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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doc_lydgate
2007-07-21 03:44 am UTC (link)

Well, somebody--can't remember who; might have been somebody of a Campbellian sort of persuasion--made the point that Latin in a mass functions not just as a random mystery meat language, but as a ritual language. S/he had a point: You have a whole tongue, one with a particular feel to it in your mouth, on reserve for the purpose of prayer, one you don't use to scream profanity at the fatherfucking bastard who just cut you off while passing illegally on the right.

Also, when setting Latin texts to music, you can get away with a lot more. "Cre-eee-eeee-eeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-do" over eight measures of Bach fioratura just doesn't sound as funny as "I be-lieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve!" You know what credo means, you know it immediately, without having to stop and consult your inner Latin-English dictionary, but it still doesn't hit your ears the same way as the equivalent you hear every day. You hear option A, and you expect something that makes no conversational sense. You hear option B, and you expect it to be followed by "I can fly."

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