Thursday, November 20, 2008

Review of a review, with a message to dhux

David Allen White, professor of English at the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has reviewed a work by Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods Jr. That work is called: The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church - and the review is on pp. 60 et seqq. of The Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture: Vol. 11, No. 4: Fall 2002. I am doing this review specially for my opponent dhux on yahooboards. It is in three quotes with my comments.

"When James Joyce announced to a friend that he had lost his faith and was leaving the Church that friend inquired if the young man was going to become a Protestant. Joyce responded that he had lost his faith, not his mind; he was leaving a Church that made perfect and coherent sense; he was not about to then join one that made no sense at all. One sign of the protestantization of the modern Church is that it all too often makes no sense."

- First time anything Joyce said makes sense to me. And good point.

"Who knew that the Holy Father stated on January 1, 1989, that the Church's teaching that Christ descended into hell only meant that Christ's Body experienced death and was placed in the tomb, while in Heaven his soul was glorified?"

- Why call him "Holy Father" then, since he is obviously no more a Catholic? Unless of course he has repented.

The plowman sayd unto the preste
Syr I beleue in Jhesu Cryste
Which suffred deth and harrowed hell
As I have herde myn elders tell.

The harrowing of hell is of course the correct meaning of "descendit ad inferos". Infidels they who do not believe it.

"I do believe the authors a bit optimistic in their hope that the recent accord with the Society of St. John Vianney priests in Campos, Brazil, may prove to be a model of how tradition may be restored. Having done such an excellent job of recording the problems faced by the Fraternity of St. Peter, the authors may be touched with a hint of the pollyanna-ish here."

- Plz, dhux, prove you ARE a literary scholar and inform a foreigner less read in English letters:

  • - a) what "a hint of the pollyanna-ish" means;
  • - b) who Polly Anna was; and
  • - c) in what book by what author.

If you do, I for one will believe in your grades. You have already proven some more than common linguistic knowledge by not contradicting me a second time on the supposedly evolutionary origin of French and English as literary languages!

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