Latin lives through all ages, and his love embraces both the classics as well as the Fathers, the medieval period, and up until today. And this is an exciting approach because once you realize that a thorough knowledge of Latin is your key to opening up the wisdom, beauty, and knowledge in the literature of all these periods, you can’t wait to get started; you can’t wait to begin, and you have to give it your best shot, for how could you live without being able to savor the sounds and the particular senses with which so many magnificent minds clothed their thoughts?
I imagine that the talk at Notre Dame will run over some of these ideas and will probably inspire a few, who haven’t already been, to make the pilgrimage to Rome next summer for aestiva Romae latinitas.
This is where my friend, Ricardus, first saw the news.
howdy, josephus (I am a JPII-latin fan:) I just looked up your website and see, much to my chagrin and that of my dear colleague, that y’all have yet to update to “the cornell society for a Great time.” I wish I were gonna be in south bend. This guy’s great.
Please don’t post as “anonymous” - you can click “other” and write in a name without having a Blogger account.
I’m disappointed that I won’t see you and your colleague in South Bend, but it will spare me the risk of seeing the wrong persons in man’s dress, which I was not spared the last time.
JPII - Latin fans are not much in fashion on this blog. You see, even Reggie, though the very opposite of a traditionalist, didn’t like John Paul. He told our whole class, “Just once in 28 years [or however long John Paul gloriously reigned] did he come to visit us in our offices.”
Now I’m sure that this was no personal slight to Reginald Foster, for John Paul was abstemious in his avoidance of all curial offices. Which was one part of the whole problem with him: hands off.
Reggie also didn’t like the way the Poles crowded into the Vatican during John Paul’s years in office; of course they did. When we were looking at John Paul’s Latin address to the cardinals at the time of his elevation, Reggie explained how JP had revised the text Reggie and his teacher had written, adding a paragraph at the end in honor of the Blessed Virgin et in honorem Poloniae, semper fidelis! Those were really the words, too, I mean, “semper fidelis”, though I’m sure he wasn’t trying to ape the Marine Corps’ motto. The Poles loved it.
And that’s actually a part I like about John Paul, that he was at least that much of nationalist and that he always kept a strong bond with Poland. Unlike this foolish modern liberal business of a European continent with no borders.
Why doesn’t he ever wear a Roman collar? Is he a priest or not?
Oh, he’s definitely a priest, and Carmelite friar besides, but he doesn’t go in for any of that fancy habit, collar, stodgy, traditional uniform kinda business.
Reggie is a strange mixture of certain traditionalist leanings coupled with a perhaps fatal case of the Nervous Disorder.
One sad consequence of this is what happens during his summer Latin courses. There, in Rome, as the Pope’s own Latin secretary (one of them), with the charisma and quirks of personality he uses to great effect in the classroom, he could be a huge force for evangelization. As it was, certainly going nowhere in that direction, it struck me that the things he said and the texts we read would have to make some people stop and think about the truth of the Faith.
As it is, he often would talk of things he had done in the past would tend of lessen people’s estimation of the Church and its laws, such as when he married some friends of his who wanted no mention of God at the wedding. Or when he told the class that, as far as he was concerned, one might well worship God on Saturday morning (fulfilling the Sunday obligation) and go to the beach on Sunday morning (as most Italians do, minus the Saturday morning Mass part).
Then he would also rant against traditionalists, which often got me angry. But I forgave him, and I no longer remember the content of those rants - except one concerning the Blessed Virgin - but I do remember the stuff he taught us.
So with Reggie, you just have to know what you’re getting into, and pray to God that he knows what he’s doing when he says scandalous things, in which he’s often exaggerating just to poke people’s buttons. Last summer, there was quite a contingent of traditionalists on hand, and Reggie knew it, too. I don’t know if the size of that group was just a fluke or if it has been like that.
Well, I plan to go take Reggie’s course next summer (should he accept me). Where in the Eternal City can one find a Tridentine Mass and a good Anglophone confessor?
Well, it’s going to be one grand summer, because you’re not the only one going, Tobias. Clara, Asinorum Doctor, Mater Ambrosii, et fortasse Ambros. soror et quaedam amicae suae et ego quoque in aeterna Civitate tunc latinae sperunt studere. Confessiones anglice audiunt in Sancti Petri basilica paene per totum diem. Ad audiendum Missam veterem, Fraternitatis Sancti Petri ecclesia praebet omnia necessaria.
Ne anxiaris: te profecto accipiet, tu etiam non ei latine scribes, sed id melius esset.
Iosephus et al.,
Sorry to have mixed people up, etc. About the priests’ collars- why don’t priests have to wear a collar? I once had a course where I didn’t know the prof was a priest for 3 weeks. It was kind of disturbing. You’d think people w