A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE

“You’re enough to try the patience of an oyster!”

From Reader #5 (our refined Southwestern angling correspondent)

Would not a Carroll enthusiast, logically speaking, opine that this chapter comes out of order? Should it not, using strict Thomistic logic, have followed “The Pool of Tears”? Are some of us Readers so acutely affected such that it all comes different? By no means is there a contradiction of our principles of narration, but there was talk about the necessity of using a drôle line as the epigraph for my sole post. For today, we have snagged some ichthyological content, to wit, Fr. Cekada’s fishy translations. Indeed, his corrigenda are small fry compared with the other whoppers in Work of Human Hands, but his floundering is plus qu’il n’en faut to rouse the fury of this patient and very well educated lay angler. So, yes, let us hold our noses, put out our stink bate, and net some of the smaller spawn hatched in Fr. Cekada’s stagnant pool of misinformation.

Our first example shows Father’s irritating proclivity to over read and clumsily alter meaning and intention in an original. The defect may be fine for high-school term papers but is unacceptable in the world outside of mom-and-pop vanity-press imprints. On p. 67, we caught the following translation from In Novum Codicem Rubricarum:

…the text of the rubrics already edited down to a simpler and systematic form would certainly make many decisions of the Council Fathers much easier.

For would…make, the Latin text given in footnote 66 reads reddet, a future indicative, which must accordingly be translated will make. For many, the Latin has nonnullas (lit. ‘not no’), which means ‘some,’ ‘several,’ ‘a number of,’ ‘not a little,’ or ‘not a few’ but never ‘many.’ The adverb much is a completely unwarranted nuance absent from the original, for the Latin gives only the simple comparative adjective faciliores ‘easier’; had Braga meant to say “much easier,” he would have added multo (an instrumental ablative to indicate measure of difference). Accordingly, the line should have read

…the text of the rubrics already reduced to a simpler and systematic form will certainly make not a few decisions of the [Council] Fathers easier.

Yes, that’s how an author writing in 1960 would express himself about decisions then expected to take place starting two years later (Vatican II commenced on October 11, 1962). By the by, we’ve got no real quarrel with Father’s adding the word ‘Council,” which is not in the Latin original; we wish, however, that this “genteel scholar–theologian” had used some typographical device to indicate the editorial interpolation, as we so very elegantly did.

Notwithstanding all our tolerance, we do lose our piscary composure altogether when discernible ignorance of Latin abets mistranslation. On p. 113, Father renders eo (see footnote 36) as “by means of this,” when the adverb really means ‘therefore,’ ‘consequently,’ or ‘for that reason.’ The wrong translation impairs the argumentative coherence of the original and threatens to distort its meaning inasmuch as the reader might think the pronoun this has as its antecedent “grace and assistance” in the previous sentence. Bottom line: Save your patience and throw this indigestible, bottom-feeder of a book back into the fetid swamp.

Vigil of Ss. Peter and Paul

THE MOCK TURTLE'S STORY

“I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”

From Reader #4

Try as Anthony Cekada may to hoodwink the reading public, his ill written, inattentive, and error-laden samizdat misadventure will never, in the eyes of the knowing, resemble serious scholarship. The fellow plainly cannot follow the most elementary principles and practices of scholarly method and only troubles himself to appear learned. He’s probably playing the odds in hopes that educated, independent people won’t read Work of Human Hands anyway, so he didn’t waste his time asking his betters to help him do it right. Hitherto the Reader has distinguished between the appearance and the reality of Father’s "erudition,” so today we’ll examine how he flouts basic academic standards. Two blunders of citation on a single page (p. 166) should be enough to make the point—otherwise it might appear as though the Reader were beating an imaginary long-dead horse.

A fundamental canon of academic documentation teaches that a translation of a translation will not normally satisfy the demands of scholarly accuracy. In other words, if, for the sake of the learned reader’s reference, you supply in your notes the foreign-language source behind the translation given in the body of your text, you are obliged to supply the quoted passage in the original language in which the author wrote. However, in footnotes 22 and 23, Fr. Cekada provides not the Greek originals for Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, but the synoptic Latin translation from Migne’s Patrologia Græca. Although this sometime “seminary teacher” is Greek-less (and without sacred Semitic languages, to boot), he could easily have satisfied academic standards by printing with proper attribution an acceptable published English translation from the original Greek. But then, he might have appeared otherwise less erudite than he hoped others would imagine him to have been.

Let’s move on, however, from this amateur’s (and poseur’s) oversight to a far more serious breach of principled academic praxis. Since the purpose of citing the original language is to enable the educated consumer to judge the accuracy of the translation, the Reader—who incidentally has studied at the graduate level Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic as well as Latin and modern languages—accepted Anthony Cekada’s surely unintended invitation to scrutinize his text.

A comparison of the Latin in footnote 23 with the given translation assured the Reader that the English version was not very likely based on the Latin. The main reason for the morally certain conjecture is that the Latin translation reads ex qua ejecti sumus (“from which we have been cast out” or “driven out” or “banished”) while the Greek original has ἧς ἐκπεπτώκαμεν (“from which we have fallen”). Since the English translation in the text reads “from which we have fallen,” it isn’t rocket science to suppose the English version has the Greek original, not the Latin translation, behind it. Furthermore, given that Anthony Cekada is no Grecian and at best a barely mediocre Latinist, it’s easy to suspect that the translation was lifted from elsewhere.

What’s that? Did we hear some creatures lisp in a slurred, Southwestern twang, “Literary license from a ‘facile wit’”? Yes, we thought they’d say that, so we investigated. Here’s what Anthony Cekada printed:

our first homeland is in the East; I mean our sojourn in paradise from which we have fallen, for God planted a paradise in Eden towards the East.

And here’s the version that we found in The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes, translated by Hilda C. Graef (Ancient Christian Writers Series, no. 18. Mahwah: The Paulist Press, 1954):

our first homeland is in the East; I mean our sojourn in Paradise from which we have fallen, for God planted a paradise in Eden towards the East.*

The passages are identical except for one difference in capitalization and the italicization of the verse from Genesis 2.8.

Are these verbatim texts a mere coincidence? Do we again hear a member of Father’s mouth-breathing claque snarl a guttural protest that great minds think alike? Hogwash! (as Anthony Cekada might well write [p. 137]). At all events, “sojourn” isn’t the first meaning that comes readily to mind for the Latin habitatione (“residence”) or the Greek διαγωγῆς (“manner” or “way of life”). While sojourn is a particularly happy rendering in the context, its choice here is, we must say, inspired, i.e., the result of formal linguistic training and innate talent. (Sorry, Anthony.)

No, we all recognize a violation of academic writing guidelines when we see one. As Dr. Miguel Roig, an authority on research integrity, puts it, “An ethical writer ALWAYS acknowledges the contributions of others and the source of his/her ideas.”**Bottom line: Reject this slovenly imitation of the labors of the academy, otherwise you might appear to have been had.

Feast of St. William

*Editor’s Note: Every Doubting Thomas in cyberspace should see the Google Books preview (scroll to pp. 76-77 ):

http://books.google.com/books?id=txtYdIXpoJYC&pg=PA3&dq=Gregory+of+Nyssa+The+Lord's+Prayer&hl=en&ei=sMUgTI7OIdGQnwfCsJ1a&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

**http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/List%20of%20ethical%20writing%20guidelines.html

THE QUEEN'S CROQUET-GROUND

…they don’t seem to have any rules in particular: at least, if there are, nobody attends to them…

From the mild-mannered Reader-in-Chief

Pistrina Liturgica has now reached the two-thirds marker in its narrative of the Reader’s misadventures in the slang-encrusted, one-dimensional Blunderland known as Work of Human Hands. In this blog’s remaining chapters, the Reader will have neither the time nor the patience to bring to light all the flaws that Anthony Cekada’s miseducation has occasioned. Father's unlettered transliteration of προεστώς as proestoos (p. 121, note 74), his ignorance of liturgical terms of art (e.g., p. 209, the Indulgentiam is better called the absolution formula), and the reductive simplemindedness of his conclusions (v.g., “No more Amish crockery— the restoration has begun!”on p. 188) must be left without further remark.

As a body of writing, Work of Human Hands is covered over with a mass of malignant lesions, some basal, many necrotic—all fatal. Tomorrow’s post will be of signal interest to everyone, for it commences a three-part series to expose decisively this academic imposture. Reader #4 —exhibiting, we caution, a soupçon of ill-tempered “tone” — returns from academe with a detailed post affirming beyond a doubt that Work of Human Hands is fit but for the dust bin, not the library shelf. Anthony Cekada follows no rules at all: he roquets and peels by fits and starts. Bottom line: Tell everyone you know to read tomorrow’s post; they will be grateful, for it will spare them from making an unsavory purchase.

Nativity of St. John the Baptist

A MAD TEA-PARTY

The Hatter’s remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. “I don’t quite understand you,” she said, as politely as she could.

From Reader #2

How dreadfully toilsome, all this grammar and lex—i—co—graphy! And no pictures either! Why, I should have thought Papa had tumbled down the rabbit hole after me. Now it’s my turn: I shall talk about Anthony Cekada’s slang and his —(what’s the word?)—col…collo—qui…colloquialisms! Yes, that’s just the word. Exactly so. It’s like a book of riddles with no answers!

I don’t think people in other countries can understand all those queer words. And when the words aren’t savage, their pairings are. Oh, Blunderland is so confusing! The proper French will be contemptuous. And the dear Italians, well, I’m certain they simply feel sorry for such a mooncalf. But the precise Germans, dear me; they must be über cross. Fiddlesticks! Even the English can’t fathom such blather. Look at these horrors!

p. 30, fill in the blank; p. 31, mumbo-jumbo; p. 53, driver’s seat; p. 68, cherry on top; p. 73, spin; p. 75, icing on the cake; p. 78. barreled along; p. 85, consumer is king; p. 95, wildcat mistranslations; p. 100, conniptions, top it off; p. 104, backpedaling; p. 107, the verb short-circuits (an awful mixed metaphor, I think, with its subject The GI’s sleight of hand; couldn’t he afford to go to school?); p. 109, The old teaching has been flipped; p. 125, wannabee (shouldn’t it read wannabe if it’s supposed to mean ‘want to be’?); p. 136, major scramble; p. 137, Hogwash; pp. 138, 150 & 272, double-talk (Oh, heaven forbid that’s not American for double-entendre!); p. 145, The sop this passage threw; p. 161, sourpuss; p. 168, cooked up; p. 180, a dig at…piety; p. 182, vintage Vatican II; p. 215, yammering; p. 252, pulled off; p. 253, ditty; p. 256, conga line; p. 260, scrapped; p. 280, dredge up; p. 283, Show-and-Tell time; p. 310, put it under the knife; p. 325, dodgy; p. 353, fix the teddy bear’s wagon; p. 359, Father Chuck Moment; and p. 365, “Touchdown!”*

It’s so maddening to stop and puzzle out these words, for, in the end, Anthony never says anything clever. I suppose he prefers to talk only to Americans. The River Rat (though he’s very frightening and uses beastly words of his own) is much easier to understand. I suppose the River Rat might call Anthony’s book a…a…(let me say this precisely)…a her—me—neutic of in—com—pre—hen—sibility. Bottom line: Take some tea and comfortable advice and do not waste your time or your money on Work of Human Hands.

Feast of St. Paulinus of Nola

*Editor’s Note: Inasmuch as “Secunda,” as we fondly call Reader #2, is still wandering lost in Blunderland, she has not yet read Peregrine’s insightful observations about our merry-andrew author’s style and voice. Go to Cathinfo.com>>Traditional Catholic Faith>>Crisis in the Church>>Ode to Reality, p. 84.

PIG AND PEPPER

“Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s perfectly idiotic!”

From Reader #3

You can’t put lipstick on a pig, and that’s why I must take exception with Reader #1 for his intolerable tolerance of Anthony Cekada’s misspelling of Regensburg. In this day of instant verification via the Internet, there’s no excusing such a slip. (Psst! I suspect that Fr. Cekada thought Regensberg was right in the first place.) Although Father is a creature of limited gifts, his ego knows no bounds, so he’s ever quite sure of himself in spite of his handicaps. Many correspondents have told us that offering correction to Anthony Cekada is like trying to plow the sands of the sea. Accordingly, as a warning to consumers, here are just four of his boo-boos that a simple quick check could have prevented.

I. The transcriptional goof on page 38 belies all that Internet billing and cooing about the book’s being Ph.D.-level effort by a “theologian-scholar.” Fr. Cekada, perhaps following Bouyer, prints “Qehal Yaweh” instead of the scholarly q^ehal Yahweh. Since I don’t want to nitpick, I might adopt some of Reader #1’s forbearance and ignore the failure to represent the šĕwā’ by a superscripted e in the first word; however, aitch dropping in Yahweh is another matter. Without the additional consonant, removing the vowels would not produce the Tetragrammaton (YHWH, יהוה). In any case, Fr. Cekada’s “Yaweh” is just plain wrong in genteel scholarship (as well as in the more proletarian tradition he comes from). Just think: a little Googling could have saved him from the Reader’s woodshed.

II. On p. 88, toward the bottom of note 16, this poorly tutored priest assures us parenthetically that the Georgian language is “a Slavic dialect.” Saints preserve us! Georgian, an agglutinative language, is member of the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language family and has several dialects of its own. Slavic languages are fusional (inflective) and belong to the Indo-European family of languages. All he had to do was to consult the Wikipedia!

III. In spite of his note 1 on page 103, rubrica does not mean “red things,” as though it were a neuter plural adjective (from *rubrīcus, -a, -um) used as a substantive. In classical and ecclesiastical Latin, it is a singular noun, originally meaning ‘red ochre’ (the pigment). Later it came to signify a chapter heading in a book of law, painted red, from which developed the liturgical meaning. The word looks like an adjective because it used to agree with the appellative terra ‘earth,’ which was dropped several thousand years ago. We wouldn’t expect Fr. Cekada to know that, but we would expect him to go online if he doesn’t have a good etymological dictionary or Latin lexicon at hand.

IV. In his bibliography (p. 414) and throughout the book (e.g., under “Bibliographical Abbreviations” and p. 317), Fr. Cekada spells the alternate (i.e., German edition) title of Jungmann’s Mass of the Roman Rite as Missarum Solemnia (!) with one l. Just a closer look at the title page of the English translation, which he used, or a query on Google Books (or a search on the Verlag Nova & Vetera site) would have revealed the true spelling: Sollemnia. By the way, genuine scholars who didn’t have trouble with Latin know that the occasional spelling with one l is very far from correct. The right spelling always has two l's.

Bottom line: you wouldn’t buy a pig in a poke, so why would you buy Work of Human Hands after the Reader has shown you the nasty slop inside?

Feast of St. Juliana Falconieri

MORE ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR

“I’m very sorry you’ve been annoyed,” said Alice…

From All

We’re so pleased with our first comment (see June 17) that we’ve decided to respond to it in a separate post. Blogger Mark sadly queries (waxing literary with a reference to Hamlet), “My Lady thou dost protest too much or is it does?” (We fear he may have been trying to quote exactly.)

Well, our earlier post already answered his question, so we invite him to read it again for the answer. Here we merely advise that (1) in his sadness, he forgot the comma to set off words in direct address and (2) Shakespeare actually wrote, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” (III, ii, 230). Let’s hope the future brings us more literate adversaries.

ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR

“Not quite right, I’m afraid,” said Alice timidly: “some of the words have got altered.”

From Reader #3

Perhaps the best way to apprehend the crass carelessness of Work of Human Hands and the woeful thinness of Anthony Cekada’s learning is to examine closely a small sample of errors. The Reader’s random selection includes downright boneheaded howlers as well as mistakes that seem trivial at first blush but magnify themselves when considered against all the noisy, false claims of exacting scholarship. To err is indeed human, but the occurrence of so many mistakes corroborates the Reader’s contention that the book is not serious.

Caution: THE FOLLOWING exercise IS not INTENDED

for the grammatically faint of heart.

Let’s begin at the beginning, where (under the front matter “Other Abbreviations”) we find Tempus Pentecostis. Anthony Cekada prints the word as a Latin third declension genitive singular. However, in the Roman Missal and Breviary (and in real liturgical authors) the word is Pentecostes, a Greek genitive of the first declension. The blunder reveals a breathtaking ignorance of official Roman books and the Vulgate. The Reader wonders why the correct form could not stick in his head after so many years of saying Mass and reading the Office.

On the same page, we have another tell-tale boner. This time it’s not one of morphology but of usage. Against “Ember Days,” Anthony Cekada writes Quatuor Temporum (genitive plural) where he should have used the nominative plural Tempora, the correct Latin for a section header or an index entry (v.g., in the Missal and Breviary’s treatise De Anno et Ejus Partibus or in De Herdt’s index to his three-volume Sacræ Liturgiæ Praxis). The genitive Temporum is found in the Missal and Breviary, but that form commonly appears after the name of a day of the week (e.g., Feria IV Quatuor Temporum ‘on Ember Wednesday’). He really should have tried to stay awake in Latin class, or perhaps he should have read the Missal and Breviary with more attention.

It isn’t surprising if you’ve read the man, but Anthony Cekada’s ignorance of syntax and morphemes is so broad that it extends to English, too. In hazarding a literary translation of Psalm 42, on p. 204 he writes “Why art thou sad, o [sic] my soul? And why does thou disquiet me.” Every schoolboy knows that it should be dost. This isn’t a "printer’s error" since he produced the electronic text. This is Anthony Cekada’s bad ear for archaic English and his ignorance of morphemes. He has a similar mistake on p. 189, where his translation of the vesting prayer for the chasuble reads, “O Lord, who has said, ‘My yoke is sweet and My burden light,' grant that I may carry it as to merit Thy grace.” The archaic possessive adjective “Thy” would tell the literate man to use the archaic hast, the “Biblical” second person singular, since the prayer addresses the Lord directly (the Latin verb dixisti ‘you have said’ is second person singular). The third person singular has is an option neither in archaic nor in modern English.

Anthony Cekada is wrong from beginning to end. Bottom line: spare your pocketbook and your sensibilities. Take our advice and just say NO! when he asks you to buy his tattered wares.

Within the Octave

THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL

“But then,” thought Alice, … “but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!”

From Reader #1

It’s a pity that Anthony Cekada thinks scholarship a game any fool can play. Had he heeded his critics (who are legion), he would have remained content dazzling his few followers (who know no better). Then the readers’ circle would be reading something not so contemptible.

Since we’ve just arrived in Blunderland, we might as well let everyone experience a sampling of Fr. Cekada’s sloppy work from the outset. Over the next few posts, you’ll see for yourself why the Reader and the readers’ circle affirm that Work of Human Hands will never be considered a genuine contribution to learning. We warn you: the forthcoming litany of errors may be a bit tiresome. Nevertheless, it’s the quickest way for traditional Catholics—perhaps even Father’s most undiscriminating fans—to recognize that he’s selling a bill of goods at a pretty hefty price.

Sure, everyone makes mistakes. And it’s fair to say that books from professional publishers and sound authors often contain a number of blameless slips. “All men are liable to error,” mused John Locke, “and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.” Therefore, the Reader will not quibble over minor defects like the non-standard transcription Koiné on p. 86 (instead of Koinē or the old-fashioned Koinè or just plain Koine) or the misspelling Regensberg on p. 166 (instead of Regensburg). Besides, you’d have to be a real scholar to know how to transcribe Κοινή correctly. And spoken English doesn’t differentiate between the vowels in –berg and -burg, so if you can’t speak German and can’t remember that –berg means ‘mountain’ and –burg ‘castle,’ you get a pass.

No, the flaws the Reader will document are those that are not the little random mistakes that human flesh is heir to (nor may they ever be called the “volitional errors” of Joyce’s man of genius). To be sure, some examples may appear minor. However, minor errors are not necessarily insignificant errors. In fact, (and the whole readers’ circle agrees on this point) the multitude of Fr. Cekada’s small blunders is testimony to the absence of authentic scholarship in this pretentious book of limited utility. He never did learn his lessons. Bottom line: If you’re thinking of buying Work of Human Hands, you might want to hold off until we finish. Better yet, just avoid the goof-prone malice of Blunderland altogether. We’ll be giving you lots of reasons in future posts.

Feast of St. Anthony of Padua

STILL SPLASHING IN THE POOL OF TEARS

“…but, oh dear!” cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!”

From Reader # 2

Oh dear, indeed! We’ve been here nearly week, and no one has so much as even thrown a brickbat at us. We’ve told ever so many people where we are. How can they be so…so, let me see—ah, yes, I have it!—so indifferent!

What would our Author do? Hmmm? No! I shan’t enflame my irascible appetite. I have it! I’ll put on my puzzling cap and warm up my speculative intellect, and then let right reason be my guide. (Our Author most certainly won’t approve of that.) Now let me think.

Eureka! (Or is it heurēka? I’m sure it’s Greek to our Author, too, and I mustn’t ask him to pretend that he knows. I shall ask Reader #1. He can hardly wait to write next.) I daresay everybody is peevish because our Author gave out a pretty bookmarker, and we didn’t. That certainly wasn’t at all civil of us.

Well, I shall give them one. But what shall it say? I don’t want to ask the Hippo. I know! It shall be a bottom-line caution from the Horse! It shouldn’t at all do for nice people to waste their money just to have a bookmarker. Now that everyone has a bookmarker, will somebody say something rude?

Feast of St. Margaret

YOUR BOOKMARKER (click & print)

THE POOL OF TEARS

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). "Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!"

From Reader #4

Let’s make something clear now: Fr. Cekada’s Work of Human Hands is not a serious book and assuredly will not “find an enthusiastic audience among professional, academic philosophers” as one gushing (and self-referential?) comment reads on his blog. Just one example will illustrate.

On pp. 171-172, the author aptly quotes a passage from Spirit of the Liturgy, which substantiates Joseph Ratzinger’s debt to the unsound speculations of Teilhard de Chardin. The quotation itself is enough to make the author’s point, but Fr. Cekada then exceeds his limitations by hazarding an analysis. In a muddle of superficial observations, Father astounds the reader by asking sophomorically whether the quotation marks surrounding the word fullness in Ratzinger’s text were intended to distinguish the word “from just plain fullness.”

Now even a callow undergraduate recognizes the academic convention of enclosing in quotation marks technical terms possessing a special meaning. Just a few lines above we find “Noösphere,” so it doesn’t require too much effort to assume that “fullness” must also have a specialized sense in Teilhard. And indeed it does. Throughout the disgraced Jesuit’s works, it is a term of art, based on the New-Testament Greek word plērōma (cf. Col 1.19, John 1.16) and signifying something like "God and His completed world existing together."

Just like right-thinking Catholics everywhere, I find Teilhard’s “Christocentric evolutionary biophilosophy” as repugnant as Fr. Cekada does. The difference is that I know the real perils lying underneath all that vivid lyricism and clever word coining. In graduate school, I formally studied several of his more popular books, and I did so under the tutelage of a real Catholic theologian (that is to say, trained in a Roman institution, published in Latin, a contributor to refereed academic journals, recognized by peers with genuine credentials etc.). There I learned that Teilhard’s vocabulary and text do have a meaning too dangerous to be dismissed so fatuously.

The sad fact is that Teilhard’s —and now Ratzinger’s—language and style shape the privileged discourse of today not only in the Novus Ordo but in the secular academic world, too. Nobody, friendly, hostile or indifferent, will consider Fr. Cekada’s facetiousness a sober contribution to the discussion. Bottom line: this book makes the potboilers of Danielle Steele read like works of penetrating genius.

Within the Octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi

WELCOME DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE

...Alice...found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be posting the numerous failings of the book Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI. Reading this dreary volume is a penance if you're used to skilled writing. However, a group of us formed a readers' circle in order to mitigate the discomfort. Don't expect to find too much opinion or hard-hitting editorializing in our posts. We think simple reporting and straightforward commentary will be enough. If you want to join the circle, contact us at csmasztics@hushmail.com. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend, and save your money.

Feast of St. Leo II