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snarkivist ([info]snarkivist) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2007-07-18 20:20:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
What's Latin for "wank"?
I guess you could say that this is from the Jesus fandom. One of the two recent pieces of news out of the Vatican that pissed off most of the planet was that individual priests will be free to celebrate the Tridentine Mass whenever they damn well please. The Tridentine Mass is the Latin service used worldwide by all Catholics from the 16th century until about 1970. The structure of the service itself is different, not just what language it's celebrated in.

(Full disclosure: Yes, I am one of those whackjobs who attends this kind of Mass.)

Well, this has caused such global waves of wank in the press and on the Internets that the entire planet is red and sore by now. I have many examples, but my favorite so far has got to be this innocent-looking article from Indianapolis. All would have been well...if this paper didn't have forums attached to every article.

"A dead language for a dead god. How appropriate," one commenter said oh-so-cleverly. And...they're off! Catholics aren't Christians! Protestants don't understand history! Anyone who believes in God is a fucking moron! Pedophile priests!  FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!!!!11

I'd pick out highlights, but really...there's too much here.





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[info]grrliz
2007-07-19 01:32 am UTC (link)
Okay, so they can celebrate this mass whenever they want, but are there really that many Catholic priests who are that skilled in Latin these days that they'd actually be able to recite an entire mass in the language? I mean, they could memorize it start to finish, I suppose, but that strikes me as lacking a little bit of spiritual passion. o_O

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]delcj
2007-07-19 01:38 am UTC (link)
they could recite it from a missal. at home we have a missal with some parts in Latin, because my father was in Opus Dei. he brought me to a Christmas mass in Latin once when i was much younger.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]hearsawho
2007-07-19 01:40 am UTC (link)
So I guess an altar boy holding up cue cards in the back is right out, then?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]doomsday
2007-07-19 01:44 am UTC (link)
I think I love that idea.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]crickets
2007-07-19 02:31 am UTC (link)
Now that is how you do a fake HP spoiler icon. All the others I've seen have just ticked me off a bit. (Which I suspect was probably part of the intent.) Excellent!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]doomsday, 2007-07-19 02:40 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]crickets, 2007-07-19 03:01 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]littlest_lurker, 2007-07-19 07:33 am UTC

[info]grrliz
2007-07-19 02:17 am UTC (link)
I'd go to church more often if that's how it was.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]snarkivist
2007-07-19 02:53 am UTC (link)
We already have that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]hearsawho
2007-07-19 03:00 am UTC (link)
Yeah, but the poor elderly priests! "NEEDS BIGGER FONT PLZ."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]snarkivist, 2007-07-19 03:36 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]zaganthi, 2007-07-19 11:26 am UTC

[info]polygamouse
2007-07-19 01:41 am UTC (link)
A lot of the Catholic priests these days are the same Catholic priests from those days. There aren't a whole lot of new priests -- most parishes consider any priest under 50 to be young. And a decent number of these newish priests would have taken Latin in Seminary.

Which would be the equivalent of me giving a mass in my high school French. And that would be pretty funny, unless the mass has way more about shopping and school supplies in it than I remember. Come to think of it, that would also be funny.

"And Jesus said unto the apostles, "How much does this blue pen cost?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]vengeance_bean
2007-07-19 02:32 am UTC (link)
"That's too expensive. Blessed are the cheap pens, and those who sell them."

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]luthe
2007-07-19 03:08 am UTC (link)
Um, we are talking about Latin, right? Because from what I've gathered from my Classics major friends, the entire point of Latin is to learn how to describe sex acts in the most interesting way possible. Those Romans were *kinky*, man.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]omega
2007-07-19 08:13 am UTC (link)
Mmm, Catullus. Teach me more, old man, teach me more.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]mummimamma, 2007-07-19 08:35 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]omega, 2007-07-19 11:51 am UTC

pastri_archy
2007-07-19 05:51 pm UTC (link)
:D I have an idea, but how exactly kinky were the Romans.

They learned it from the Greeks, probably.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]doc_lydgate, 2007-07-21 03:29 am UTC
(no subject) - pastri_archy, 2007-07-21 04:33 am UTC

[info]sashenka
2007-07-19 02:59 am UTC (link)
Considering how important the language is to the bible, I would hope they all speak or know at least a little Latin. Yaweh knows, you've gotta speak Hebrew to be a Rabi (or actually to have a Bar/Bat Mitzfa and be considered an adult by the Jewish community, which I have not actually bothered to do myself >_>).

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkivist
2007-07-19 03:33 am UTC (link)
Yeah, it used to be required in Catholic schools and in seminaries (obviously) but not so much anymore. The Pope has said that he wants ordinary people to at least memorize some prayers in Latin.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]sashenka
2007-07-19 03:57 am UTC (link)
That's kind of understandable. I, at some point, knew the Lord's Prayer in Latin and I don't speak it and I'm Jewish, so it's not so much to expect a few short prayers, especially if they learn it phonetically, which a lot of secular choral singers have to do and which is why I had to.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]blue_penguin, 2007-07-19 04:14 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sashenka, 2007-07-19 04:21 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]blue_penguin, 2007-07-19 04:22 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sashenka, 2007-07-19 04:27 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]blue_penguin, 2007-07-19 04:28 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]bemysty, 2007-07-19 09:20 am UTC

[info]ladysorka
2007-07-19 05:19 pm UTC (link)
...the only thing I know in Latin is Adeste Fideles.

And I got that from my Mom, not from either the Catholic elementary school or the Catholic services that I went to when I actually still went to church.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]rosehiptea
2007-07-19 10:52 am UTC (link)
Actually, the way I understand it, you're an adult when you turn 13 (for a guy) or 12 (for a girl, in Orthodox circles, in others it's 13 for girls too) and that's it. You don't have to celebrate the passage to be an adult. I'm not 100% sure what other branches say about it but I'm sure that's the Orthodox point of view.

You do have to know Hebrew though, yeah.

Forgive the nitpick though, especially if I'm wrong according to other opinions.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]jat_sapphire
2007-07-19 04:42 am UTC (link)
Okay, so they can celebrate this mass whenever they want, but are there really that many Catholic priests who are that skilled in Latin these days...?

Fixed. And I'd say no, not really.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]snarkivist
2007-07-19 05:36 am UTC (link)
Win.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]eilan
2007-07-19 05:17 am UTC (link)
I can only speak for Germany, but to become a priest (or a Protestant pastor), you have to be very skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]mummimamma
2007-07-19 08:41 am UTC (link)
In Norway you don't have to know Latin anymore when you study theology, only Greek and Hebrew. And not particularly well either. I taught Koine Greek to seminarists a semester, and if I gave a text that wasn't from the Bible they were unable to translate it. After all whenever we read the Bible in Grek they knew the texts by heart, not actually having to know the Greek of whatever we read.
*sigh*

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]threegoldfish
2007-07-19 11:23 am UTC (link)
Oh man, I took Koine at my religious-based undergrad and we had the *exact* same problem with some of my fellow students. And then there would be arguments about how what the prof thought was the correct translation didn't exactly match the King James and I headdesked a lot.

I did really love that class though. Prof was like a absent minded professor archetype and totally hot. Wish I had discovered the classics department sooner. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]mummimamma, 2007-07-26 07:06 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]threegoldfish, 2007-07-26 07:11 pm UTC

[info]doc_lydgate
2007-07-21 03:34 am UTC (link)
I know!! Koine seems like a completely different language half the time, or at least a small scoop of the same vocab jammed through a completely different grammatical/syntactic system. Do you know the story of how that came to be?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]mummimamma, 2007-07-26 07:35 pm UTC

[info]suzycat
2007-07-31 11:31 am UTC (link)
they could memorize it start to finish, I suppose, but that strikes me as lacking a little bit of spiritual passion.

But that's what Catholics DO. Also, it is imperative that we recite all the prayers and responses with just the right amount of reverent boredom.

(Priests would just read it out of the book.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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