Traddielandia knows how much Pistrina hates pettiness. Yet, as we've written so often before, it's the little things that disclose the true state of affairs.
Dannie the Dork and Checkie Cheeseball have clawed and scratched for decades to trick Catholics into believing they're equal to the pre-Vatican II clergy. Just as assiduously, Pistrina has spent almost a lustrum in demonstrating conclusively they're not even close to the old standard of excellence. (For that matter, they're not even close to the old standard of mediocrity.) Two of the preposterous myths we've solidly debunked are (1) that "One Hand" is a man of broad culture (LOL) and (2) that the cult masters know Latin.
As the "gift that keep on giving," His Pretentiousness is ever supplying the Readers with fresh instances confirming his gross deficiencies in cultural literacy and the Church's sacred language. Last week, in his simpering "Bishop's (?) Corner," Li'l Dan revealed once again how far out of his depth he has waded and how downright alien he is to the world of bona-fide learning. Dannie's got to do more than name his feral tomcat after a painter in order for the cognoscenti to regard him as cultured: He's got to learn some basic facts, too.
So, now, to gild the lily of our already proven contention that Dannie is a poseur, not a connoisseur, here's today's first exhibit (emphases ours) of another unsuccessful attempt to appear learned:
The young lady who did such a beautiful job on St. Francis has also repainted Our [sic] Lady’s robe for the Pietá [!!], beautifully colored and shadowed.As every properly educated schoolboy knows, the term for an artistic depiction of the dead body of Christ in the arms of the mourning Blessed Virgin Mary is spelled Pietà, with a grave accent, not an acute, as His Fatuousness mistakenly writes. (Pietà is Italian, a parola tronca [accent on final syllable], requiring the accento grave.) Most people with an interest in Western art are familiar with the correct spelling, even if they haven't studied Italian. In spelling the word with an acute accent as he did, Daniel the Dunce bears witness to his scandalously inadequate schooling. Admit it, folks: He's an embarrassment to the traditional Catholic world.
Our second exhibit for the day is Dubious Dan's sign-off line to the same edition of his squalid "Corner," to wit, "Laetare!"
Inasmuch as his message was for Lætare Sunday, the pint-sized posturer thought he was being oh-so-churchmanly -and-urbane in inviting the sad-eyed, distempered Gerties to rejoice when he quoted the first Latin word of the day's Introit. How elegantly à propos, right?
Wrong!
Laetare is a singular present imperative, but Dannie's addressing a plural audience, for Pete's sake!
No one who really knows Latin -- we mean, someone who's really educated and has a genuine feeling for the Church's tongue -- could bring himself to write the singular laetare for a plural audience. The gross error is akin to a middle-class English speaker's writing, "they is" (no doubt the usual idiom at SGG): an educated person just couldn't make such a mistake. By second mature, a properly instructed soul would have, without thinking twice, written laetamini, the plural imperative. Using the singular form would never have occurred to him in the first place.
However, a university-trained cleric of taste would also know that writing laetamini in an informal message directed to the barely literate, head-scratching Gertie rite-trash would amount to insufferable pedantry. It's also more than likely that the few semi-literates who remain caught in the cult's deadly embrace might not be able to guess with any ease at the precise relationship between laetare and laetamini. To be frank, normal traditional Catholics outside the cult couldn't be expected to make the connection either. (The same might be said of a very large number of traddie priests.)
What Dannie should have done was to have closed with the whole phrase Laetare, Jerusalem.* In so doing, he wouldn't have exposed to ridicule his ignorance of Latin. At the same time, he would have flattered the cultlings into imagining that they, under his one-handed control, composed the body politic of the messianic city, the mother of Christians. Granted, the conceit's utterly without foundation, but it would work at all levels, even though the apocalyptic "great city" Babylon is the more fitting analogue for Gertieville.
Naturally, he could have closed with the English "Rejoice"and communicated the same message without the discomfiting linguistic failure. That sensible option, however, wouldn't have promoted the false image he wants so painfully for people to swallow. In Li'l Dan's ego-centric world, pretense trumps substance.
Isn't it time for everyone to confront the cold, harsh reality that "One-Hand Dan" and the Blunderer as well as the rector are in no wise like pre-Vatican II clergy? The three are buffoonish characters in a seedy, melancholy burlesque. The image they project is the grotesquely distorted reflection of a carnival fun-house mirror. Trad World is better off with its self-confessed ignoramuses than with these gauche pretenders.
They are definitely not the real thing. They aren't even big fish in a small pond. They're intellectual minnows in a vast, inhospitable salt-water ocean, where they can't last too much longer.
STARVE THE BEAST. GIVE YOUR WEEKLY CASH OFFERING TO THE DESERVING POOR IN YOUR COMMUNITY.
* We've anticipated that one of the malformed, logic-chopping close loyalists of Dannie (CLODs) is going to rush to his Missal and inanely argue that other verbs in the Lætare-Sunday Introit are actual plural imperatives, so Dirtbag Dan is justified in using the singular Laetare alone. Let's save the hopelessly miseducated some embarrassment with a brief explanation.
Three separate grammatical entities are directly addressed in the Introit, each one with a different imperative verb: (1) the personified city Jerusalem, (2) those who love her, and (3) those who have been in sadness. Jerusalem is bidden by a singular imperative, "rejoice"; those who love her are charged by a plural imperative, "come together (lit. 'make an assembly')"; and those have been in sadness are enjoined by the plural imperative phrase, "be glad with happiness." Laetare, then, belongs solely to the grammatically singular vocative Jerusalem.
The Vulgate version of Isaias 66: 10-11, the source of the antiphon of the Introit, does employ the plural form: Laetamini cum Jerusalem, "Rejoice [ye] with Jersusalem." However, the Introit Mass text is not taken from the Vulgate, which is based on the Hebrew version; it comes from the Itala (Vetus Latina), which is based on the LXX.
Accordingly, if your vanity demands you use the Roman Missal's form of the verb when addressing more than one person -- and if your vanity demands in addition that everyone know you're referencing the Missal -- you must then cite the entire phrase Lætare, Jerusalem, "Rejoice, O Jerusalem," wherein Jerusalem is vocative. Otherwise you risk exposure to public ignominy -- just like Dim Dan.
I was wondering if the good bishop perhaps learned Latin from one of those Great Books of Modern Civilization, "Latin for Dummies".
ReplyDeleteActually, the "bishop" once told a friend of ours that he studied Latin -- we'll never say "learned" -- from Waldo E. Sweet's dreadful "Michigan Latin" with its modern emphasis on the structural approach. From what our friend reports, Wee Dan told him he had to get some enough Latin with the programmed course before he could enter Écône.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the archbishop thinking when he even considered such a candidate, let alone admitted him?