DISORDERED ORDO V

But it must not be forgotten that training in habits of accuracy is one of the chief functions of education. W.C. Collar in Moulton's Latin Composition

Editor's Note: Some student fans from a high-school Latin II class worriedly inquired whether we'd have a DISORDRED ORDO post this month. According to our correspondents, the whole class enjoys fixing the imbecilic mistakes of "One-Hand" Dan's disgraceful ORDO 2016, and they don't want to miss out before the school year ends. Never fear. Pistrina keeps its promises.  For the Memorial Day weekend (and as a 65th birthday present to "One Hand"), here's # V in the monthly series.

A BURNING QUESTION

Correspondents often ask how much Latin is really required for a Roman Catholic priest. The query is timely, for in Traddielandia, there are no real seminaries as contemplated by Trent (and hence no real Roman Catholic priests). There are only comical, pathetic imitations, staffed by the untutored, turning out counterfeit "clergy." Moreover, the beetle-browed trainees usually enter those sub-standard mockeries with enormously crippling educational, emotional, and intellectual deficits. So, you see, a judiciously measured answer to the question is rather tricky. But we'll try anyhow.

A COOL RESPONSE

Our reply to these correspondents depends on what kind of "priest" they mean. In the case of a  "simplex" priest, i.e., a second-class placeholder with restricted faculties owing to inferior formation, then the amount of Latin needed isn't much. All that's demanded is enough to celebrate Low Mass, anoint the sick, baptize, bless sacramentals, hear confessions in danger of death, and perhaps scribble a liturgical phrase or two in Latinitas culinaria ("dog Latin" or, if you will, latinajo, latin de cuisine, Küchenlatein). With the right curriculum and instructor, three academic quarters of concentrated study might suffice, depending on the candidate's aptitude.

On the other hand, the Latin requirements for a "first-class" priest (as most lay people conceive of such a churchman) are much higher. Although he need not possess the proficiency of a classical scholar, he has to have enough education to (1) comprehend with ease ecclesiastical Latin and (2) write and/or transcribe basic expressions free from screaming grammatical errors. That means he unreservedly ought to recognize when something is clearly not Latin. Furthermore, he must also be able to read, without frequent recourse to a lexicon, standard theological manuals or papal documents. It goes without saying that he should have the skill to translate those texts accurately into written English.*

A Chilling Distinction

To be sure, the non-canonical, third- or even fourth-rate "priests" of Tradistan, who wantonly exercise a sacerdotal role without a commission from the Church and who attended what are essentially privately operated, unlicensed, unregulated trade schools of doubtful standards, are essentially simplex priests (but several degrees lower in status owing to the bush-league formation they received).

Come to think about it, they really aren't simplices either, for they don't possess faculties at all, not even restricted ones. Regardless, we'll willingly suspend our disbelief (for the sake of this discussion) and pretend we can talk about Tradistani laymen-in-orders as though they were honest-to-goodness Roman Catholic priests (which they can never be).

A TEMPERATE APPLICATION

Thus, for the run-of-the-mill trad "priest" who runs an illicit "chapel" for Sunday and holy-day Masses, we wouldn't demand too much in the way of competency in Latin. As long as he can puzzle out with fair accuracy the sense of the Missal, the Ritual, and his Ordo Recitandi, the Readers wouldn't bust his chops (most of the time).

However, when a simpleton sede masquerader starts advertising himself, albeit indirectly with a wink and a nod, as a licit priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, then we'll hold the creep to a much higher standard. Additionally, when that impostor undertakes efforts to make himself appear to be an authentic minister of Christ's Church, say, for instance, by publishing Latin ordines, then we insist he meet the highest criteria. If he falls short, he deserves to be unmasked, shamed, and made, by dint of public ridicule, to desist.

A WHITE HOT EXPOSÉ

All this brings us to May's examples of ineptitude ripped from Doofus Dannie's incompetent ORDO 2016. This month we have two juicy boners to show you how "One-Hand" cannot satisfy our very permissive requirement for a "first-class" priest to write basic Latin expressions without cringeworthy howlers. (In our day, we remember when seminarians still had to write their exams in Latin.)

In the Readers' opinion, the following huge mistakes are not the result of mistranscribing copy found in an old ordo. We suspect they are failed attempts at original composition, at least in part. How pleased that nitwit must have been with himself as he imagined the esteem in which Trad Nation would hold him as a liturgist. We can imagine a silly, sloppily smiling Wee Dan, eyes glazed over in an ego-centric trance, contentedly pausing over the ill-designed layout as he proudly reads aloud the very un-Latin Latin he had penned.

Let's put an end that fevered reverie right now, shall we?

Sizzling Error A

As every schoolboy and every schoolgirl knows, in Latin, unlike in English, a noun is not used as an adherent adjective. For instance, native Latin idiom isn't patient of noun groups like headache, train station, or insurance company, where one noun functions like an adjective for a second.  Latin would qualify ache, station, and company with a genitive (e.g., capitis  dolor, "ache of the head"), or an adjective (e.g., statio ferriviaria, "station belonging to the railway"), or a phrase (e.g., societas sarciendis damnis, "association for making good losses").

Naturally this is first year stuff. All but the slowest pupils get it by the second grading period. But Dimwit Dan, one of the slowest studies we've ever known, patently did not, as you'll see.

On p. 49, under the feast of St. Monica, we find the following note in Dumbo Dan's ORDO 2016:

Hodie post Nonam fit Processio Litaniæ Minores (very literally, "today after None the Lesser-Litanies Procession is done.")

Now that may sound kind-of OK to English speakers. But if the Latin had been correct, viz. "Processio Litaniarum minorum," then a very literal translation would read,"Procession of the Lesser Litanies."

You see, folks, Dannie's "Litaniæ Minores" is wrong because it's nominative. Here the genitive (Litaniarum minorum) is required to qualify Processio. If His Deficiency were capable of reading liturgical authors like Martinucci (II-I, c. vi, art. xviii, 9), the pea brain would have known what to write.**

Such foul Latinity reeking of the kitchen cannot be tolerated in "first-class" priests (though, to be fair, "One-Hand" might not even be a "priest" at all). It's only acceptable in a "second-class" simplex priest who hasn't had the benefit of sound sacerdotal formation. Consequently, it should be clear by now that Dannie has no business putting on airs by publishing an ordo. He along with the rest of the cult "clergy" belong in remedial education classes so they can strive to reach, one day, simplex status. ("One-Hand" may well never get there.)

Scorching Error B

Our second example equally locates "One-Hand Dan" among the ranks of a second-class (or much lower) "priesthood."  Depraved cult vermin may defend Error A as a production oversight or the result of last-minute editing (LOL), but no one in his right mind can put a smiley face on the following illiteracy found on p. 53, at Pentecost Sunday

Ad aspersionem fit aqua pridie benedicta

Plausible literal translations of this barbarity may be either "at the aspersion, it is done with the water blessed on the day before," or "the water blessed on the day before is done at the aspersion." Like Dannie's Latin original, both renderings are gibberish. Clearly the $GG sad sack tried to compose a new liturgical note on the model of the instruction found on p. 37,  at Easter:

Ad aspersionem aquæ benedictæ dicitur Ant. Vidi aquam etc. (= "at the aspersion of blessed water, the antiphon Vidi aquam is said" etc.).

In spite of his inability to understand Latin at the syntactical level, it seems His Deficiency recklessly ventured to cobble together his instruction to impress the world with his (nonexistent) liturgical finesse. Had the simpleminded featherbrain enjoyed a proper formation, he would have learned from a prose composition class to put his thoughts first into English so as to form a clear idea of what he wanted to express in Latin.

That idea in its simplest form — and we must think simple when we're dealing with cult "clergy" — may be either (1) "the aspersion is done with the water blessed yesterday" or, following the format of Error A and thereby avoiding the apparently problematic aspersio, -nis,  (2) "today the people are sprinkled with the water blessed yesterday." Even a first-year pupil of middling talent would have instantly found grammatically correct solutions, viz. (1) fit aspersio (cum) aqua heri benedicta ("aspersion" is the subject of the sentence, hence in Latin the nominative must be used, not a prepositional phrase) or (2) hodie populus aspergitur (cum) aqua heri benedicta. But even these elementary constructions were far beyond Li'l Daniel's mean capacity. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The $GG cult "clergy" have no business compiling ordines and no business in the priesthood. To borrow a Shakespearean phrase, they haven't "so much brain as ear-wax." From the looks of it, these "clergy" probably don't understand what they're reading at Mass. Since they won't leave on their own, the only way to rid Traddielandia of these savagely miseducated charlatans is to stop funding them. Why pay for bad Latin AND dubious sacraments?

STARVE THE BEAST

   

* To operationalize our standard:  a"first-class" priest would never blunder as badly as Erroneous Antonius Cekada, who perversely mistranslated Pius XII's Sacramentum Ordinis (see here or here, question #VI.) An error of that magnitude automatically identifies the illiterate offender as a simplex at best, and probably much lower, say, a cretin.

** We're pretty sure we know the source of Dannie's massive blunder. Up through 2006, the St. Lawrence Press (SLP) Ordo used to read "Hodie post Nonam fit Processio Litan Minor," where it employed abbreviations, a common practice in ordines. Starting in 2007, the SLP ordo began spelling out the words, and thus we now read the instruction Hodie post Nonam fit Processio Litaniarum Minorum.

We surmise that Dannie was copying either from an older edition of the SLP or perhaps from an SSPV ordo, which has adopted much of the language and format of the SLP. (At least that's what we can tell from a copy of the 2003 SSPV ordo in our library).  Why Dannie decided to spell out the abbreviated words without cross-checking newer editions of the SLP is anybody's guess. If he was using an SSPV ordo, he may have wanted to score a useless point against his old adversaries — or conceal his dependence on their text. 

What makes Dannie's botched effort so puzzling is that literate traditional priests have noticed how the English editor makes improvements from year to year to some of the boilerplate that has been around since the earliest days of the SLP enterprise. Anybody with an ounce of sense would have consulted a more recent copy. But we figure Dumbo Dan thought he had the right stuff to expand the abbreviations on his own (WRONG!).  So the pint-sized, foolish foul-up changed the abbreviations into the nominative case (LOL).  By that act of arrogant stupidity, His Inadequacy proved himself profoundly ignorant of both Latin and liturgical terminology.