THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE

“...it sounds uncommon nonsense.”

From Reader #3

“Accuracy,” wrote the redoubtable textual critic A. E. Housman, “is a duty and not a virtue.” As a matter of course, we never laud its presence, but we are duty-bound to condemn its absence. In this third of a series focusing on Fr. Cekada’s disdain for accurate academic documentation, we offer but two examples (and small ones at that), lest we exercise your patience after the long holiday weekend.

In all fairness, we won’t flog him for “Decima Session Plenaria” (p. 139, note 16), unquestionably an artifact of his spellchecker and a result of not hiring an editor with a practiced eye. Likewise, we won’t raise our eyebrows at “ampollositatem” (p. 96, note 44), for the inferior spelling may have been printed in the vulgar Consilium’s original (and Fr. Cekada’s Latin isn’t good enough for him to have spotted the variant and entered the editorial protest of a bracketed sic). We will, however, censure him for a pair of (apparently) trivial errors, insofar as such minikin inaccuracies are emblematic of Father’s mammoth insouciance.

“Errorlet” 1. On p. 115, Father makes an effort in his printed translation to distinguish between the “Liturgy of the Word” and the “Liturgy of the Eucharist”; however, in footnote 41, he prints “eucharistia” (the nominative [or ablative]) instead of the genitive eucharistiae. To be sure, the learned reader can readily supply the correct case, but one wonders why Fr. Cekada couldn’t have been more careful about getting this important text right in the first place. He should have been especially cautious about original-language citations because experts use them to judge a researcher’s craftsmanship, integrity, and trustworthiness. But, of course, he never imagined an expert readership, did he?

“Errorlet” 2. Although we overlooked one typo on p. 139, note 16, we cannot let pass unnoticed the howler “Missale Romano praemittendis” (line 3) instead of Missali Romano. Real scholars pay attention to their citations in order to make the work of verifying references easy. What makes the oversight more blameworthy is that he had a hint in line 2 of the same note, to wit, "pro Missali Romano." (We also think that his translation of the phrase Missal[i] Romano praemittendis as “to be set forth in the Roman Missal,” while not altogether wrong, falls a bit short of the mark. A decent Latinist would have more accurately rendered Bugnini’s original as “to be set out by way of preface to the Roman Missal” or “to be set out in the front matter of the Roman Missal.” Father’s inadequacy as a translator, however, is another post.)

Browning’s line that “great things are made of little things” ironically applies to Work of Human Hands: the many little slips, careless fumbles, rattlebrained goofs, and staggering errors render the book a massive failure of intent, effort, and execution. Its credibility is forever impeached because the untrained author, unlike a real scholar, refused to sweat the small stuff. That’s why we say Work of Human Hands is not serious.

In the sparsely peopled world of exacting scholarship, Disraeli’s precept that “little things affect little minds” is false. Great minds exercise their genius on the littlest of things, and small minds scorn the fine points. The two little errors we reviewed above could easily have been cured with a modicum of care. However, an undisciplined, small mind is always contemptuous of painstaking attention to detail. How true we find the words of Horace: parvum parva decent, which we freely render here as “pea-brained slackness befits a pint-sized wit.” Bottom line: Don't waste one tiny red cent on this big book of blunders.

Octave Day of Ss. Peter and Paul