Saturday, August 3, 2013

A CAPITAL MISTAKE

Everyone needs an editor. Timothy Foote

As a matter of press policy, the Readers have endeavored to refrain from calling out the Blunderer's merely typographical errors. Anyone who has put fingers to keyboard understands how difficult -- indeed, how nearly impossible -- it is to proofread one's own work when laboring under a deadline. (Perhaps it's impossible even without a deadline.) Way back when we started our post mortem of the Blunderer's stillborn monstrosity of shoddy errorsWork of Human Hands, Pistrina adopted the practice of passing over in silence what the Readers considered innocent typos. Since then, we have made exceptions to our fair-minded policy only when prompted by correspondents (e.g., as on July 21).

However, there comes a time when a small blunder in an important passage is so egregious as to condemn the entire published work as unfit for use. A famous example is the 1631 "Wicked Bible," which resulted in a heavy fine, the publishers' loss of their printer's license,  and the cancellation and burning of remaining copies. Now the Blunderer, as should be expected, has given us another instance.

In Appendix I of his thoroughly discredited monograph on one-handed orders, we find the following translation of a passage from Palazzini and De Jorio's Casus Conscientiae (we have marked the blunder in red; another blunder, noted in blue, the gross mistranslation of Pius XII's definition, is one we have already discussed at length and hence needs no comment today, except to remind everyone how so much of the Bonehead's argument is based on his error; brown marks other problems):
That this other imposition of one hand does not have less power than the imposition of both hands is required by force of the aforesaid Apostolic Constitution itself which, while it declares “The matter of the Sacred Orders of diaconate, priesthood and episcopacy is one and the same, and that indeed is the imposition of hands” (§4), determines and lays down: “For ordination to diaconate, the matter is the imposition of the hands of the bishop which occurs once in the rite of this ordination” (§5)
We don't need to drag out the Denzinger Latin text of ❡5 to inform everyone that Pope Pius wrote manus impositio  -- imposition of the HAND, singular, not plural (that would be manuum): In Tony's footnote 11, where he attempts to supply the Latin text, we find the words as Pius wrote them  (our highlighting and  green emphasis):
Certerum impositionem unius manus non minorem habere virtutem quam utriusque iure cogitur ex praedicta Constitutione Apostolica, quae dum declarat 'Sacrorum Ordinum Diaconatus, Presbyteratus et Episcopatus materiam eamque unam esse manuum impositionem' (n. 4), decernit atque constituit: 'In ordinatione Diaconali materia est Episcopi manus impositio quae in ritu istius ordinationis una ocurrit.' (n. 5).*
The Bonehead's sloppiness in this context is inexcusable. Those Catholics without any Latin are burdened with another false impression of what Pope Pius XII and the two theologians actually wrote. Also, the blunder resulted in another erroneous translation of Pius XII's teaching, which led a number of e-mail correspondents (and doubtlessly many others) astray. If Tony had any real academic training, in the case of such a theologically important passage, he would have checked, double-checked, and triple-checked his translation against the original Latin. (He should have done the same for all his direct quotations from the Latin, too. But when you're untutored and intellectually slovenly, you're lost forever.)

He also ought to have enlisted the services of a formally educated layman or laywoman; it's obvious his unschooled clerical pals missed all his dumb goofs. Perhaps the real reason he didn't seek informed guidance from his betters was that he knew the culties and CLODs ("close loyalists of Dannie") are so bewitched, beguiled, and befogged that they'll believe anything he says, even when it's just plain wrong.

One thing for sure can be said: when you don't give a fig about accuracy, the going is pretty easy -- until you get caught.

That's why those of you who aren't held in the Southwest Ohio cult's thrall should never, ever pay one whit of attention to anything the Blunderer writes or says. Let the cultie troglodytes ingest all that toxic waste. Decent Catholics must shun such dangerous fare. By now, "One Hand" knows the Bonehead's monograph is a train wreck, so he should get on the horn and put in an emergency call to the rector for conditional orders. That'll give the forlorn Rev. Mr. Nkamuke a fair start in his priestly life.

* A bit of caution is advised: We took this text directly from the Bonehead's slapdash monograph without checking it against a printed copy of Palazzini and De Jorio's book, which we have not yet been able to obtain. But even without the book, we can show that Tony didn't transcribe everything correctly.  For starters, right off the bat there's a definite transcriptional error, "Certerum" instead of "Ceterum" (or "Ceteram," if we are to believe Tony's translation, which we don't.).  But insofar as an extra r is a relatively harmless blunder compared to mistranslating and adding whole words to papal teaching, as a corollary to our policy, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and stipulate, for the time being, that his transcription of Palazzini and De Jorio's Latin correctly quotes Pius's manus impositio. (In the near future, please note, we do intend to revisit Palazzini's and De Jorio's opinion qua theological opinion, but only after we get hold of a copy of their book. Our concerns are too important to risk relying on Tony's tissue of inaccuracy.)

In addition, again without the aid of the book, we can see the Bonehead's translation has problems (as usual). He renders ceterum here as "this other," yet  the word it's supposed modify, viz. impositionem, is feminine accusative singular. But ceterum is masculine accusative singular or neuter nominative or accusative singular when it's used as an adjective. Consequently, unless Tony made another transcriptional error in the same word, ceterum cannot mean "other."  (We read it as the commonly found neuter singular adverb meaning "but, however, moreover, in addition, for the rest, otherwise etc.")  Nevertheless, before shaming the Blunderer once again with a corrected translation, we'll wait until we can inspect the original, just to be 110% sure: the text as transcribed by the chronically slipshod Bonehead is too unreliable at this juncture to make any firm conclusions. (As an aside, we invite you to observe our forbearance in not commenting at length on the misspelling of ocurrit in the last line of the Latin-- a trifle in comparison with the other colossal foozles.)

We note in passing three other problems with his translation: first, there is no word in the Latin to justify "this" in "this other imposition."  Second, there is no word in the Latin to justify "itself" in "Apostolic Constitution itself." Third, there is no word in the Latin (to wit, one of the so-called "weak" causal connectives nam, enim, etenim etc.) that justifies the English coordinating conjunction "for" in the phrase, "For in the ordination to diaconate...": Continuous Latin prose, as every seriously trained student of the preliminary hints in Bradley's Arnold will tell you, deploys such connectives with greater precision and frequency than does English. Had such a particle been needed, it would have appeared in the text of Sacramentum Ordinis, from which Palazzini-De Jorio directly quoted. (However, in theory, we suppose, there's always the chance that the klutzy cultmaster made still another faulty transcription.)

Let's face it, folks: the Blunderer just loves to add nuances that were never intended. Keep this sub-amateur forever away from Latin theological works, and, for heaven's sake, don't believe a word he says! (Pssst! Are you listening, "One Hand"?)




4 comments:

  1. http://www.troll.me/images/conspiracy-keanu/what-if-all-those-theologians-are-wrong-and-some-blog-i-just-read-is-actually-right.jpg

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    1. Great image. One needn't look so nonplused, however, if the nature of theological opinion is rightly understood. Such opinions possess less certainty than the notes "de fide divina," "de fide divina et catholica," "de fide definita," "fidei proximum," "theologice certum," and even "sententia communis," the latter of which pertains to the realm of free opinions albeit generally accepted by theologians. The certainty of an individual theological opinion may even be so low as to be merely tolerated ("opinio tolerata").

      As we have insisted before, Regatillo himself was precisely aware that his opinions were not absolutely certain when, after giving his opinion that one-handed orders were valid, he counseled consulting Rome to see if anything needed to be supplied (p. 495, "Summa"). We can also add here that his word choice of "putamus" (in the clause "The other canonists, whom I have consulted, and I THINK ordination so conferred is valid" [our emphasis]) is another sign of hedging his view: As "Bradley's Arnold," to which we referred in this week's post, explains: "puto" has the sense of "'I incline to think,' 'I fancy,' 'I suspect,' I think without having as yet any full clearly reasoned grounds for thinking."

      "One Hand" has a very easy solution to put a confident smile back on the faces of his culties: get conditional ordination and consecration from the rector and end this discussion forever (that is, once he's conditionally ordained ALL the men on whom he's conferred holy orders).

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  2. Just some thoughts: Abp. Lefebvre was certainly familiar with the requirements for validity. I think it strange that, for no reason whatsoever, he suddenly imposes one hand rather than two while performing something that he had done hundreds of times before, assuming, of course, that it did actually happen that way. It didn't seem to bother him, though, and it doesn't appear to have been a pressing issue until it became a convenient weapon.

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  3. Who knows why it happened that day? Actually, it's not hard to imagine in that the archbishop had just beforehand conferred the diaconate. However, what convinces us is a statement we have from an eyewitness, whose name we will not reveal, that the untoward event occurred. We happen to know that the defect did indeed bother the archbishop, who was in a "panic" afterwards until someone calmed him down. To be sure, he should have remedied the defect the next day, but apparently the cult of his own personality was too strong for him to resist.

    Back in'76 nobody knew too much about these matters. However, as the years went on and priests learned more about both the archbishop and sacraments, it suddenly dawned on them there was a problem. We believe the priestly signatories of the 1990 letter who affirmed that the dispute they had at the time with "One Hand" had nothing to do with with their concern over his orders.

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