Nunc!

From Poppy by Cynthia Stockley:

Clem was Catholic and Bill Protestant, and the result was a strange medley of prayers for Cinthie.

The kid has just gabbled her way through some Protestant children's evening prayer, the Our Father, and a few intercessions, ending up with "Amen -- now I must say my Latins."

She kneeled up, crossed herself solemnly in Latin, and began to chant the lovely words of the Angelical Salutation: "Ave Maria! gratia plena, Dominus tecum; benedicta tua in mulieribus, et benedictus fructis ventris tui Jesus. Sancta Maria! Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."

Afterwards she fell into a peal of laughing.

"Why do you laugh, darling?" Poppy gravely asked, and the answer was: "Oh, Poppy! Wouldn't Nunc be a funny name for a dog!"

 I don't know what religion Cynthia Stockley was (there's a family myth that she was married to my great-grand uncle, but that's illogistical -- also, he's not mentioned in any of her online bios). I'd guess her for a Protestant with Catholic leanings -- this passage shows much more respect for Catholicism, but a Catholic would've called the "Angelical Salutation" just the "Hail Mary".


Anyway, let perpetual light shine upon her.

 

Mr. Moore at the Olympics

Another quasi-infringement brought to you by Dover Publications and myself.

"There haven’t been any reported illnesses . . .

 . . . at Lac Ste-Anne, where this year's pilgrimage coincided with a toxic algae warning . . .

 and, as happens every year, there were canes and braces left behind Thursday morning by pilgrims who sought healing during the three-day event.

Toxic algae is no match for Grandma's remedies.

Today's quasi-infringement of the Olympic monopoly on certain words

brought to you by Dover.

Blotted out

"I refuse to say his name. In my house we're just going to call him Suspect A." 

-- John Hickenlooper, Governor of Colorado

Not anything he called himself, not anything he would call himself. So it's taking power away from him, in a way -- or is it giving him at least a little, by acknowledging the impact of what he did?

Father and Father

Until I read that these two were Episcopalian converts, both married, I was saying to myself, "There'll never be another Father Chuck Hough."

Anyway, blessings and congratulations to them.

What I've been doing instead of posting

• Having a horrible time on the job -- never knowing if my edits were going to stay edited, or be dropped by the broken server, having published posts disappear the next time I looked at the site, hitting control+refresh over and over and expecting it to do something different
• Reflecting that, even though my natal country's foreign service outposts have idiotic security procedures, at least they're not -- as far as I know -- spying on me, or trying to recruit me to undermine the country where I now live
• Planning grandiosely to write about Zerubabbel, and Esther, a Real Housewife of the Old Testament
• Accidentally standing under the drip in the front room ceiling
• Tracking down a relative who's living alone on a  boat. Just to make sure, you know
• Going to bed early before anything else can happen

No Compromise After All

Thaddeus Ma Daqin was just ordained an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, with the approval of both the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the real Church -- so everyone was happy, right?

Not Bishop Ma. When he made his ordination address, he said he was quitting the CPCA. And "The congregation broke out in loud applause."

Of course he's been put in “closed meditation”. But he's chosen the better portion and I hope he never regrets it for a moment.

Here comes everyone

Well, anyway, here comes Katie Holmes, back to the fold. Must confess I didn't know she was one of ours. Must also confess that when I first saw the headline, I thought "Katy Perry? Wha . . .? Wasn't she a preacher's kid?"


And I wish that had been the most disoriented I'd been all day.


U.S. Navy photo -- credit where it's due.

In honor of a literate communicator

John Murray Corse, 1835-1893

I don't mean to diminish General Corse's greater achievements by highlighting one of his lesser ones, but I'm more qualified to comment on language matters than military ones -- just ask anyone who was in the service with me. Anyway . . .

Corse became a general while still only in his twenties. One fine day he found himself and his garrison surrounded and outnumbered by Confederates. Their commander sent a note into the fort suggesting Corse surrender "to avoid a needless effusion of blood".

Corse wrote back: "We are prepared for the 'needless effusion of blood' whenever it is agreeable to you."

Unfortunately, by the time he'd finished this, the man with the white flag had waited the five minutes allotted and gone back to tell his commander there was no answer. It didn't really matter; events proceeded the way they would have anyway. The Confederates attacked, killing one man in three, shooting Corse himself in the face (not badly enough to keep him from remarrying after his wife died), but not taking the fort.

However, Corse's literate refusal to surrender was not widely known or appreciated till after the war -- so I'm remembering him for it now. And sadly noting that all that would be expected of anyone his age today would be something like "BRING IT ON REDNEK!!!!!!:P"

Hacked! (not here, at work)

Unable to do all my work yesterday because someone had replaced some of the prompts on the dashboard of one site with a semi-literate, completely incomprehensible message, presumably to show how much better they are than the rest of us.

More on literate messages later.

"Out of our polling station, Papist!"

Well, not quite. But a woman in Alberta was kept from voting in the school board election because she was -- technically -- Catholic. And we've got our own school boards and so forth in that province, so it wouldn't be fair, would it?

Weird part: "But the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association thinks the law is fine as it stands." If Catholics can take part in the secular school boards, maybe non-Catholics will decide they have a right to sit on the Catholic boards. Would they even want to? A few years ago, they wouldn't have. Now, it might be seen as a chance to "correct" what those darn Catholic schools are teaching about marriage.

We might say it was a mistake for the Church to set up school systems under the aegis of any government -- but the arrangement seemed to be working fine for most of its history. Anyway, where to go from here?

Meanwhile, let the lady vote. Her kids are in the public schools. She pays taxes. And if she loses any of her voting rights, mine aren't safe either.

Independence Day

In practice, nothing guarantees our freedoms except our willingness to fight for them.

-- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap

Pulling Down the Statue of George III at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan, by William Walcutt

And on a lower note:

They fought so unfairly from back of the trees

If they'd only fought open, we'd have beat 'em with ease

They can fight one another that way if they please

But we don't have to stand for such tactics as these!

We're the old soldiers of the King

And the King's Own Regulars . . .

-- Traditional (I think) 

St. Thomas' Day

"Called the twin" -- I wonder who the other twin was. Wikipedia says "few texts" try to say -- and those few probably get it wrong; they got something wrong anyway, as none of them made it into the Canon.

It seems a story about the BVM dropping her sash to him is the origin of the Mary, Undoer of Knots devotion -- which keeps cropping up before me at unexpected times.

Call the cops -- well, yeah!

 From Australia's World Today -- headlined "'Call the police': Catholic Church says sex abuse victims should call authorities first".

ANGELA RYAN: The church does not want to investigate its own, the church wants people to go to the police and we actively try to help people. If they don't go to the police and won't go to the police, we will not ignore the matter.

We use the Towards Healing process to investigate the matter.

EMILY BOURKE: Do you think that's a robust process?

ANGELA RYAN: Well it's certainly better than ignoring the matter . . .