The Doctor and I are traveling out of town for ours, and I’m a little rushed, so for this week I’m not going to put down any deep thoughts. But I thought maybe I would amuse you with this little piece from a Miss Manners column. I always find Miss Manners amusing, if only for illustrating the depths to which some people sink. Pretty funny to imagine that anyone, when invited to Thanksgiving with people he had not yet met, would not merely decline to eat turkey himself, but would actually demand that nobody else should have any either! Perhaps this can leave all our readers feeling grateful that the gentleman in question is not one of their friends or relations.

Dear Miss Manners:

This year I will be hosting a rather large Thanksgiving dinner for family. My sister-in-law will be bringing her boyfriend, who is vegetarian. I had planned on offering several vegetarian options, as I want him to feel welcome.

My sister-in-law informed my husband they preferred that no meat be served, but if we insisted, could we make sure not to cook meat/nonmeat items in the oven at the same time, and could we refrain from ceremoniously carving the turkey at the table? How should I handle this request?

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(I’m wondering: do we not have any other good photographs of Antonio Cardinal Bacci available on the internet?) This is a post I’ve been meaning to write ever since June when I saw J. P. Sonnen’s post about Cardinal Bacci, “Greatest Latinist of the 20th Century.” Mr. Sonnen followed that six days later with a post about the helicopter pad at the Vatican and its Latin dedication of which Reggie was the author, though Bacci had supplied the word for “helicopter” – not that it’s terribly imaginative!

Perhaps the best book I acquired this summer – I had previously been unaware of its existence – was William Smith and Theophilus D. Hall’s Copious and Critical English-Latin Dictionary. Including an index of proper names, it runs to 754 over-sized pages. Though its usefulness is restricted owing to the fact that it was first published in 1870 (begun in 1855), it is far and away the best option for English speakers looking to compose in Latin. One of its nicest features is that it gives citations in support of the Latin translations for English words and expressions. For example, if you look up the adjective “eternal”, you’ll find this:

eternal: 1. aeternus (strictly, without beginning or end of time: nothing that hath had an origin can be eternal, [nihil] quod ortum sit aeternum esse potest, Cicero, De natura deorum 1.8.20 . . . .

Though not all of the citations are that specific (citing chapter and verse), they do always give the author’s name; then you can search through something like the Latin Library and have a fair chance of finding the exact passage in a few minutes time. Continue reading

Things have felt sort of gloomy lately, what with the economy collapsing and electing the great Champion of Death as our next president, and the academic job market shriveling up like a raisin in the sun. When these developments first set in, I had trouble feeling too bad about them, because it was autumn and the weather around here was so incredibly beautiful that it was hard to believe that anything very bad could happen. Now it’s looking more like winter, and that tends to have just the opposite effect. Winter can be an enjoyable season too in its way… but it’s a season for enjoying decadence and plenty. With the trees bare and the world cold, every deprivation or piece of bad news seems doubly grim. And just to add insult to injury, I came home last week to find that the happy collection of pumpkins I set out on the porch had been smashed all over the sidewalk. Stupid kids.

To stave off this uncomfortable feeling of general gloom, I let myself buy a giant poinsettia. The kind that they sell at Costco and Sam’s Club around the holidays. I love those things… they’re almost as good as a Christmas tree for cheering up a room. This one is so large that it practically seems to fill up my office, which is exactly what I wanted. Nothing like a mass of giant red blooms to make me feel like I’m living in luxury. Yeah, so it’s a little early. Too bad. I need some Christmas cheer right now.

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Just a quick note for those of you who have sent inquiries about Reggie’s health and plans. I’m not apprised of the details personally, but I hear through the Reggie listserve that he has made a good recovery, that he is back in Rome at the Teresianum, that his “Academia” (the teaching he has been doing on his own since he was fired from the Gregorian University) will start on January 7th, and finally, that spots for the summer course are filling fast. Not that he turns away anyone based on numbers – but the point is, send your application in, as he’s back in action and intends to teach this summer.

If you’re hesitating about whether to go – don’t. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that this course changed my life. A great teacher, the Eternal City, the Apostolic See, whole days devoted to study of this one language, and lugging Lewis & Short everywhere in the blazing heat is a potent recipe for Latin progress.

So, ineffable has won the day. Bishop Trautman apparently fought it to the last. I’m certainly pleased that it passed, and applaud Bishop Boyea of Lansing who apparently made the brilliant suggestion: “Let’s just teach the people what ‘ineffable’ means.” Bravo! Dumbing down the liturgy for the sake of “accessibility” is pretty much never a good idea.

And yet. A thought does occur to me that’s a little out of sync with the things I’ve been reading on blogs and comment threads. (Check out the comments on Fr. Z, for example.) There the emphasis seems to be on claiming that “ineffable” really isn’t such a hard word. I want to go the opposite direction. “Ineffable” isn’t all that obscure of a word, and anyway for those who don’t know it, it’s just as easy to look up as any other word in the English language. I’d hope that most Catholic adults (most adults in general) would know how to use a dictionary. But “ineffable” is a difficult word to grasp in the sense that the concept attached to it is challenging. It would be hard to explain to a five-year-old, for example. And that’s precisely why they should keep it in the liturgy. It’s a difficult and mysterious word, being used to express something that is in fact difficult and mysterious. Ineffable, in fact.

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One of my favorite blogs these days is Hallowed Ground: Traditional Catholic Visualism. No polemics – just beautiful, traditional Catholic photographs, artwork and images that fight the good fight with pictures instead of words. Though it’s now a couple weeks old, I thought that Ken gave us the perfect image for expressing the traditionalist’s reasons for barring women from the “office” of lector. (You call that the recently closed Synod of Bishops had voted to approve a petition to be put before the Pope asking that women be formally welcomed into this office.) I hope that Ken won’t object if I repost it here:

How does one express, to those who do not already understand, the depth of the tragedy of abortion? In the wake of a resounding victory for the culture of death, we are left with an almost inexpressible feeling of grief, similar to what we might feel after watching Schindler’s List or reading The Gulag Archipelago. Of course it’s impossible to know how many will actually die as a result of yesterday’s election. The ramifications are a bit less direct than we would see in the requisitioning of a death camp. A bit — but not too terribly indirect. We know that our next president is very arguably the most pro-abortion politician in America today. His political history shows that he was unwilling even to support legislation designed to prevent already-born human beings from being left to die in in a linen bin or a utility closet. He has promised as his first presidential act to sign a Freedom of Choice Act intended to negate all federal and state legislation putting limits on abortion, thus ensuring that it will in every state be legal to vacuum-suck the brains from a partially born infant’s skull, to use tax revenues to pay for the murder of the unborn, and to give immediate abortion on demand to any female of any age without notifying her parents, husband, or any other concerned person. So, while the precise legal ramifications may not yet be clear, we can be certain that one of the ramifications of this election will be the slaughter of countless more infants by their own parents.

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Is there any remotely legitimate pedigree to the term “preferential option for the poor”? To my ears it stinks to high heaven of liberation theology, the seamless garment of life, and other such joyous packages of heresy and disobedience that have plagued the Church over the last few decades. I might add that the term is dirtied not merely by those associations, but also because of its strong and obvious affinity with political liberalism and especially Rawlsian thought. (Which of course is modernist through and through, and very seriously unCatholic, for reasons it would take too long to explain just now.)

And yet, I occasionally hear earnest-seeming Catholics refer to this as if it were some kind of teaching of the Magisterium, as in, “of course we have a firm commitment to protecting life, but just as clearly the Church is committed to affirming the preferential option for the poor…”

Well, I’m not committed to affirming the preferential option for the poor. Can someone give me a reason why that makes me a bad Catholic? Mind you, I’m not saying that I don’t care about the poor, or that I don’t think we ought to give alms to them and help them in other ways as occasion arises. But I’m not a Rawlsian, and I don’t think Rawlsian-type principles are suitable for ordering a society.

If anyone knows of authoritative sources that use this term (i.e. catechisms, encyclicals) I’d be interested to see the references.

Update (from Dr. A): See this post at Against the Grain. They in turn link to this article where the author traces:

the use of the phrase from a 1979 pastoral document by the Latin American Bishops, to the 1986 statement “Economic Justice for All”, revisited in 1994’s “Communities of Salt and Light”, as well as pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

Update… According to one reader, the phrase “first appeared in official episcopal documents in the SECOND Latin American Episcopal Conference, that of Medellin, in 1968 — the Liberation Theology movement in many ways grew out of this meeting. It is in the last pages of the Medellin documents, under the heading “Preferencia y Solidaridad”.”

This is, frankly, amazing to me. The Bishop of Kansas City – St. Joseph was being interviewed on some local radio talk show there.

He was asked by the interviewer (who is not himself Catholic):

Bishop, tomorrow there are some Catholics listening to me right now that are thinking strongly, or convinced, that they will vote for Barak Obama. What would you say to them?

The Bishop responded:

I would say, give consideration to your eternal salvation. Because, to vote for a person who has expressed a fanatical determination to not only support abortion as it exists now, but to remove all limitations on it through the Freedom of Choice Act and to extend it without any recourse, throwing out all the efforts of citizens through the last 35 years to place reasonable limits on abortion. That you, by voting for a person who has expressed his determination to do this, to Planned Parenthood, to NARAL, that you make yourself a participant in the act of abortion, that’s gravely wrong and you mustn’t do it because your eternal salvation is tied up with that important choice.

You can listen to the entire interview here.

I’m a little dubious about the claim of being a participant. There are imaginable cases that would be at most material cooperation with evil, but nonetheless this level frankness and sincere exercising of teaching authority is wonderful to see.

[via Fr. Z]