Here.

Have you read our post about John Paul the Fair? That would be one place to start.

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 would Want to make their priesthood known.
Also, what other things are you referring to, iosephus, when you mention “the whole problem” with JPII. I guess I have not questioned his methods too much, beyond where it touches latin mass concerns and in that I am a fan of world youth days.

Ne anxiaris: te profecto accipiet, tu etiam non ei latine scribes, sed id melius esset.

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.

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.