On applications of Amoris Laetitia, and dubious reporting about said...

It increasingly seems to me that there are few more poisonous elements in the modern Catholic Church than the nest of vipers that is churchmilitant.com – there are reasons, after all, while Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput has said it and another site are ‘destructive’, tending to ‘sow division wherever they tread’. Indeed, Archbishop Chaput’s diocesan office is said the site is ‘not interested in presenting information in any useful way’, its ‘sole desire’ being ‘to create division, confusion, and conflict within the Church’. 

Philadelphia’s observation that Church Militant’s ‘reports are not to be taken seriously’ sprang to mind this afternoon as I’ve seen people linking to an article on the site, declaring that, ‘Following a diocesan synod, Bp. Robert McElroy has ordered priests in his diocese to post invitations in parish bulletins welcoming divorced and remarried Catholics to “utilize the internal forum of conscience” when it comes to receiving the Eucharist.’

Supporting this claim, the article linked to one of the parish bulletins in question, and indeed if you read down the article you will at least see the relevant passage, which, in summarising the diocesan synod, says:

‘The delegates spoke movingly to the need for the Church to reach out to divorced men and women at every moment of their journey, to support them spiritually and pastorally, to help them move through the annulment process, and to assist those who are divorced and remarried and cannot receive an annulment to utilize the internal forum of conscience in order to discern if God is calling them to return to the Eucharist.’

The bulletin, in other words, describes how delegates at the synod said they believed the Church should help people to see if they are called to return to Communion. Granted, you might think this imprudent for various reasons, but even so, if you're honest you'll admit that the reality is not quite the same as the headline description. And yet, if you didn't bother to click through, you might think that initial claim was a fair.

It’s funny how people get things so wrong when it comes to San Diego’s current bishop. 

Only the other week, Ross Douthat was talking in the New York Times about what he calls ‘the teaching document recently produced by San Diego’s bishop, the Francis-appointed, beloved-of-progressives Robert McElroy, following a diocesan synod convened to discuss the implementation of Amoris’. 

He then proceeds to quote from – as he had linked to – Embracing the Joy of Love, a document Dr McElroy issued in May of this year, just a month after Amoris Laetitia had come out, as he makes clear in the opening line, and most certainly not after the diocesan synod that took place at the end of October.

There’d be a lot less craziness in online Catholicism if people only took the time to read things properly.

Why quibble about 'Europe' while cherishing 'Britain'?

I know, I've been quiet lately, but Brexit debates and other matters are causing me to rethink my unremunerated silence.

Just after work, and before I pedal home, I want to write something about this annoying Spiked article in which Brendan O'Neill wheels out the Brexiteer whinge that it's oh-so-unfair that the BBC often refers to the EU as 'Europe'.

I think the BBC is right to refuse, but before considering why, I think it's worth noting that Brendan plays some tricky language games in this piece. When he bangs on about "the conflation of the Brussels-based oligarchy with the continent of Europe", he conflates the European Union with the European Commission, the latter simply being the Brussels-based civil service that proposes possible actions that only become laws if the national governments (or most of them, at any rate) vote for them.

I don't think there are that many people out there who would think it okay to say, as a matter of course, "the UK" or indeed "Britain" when what they really mean is "the Civil Service".

If there's dodgy conflation going on here, it's mainly on Brendan's part. I mean, really, what's he on about with lines like "the way Brussels can impose its writ on nation states"?

Does he mean "the way the European civil service, staffed by people from all over Europe and headed by people answerable to the European Parliament* and appointed by every single member state's government, can draft possible laws either when asked to do so by the governments or the European Parliament or do so off their own bat, send them to the national parliaments for feedback, and then submit them to the Parliament and the Council where the governments will scrutinise the proposals, haggle over them, and then vote so they become binding decisions which the national parliaments will then vote on so they can harmonise with their own national law codes"?

I think the process is a lot more representative and a lot less dictatorial than Brendan suggests.

In any case, like I said, I think the BBC is right, for at least three main reasons.

First,"Europe" has long been a colloquial term for the European project, whether speaking of the EEC, the EC, or the EU, such that it seems like a deliberate attempt to rig the game further by trying to change this now. There are no shortage of Brexiteers who've opposed the project since before the establishment of the EU, after all, whether at the time the UK signed up to the Treaty of Rome on the basis that the UK, with other countries and among other things, was "determined to establish the foundations of an ever closer union among the European peoples" and had "decided to ensure the economic and social progress of their countries by common action in eliminating the barriers which divide Europe", during the 1970s referendum of withdrawal from the Treaty of Rome, or at the time of the Single European Act in 1980s.

Second, proponents of UK withdrawal from the Union typically don't just want to withdraw from the EU. The European Court of Human Rights is constantly invoked as a shackle on British sovereignty, with the conflation of the Court with the EU being rationalised by the claim that you can't be in the EU without being subject to the court as a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights. Quite so, but neither can you be in the 47-country Council of Europe -- the flag of which the Union shares -- without accepting the Convention and the authority of the Court.

Third, it's a bit rich that people who insist that 'Europe' should never be used as a synonym for "European Union" are all too often quite comfortable saying "Britain" as though it's somehow synonymous with 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland', not least when they say "Brexit" when they mean "Ukexit". I'm not saying this is brazenly hypocritical, well, not necessarily, just that it seems at best indicative of muddy thinking, unless it's a recognition that Brexit might well precipitate the disintegration of the UK, as William Hague, the Scots nationalists, most Northern Irish parties, and others have all acknowledged.

It's probably worth adding that the oft-repeated line about how "Britain isn’t leaving the continent of Europe" is historically dodgy, leaving aside the Britain/UK issue. Europe is a cultural continent rather than a physical one, after all; really just Asia's western peninsula, its borders are a matter of changing convention rather than anything else. Norman Davies talks in Europe: A History of Europe being a tidal continent, such that it's eminently possible to imagine Britain leaving it. Certainly, I know people who would insist that Britain is not and never has been part of Europe, and while I think they're wrong, they testify to a possible reality.

As an example of this sort of thing, it's worth noting how Cambridge's David Abulafia, one of the 'Historians for Britain' crowd, talks of "a historical perspective on Britain’s relationship with Europe" and "a long history of British engagement with Europe" -- noting that Europe is a place with which Britain can have links, rather than a place where Britain is to be found.He talks of Britain "becoming European", which seems a claim that Britain has not been European in the past, perhaps because, he says, "the United Kingdom has always been a partner of Europe without being a full participant in it".

Granted, you might think that someone who says of national boundaries that "even Britain has contracted, with the departure of most of Ireland" hasn't really got a handle on what or where exactly Britain is, and might be better off not talking about this issue at all, but that's a debate for another day.


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* Yes, it is called that. The European Parliament. Not the EU Parliament. Do the Brexiteers think the BBC should start calling the European Parliament by a name they've made up? Presumably they likewise think the European Commission should be renamed the EU Commission, and the European Court of Justice be called the EU Court of Justice. And then, maybe, they'll suggest the BBC become the UKBC.

Not Quite Forgotten...

Years ago, I attended a talk entitled something like 'Tedius Scholasticus: Another Forgotten Classic'. As it ended, and we packed up to head off down the corridor to the obligatory wine reception, the lecturer next to me sighed, and remarked that that was a classical author he would have been quite happy to have left forgotten.

That said, there are real gems in the minor league of the Classical canon. While not everyone can be a Thucydides or a Lucretius, there are delights to be found in the lower rungs. Two of my favourites are Publilius Syrus and whatever wag or wags were responsible for To Philogelos.

To Philogelos or 'The Laughter Lover' is a bumper fun joke book from the fourth century AD, supposedly compiled by a comedy duo called Hierocles and Philagrius. The jokes, I'm afraid, aren't the funniest, but are worth a read for all that. Here are a few:

'An egghead got a slave pregnant. At the birth, his father suggested that the child be killed. The intellectual replied: "First murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine."'

'An Abderite wanted to hang himself, but the rope broke and he bumped his head. He went to the doctor and got some salve. After rubbing it on the wound he hanged himself again.'

'When a wag who was a shopkeeper found a policeman screwing his wife, he said: "I got something I wasn't bargaining for."'

'A Kymean constructed a huge threshing-floor and stationed his wife on the opposite end. He asked her if she could see him. When she replied that it was hard for her to see him, he snapped: "The time will come when I'll build a threshing-floor so big that I won't be able to see you and you won't be able to see me."'

'A rude astrologer cast a sick boy's horoscope. After promising the mother that the child had many years ahead of him, he demanded payment. When she said, "Come tomorrow and I'll pay you," he objected: "But what if the boy dies during the night and I lose my fee?"'

'A man, just back from a trip abroad, went to an incompetent fortune-teller. He asked about his family, and the fortune-teller replied: "Everyone is fine, especially your father." When the man objected that his father had been dead for ten years, the reply came: "You have no clue who your real father is."'

'While a drunkard was imbibing in a tavern, someone approached and told him: "Your wife is dead." Taking this in, he said to the bartender: "Time, sir, to mix a drink up from your dark stuff."'

'A young actor was loved by two women, one with bad breath and the other with reeking armpits. The first woman said: "Give me a kiss, master." And the second: "Give me a hug, master." But he declaimed: "Alas, what shall I do? I am torn betwixt two evils!"'

'A young man invited into his home frisky old women. He said to his servants: "Mix a drink for one, and have sex with the other, if she wants to." The women spoke up as one: "I'm not thirsty."'

'A misogynist was sick, at death's door. When his wife said to him, "If anything bad happens to you, I'll hang myself," he looked up at her and said: "Do me the favor while I'm still alive."'

Oh yes, there's far more where they came from. 255 more, to be precise, albeit with some duplication. Some aren't terrible.

Anyway, we used to be very fond of this collection back in my misspent youth. Not so much for the ancient jokes, of course, as for the endnotes. The edition of To Philogelos in our library had a prodigious quantity of endnotes, all detailing how various German academics speculated about why jokes were funny.

They tended to take the form of 'Moellendorf Willamowitz says that this is a pun on "salve", whereas Kromayer argues that this is a references to the sacking of the city by Philip II in 350 BC. Delbrueck thinks this is an allusion to Democritus, who was a famous citizen of Abdera.'

A German friend of mine -- who habitually borrowed this book to bring to the pub and show bemused friends -- was particularly besotted with the endnotes.

The great Publilius Syrus, on the other hand, is a very different kettle of fish: if the notes on To Philogelos filled us with joy, Publius Syrus filled us with wisdom.

Publilius was a Syrian who wrote Latin plays in the first century BC. His plays became famous for his maxims, such that the plays have all been lost but the maxims remain, with other similarly wise sayings being attributed to him. You can read all thousand or so statements in the Loeb volume Minor Latin Poets, Volume 1. 

Among the sort of things he says are:

'A suspicious mind always looks on the black side of things.'

'An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.'

'Count not him among your friends who will retail your privacies to the world.'

'In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.'

'It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.'

'Look to be treated by others as you have treated others.'

'It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.'

'Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.'

'There are some remedies worse than the disease.'

'Hares can gambol over the body of a dead lion.'

And so forth. Profound stuff, you'll surely agree. The kind of thing that folk should absorb before jumping to conclusions, thinking oneself into a circle, and then charging around casting aspersions on people.

Um. Anyway, we used to keep it on the handy shelf back in our postgrad days, thinking he'd be a handy man whenever there was a crisis.

'What should we do?'

'Let's find out what Publilius Syrus would say,' someone would say, reaching for the little red book, opening it and random and treating our ears with his mellodious Syrian wisdom.

Great days.

I'm tempted to start a Publius Syrus Twitter account. Just to help people, you understand. 

I'm Sorry, I'll Play That Again

So I rang the Kittybrewster this evening, all aflush with excitement.

'I've been dying to call you all day,' I declared, 'I learned a new word, and it's superb!'
Her delight was obvious, as is fitting for someone who so recently exhorted me to save the words*, and a broad grin was quite audible in her 'Oh yes?'
'It's "mondegreen",' I burst out, 'it means a misheard line in a song, like "Gladly, the Cross-eyed bear," or "there's a bathroom on the right". Apparently the word was accepted into the Merriam-Webster dictionary last year, and has been around since the fifties when someone misheard a line in a song about how someone killed Lord So-and-So and laid him on the green as a line that someone killed Lord So-and-So and Lady Mondegreen.'

She was suitably thrilled, and really, who can blame her?

Just for the record, it was 1954, and it was one Sylvia Wright who coined the term, after having misheard a line from the seventeenth century Scottish ballad 'The Bonnie Earl O' Murray', which should read:

'Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And laid him on the green.'

Yes, somehow it seems more poetic if the poor Earl had shared his terrible fate with Lady Mondegreen, whoever she was, but alas, no.

I'm sure we've all got our favourite ones. Sister the eldest used always to wonder why Macy Gray would sing 'I wear goggles when you're not here.' A friend at home used to sing along to the Beatles with the words 'pay per bike rider'. Me? Well, as a child I used to hear songs in a muddied form, being played by the Brother in the room below my bedroom, so is it any wonder that I used to think the Pogues sang a song called 'Dirty Old Man', or that I always thought Kate Bush opened Peter Gabriel's 'Games without Frontiers' with the words 'she's so popular.'

Yes, I know it's jeux san frontieres. I only learned that a few months ago. All my life I've misheard that. The Brother's still disgusted with me. Ah well.

*I like 'slimikin', and keep meaning to use it when chatting to a fair damosel or two with whom I occasionally witter. Look it up.

When does a joke become so multilayered as to stop being funny?

So, this evening I'm going to a hen party.

I know, there are at least two obvious things wrong with that sentence, being that I'm no hen and that today is Good Friday and hardly a party day, but even so.

I was invited a couple of months ago, by the sister of the bride, and I frowned and typed a hasty reply, asking in what universe I constituted a hen. In the bride's apparently, as I was on the list of people to invite. So off to my phone I went, there to dash off a text querying this certain error. Why had I been invited?

'Since you'd be entertaining,' came the reply, 'There'll be lots of single frauleins. I'll be upset that you're not here.'

Well, not wanting to upset one of my dearest friends and indeed my birthday buddy, and still determined to comply assiduously with all rules of fast and abstinence, I shall be heading out in a few minutes.

And I shall be doing so, I might add, while contemplating the timely comedy potential of the phrase 'the cock crew', which strikes me as a multilayered pun magnificently suited to a man at a hen party on Good Friday. 'Cock' as in male hen, rooster, even penis, and 'crew' as in noun meaning a gang or group and as the verb 'crow' in the past tense. It works in so many ways. Nobody else finds it funny, though.

Doctor M? Surely you?

Comma Comma Comma Comma Comma Chameleon

Unlike Vampire Weekend, I think the Oxford Comma is quite an important device. It's a rather important piece of my grammatical furniture, up there with the jewel that is the semi-colon, that prince of punctuation marks.

You're aware of the Oxford Comma? No? Well, sometimes referred to as 'the rhetorical comma' or 'the serial comma', it's the comma that falls before the final 'and' in lists. Often disregarded, I was long ago convinced of its rightness by Con Houlihan in a series of articles on good English he wrote for Ireland's long defunct Evening Press, once upon a time.

The Oxford Comma makes rhetorical, aesthetic, and logical sense. Okay, you can argue with me on the aesthetic point, but not the other two. Think about it. Do you say 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity' or 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity'? Do you say 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' or 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'? Do you say 'red, white, and blue' or 'red, white and blue'?

Listen to yourself. You pronounce that comma. And you know it makes sense. If you're going to drop one comma because you're too lazy to make a small mark on the page, well, why not drop the rest?

Language Hat has a fine little post today on the importance of the well-deployed comma. I'm going to quote it in full, though you'll need to go there to see the thriving comments thread.

'Over at the Log, Geoff Pullum provides an excellent example, from The Economist (April 4, p. 11), of why the "comma-heavy" style (with the "Oxford comma" before and and commas after introductory phrases) is preferable:

Traders and fund managers got huge rewards for speculating with other people's money, but when they failed the parent company, the client and ultimately the taxpayer had to pay the bill.

To me, that unambiguously means that when they failed the parent company (i.e., let it down), the client and the taxpayer had to pay the bill. Unfortunately, that's not what the author meant to say. When the intended meaning is pointed out, I can force myself to read the sentence that way, but it's a strain. As Geoff says, the sentence should be rewritten as follows:

Traders and fund managers got huge rewards for speculating with other people's money, but when they failed, the parent company, the client, and ultimately the taxpayer had to pay the bill.

Nobody could possibly misunderstand that.'

It's nice to learn from the original Language Log post the name of the other key grammatical point at issue here: 'the post-adjunct comma'. I shall annoy people with that too.

Someone should have a word with the Morketing People

I'm in Oxford for the next few days, attending a conference, seeing friends, and visiting my sister's clan for the first time since that marvellous August week in the dark summer of 2006., which began with me in the company of my brother and nephew watching Everton win, was followed by drinks and lots of tea with cousins galore, then a train to Oxford for family stuff and old friends, a hasty lunch with the Fairy Blogmother (ret.) in London, a wonderful evening and a very fond farewell in Brighton, and a convoluted return to the madness of Manchester, stopping for tea in Oxford with another old friend.

The conference has been excellent so far, and I've high hopes for the rest of it: it's rare you go to a conference with so many papers and want to attend them all.

This evening we dined at Pizza Express, a favourite haunt of the academic in whose memory the conference is being held.

I happen to like Pizza Express a lot, and have indeed eaten there twice this week, but I always think it's ill-named and that its Dublin monicker, Milano, is a far superior name, one that the chain could well adopt. Pizza Express is a ridiculous name for the chain for two reasons.

1. It's a tacky name for a place that's far from tacky. As chains go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer one, and yet it's saddled with a name that makes it sound as though it's squabbling for business with Domino's Pizza.

2. It's anything but express. Seriously, has anyone ever experienced service there at a speed that exceeded 'glacial'?

Watson, Other Ear!

So, last night was surely my quietest New Year's ever, but no harm there.

I'm not normally inclined towards to making of resolutions - it's been more than a decade since I've made one, after all. I think that, like promises, they're best not made, as that way they can't be broken. I don't break promises. I have a lot of failings, but that's not one of them; more than fourteen years having passed since I've broken a promise, I think my conscience is pretty clear on that front.

Still, for the craic, and with a view of giving this year some direction, though not starting for a week, as there are things to be done in the meantime, I reckon it's fair enough for me set out with a few New Year aspirations. Well, no, aspirations is a bit of weedy word. How about targets? Or missions? Anyway, here goes, in no particular order:

1. Finish That Which Must Not Be Named.

2. Learn to drive, with a view to getting my license by the summer.

3. Don't let the weather stop me from cycling.

4. Pray more, and try to go to the odd weekday mass again.

5. Return to Greece, visiting Marathon, Thermopylae, and Plataea, and watching the sun set from the Areopagus again.

6. Read The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Foucault's Pendulum, and the Jane Austen, Dashiel Hammett, James Branch Cabell, P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Dickens, and Fritz Leiber books that wonder why I continually negelect them.

7. Draw again, and complete a 24-Hour Comic.

8. Set foot on at least one new continent, and maybe climb a mountain, fire a rifle, or fly in a plane flown by a friend while I'm at it.

9. Finish the war, and win, at whatever cost, because - as already established -- I'm Batman.

10. Send one of my Christmas cards to everyone on my list.

11. Make a fresh start, and remember that the shortest way to Tara is via Holyhead.

12. Swim, though not as far as Holyhead.

Should be a doddle, eh? Realistically, though, I reckon if I manage even a few of them -- especially the first one! -- I'll have done pretty well.

Happy New Year.

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*In case you didn't already know.

Classical Jokes, no. 694

I suppose you know the real reason Hannibal took the elephants with him over the Alps? It was a long march from Spain to Italy, and of course he had huge logistics and supply problems. Elephants can carry an enormous amount on their backs, which meant that he didn't have to worry so much about maintaining a long and vulnerable supply line while in enemy territory. So his overall objective was - to maintain the elephant of supplies.

Yes, again, that's one of Doc Martin's. But I'm proliferating it, so I guess I'm just as bad. And when I tell it, I drag it out rather more, and refer to Livy, Polybius, and incidents with ravines and Alpine tribes. I like to have Hannibal losing the elephant of supplies. Hey, it could be worse. I could be telling you about Tom's limericks.

Actually, that's an idea...

In other news, and before I resume my duties, I can't believe it took me two months to notice that the BBC article headed Beauty of Swedish model disputed was about politics rather than a contentious heir to the throne of - say - Britt Ekland or Izabella Scorupco. But then, I've been busy.

Agincourt and the 'V' Sign

Asleep just before six this morning; awake just before eight. This is demented. I'm not sure how I'm still moving. I appear to have reserves of stamina I have hitherto been unaware of.

 

A bird in the hand...

While examining the insides of my eyelids in the hours when even burglars sleep, I found my thoughts drifting to what may seem a rather unusual topic: the obscene 'V'-sign, traditionally used in Britain and Ireland instead of the middle-finger jerk, more common throughout the Western World.

There's a common belief that the 'V' gesture derives from 1415, when French knights at Agincourt had threatened to cut the first two fingers from the right hand of every captured English archer; the French were defeated, and supposedly the victorious English jeered and displayed their unmutilated hands.

It's an amusing story, and one which I keep being heard repeated as fact. I don't believe it for a minute.

Poppycock!

In the first place, I've never seen any evidence cited for the tale, and I have looked for it. Agincourt is exceptionally well-recorded by medieval chroniclers, yet not one medieval account of the battle records such behaviour by the English archers.

Apparently Jean Froissart is the only medieval chronicler of the Hundred Years' War who mentions the English making insulting hand gestures to their French adversaries. I haven't been able to find the reference within his work, unfortunately, but since he appears to have died a decade or so before Agincourt, I think it can be safely assumed that he did not describe the English archers jeering at the French after the battle. For what it's worth, he doesn't even appear to have recorded such a detail with reference to the battles of Crecy or Poitiers, accounts of which are readily available online.

Even assuming that Froissart does indeed record English archers at some point jeering at French prisoners by displaying their unmutilated hands, this should not be taken as conclusive proof that such a thing actually happened. Firstly, Froissart was a talented writer but a poor historian, and much of what he wrote should be treated with a rather liberal handful of salt. Secondly, the cause of such behaviour was a supposed French threat that they would deprive every archer of the fingers he needed to string his bow; there is no evidence for such a threat ever having been made, and in truth it seems rather implausible.

Medieval warfare, while horrific, operated in accordance with generally accepted norms, and prisoners were very rarely killed; instead, they were captured and held for ransom. This practise helped to fund European warmaking throughout the Middle Ages. An archer without his fingers would have been militarily worthless, and not worth buying back. It seems unlikely that the French ever threatened the English as they are reputed to have done.

Origins?

But, let's assume that Froissart does refer, in however oblique a way, to English archers having brandished their fingers in a 'V'-sign towards captured French troops in the Hundred Years War. And let's assume that he's right. Does this mean that the modern 'V'-sign is derived from such an obscure event?

Not remotely.

There are no known illustrations of the 'V'-sign that predate 1913, when it appears in photographs. There also appear to be no literary references of the sign from before that date. There is no evidence to indicate any continuity in what may possibly have been a once-off jeering gesture in the Fourteenth Century and an obscene gesture which we have our first clear evidence for in the early Twentieth Century. Almost six centuries lie between the two pieces of evidence. To claim that there is a definite link would be ludicrous.

So where does the sign come from? Desmond Morris, in Peoplewatching, lists five possible origins, two of which look plausible.

One is that it is a modification of an insulting 'V'-sign once common in the Middle East, where the two forked fingers are jerked upwards against the gesturer's nose; this sign could easily have been adopted and corrupted by British troops who then brought it home.

Alternatively, it could be a looser version, possibly even an amplification, of an insulting gesture which existed in Britain before the Second World War. Back then, Britons would sometimes use a gesture almost identical to the middle-finger insult, but would reinforce that finger, effectively thickening it, by pressing the index finger against it. Over time, the fingers could have separated; if this is indeed what happened, the process had begun some time before 1913, which is the first case we know of the 'V'-sign being used.

There's no need to make up stupid national myths about this peculiarly British insult dating back to Agincourt.