THE LOSS OF MAJESTY!
Way back in the early 1980’s my then bishop, now deceased, Bishop Lessard spoke at one of our clergy conferences. In a nice way, I thought back then, he lamented the loss of “majesty” of how some priests were living out their priesthood. Like so much majesty stripped from the “new” Mass, as we called it back then, so too had the priesthood and religious life stripped itself of majesty all in the name of relevancy and making our lives more accessible to the poor laity who needed our ordinary way of doing things, not a majestic way, at least perceived by clergy and religious in the late 60’s into the 70’s.
It seems that our 1970’s loving pope has now brought the papacy back to those grand ole days of leaving the trappings of majesty, not just in dress but in behavior, to be more pedestrian in order to make the papacy more relevant to a world that loves false egalitarianism.
I have written this before, many years ago, about the Italian side of Pope Francis. When he was first elected pope, I loved listening to his Italian because he speaks it as rank and file Italians speak it. It is pedestrian and Italians use a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor to make their points, but the humor can be harsh when one stops laughing at how something is said. Thus Pope Francis is what we more sophisticated Italians call a “vulgar” Italian, especially how he communicates in the Italian language.
I’m sorry that we have a pope and hierarchy that love to debase themselves in a public way. It is a loss of priestly majesty, but that’s where we are and all of us, even traditionalists, can fall into the trap of acting like everyone else in language and behavior, even sinful public behavior.
I am sorry too, that what Pope Francis said about seminarians and priests in seminaries and churches in Italy was stated in a crass, vulgar way by the pope. What Pope Francis said, while true, I presume, I don’t know at all as I haven’t seen any statistic on how many LGBTQF++++ ideologues there are in Italian seminaries and priesthood, who embrace a life of unchasteness as they feel they are above God’s laws when it comes to the Catholic Church’s teaching on what constitutes breaking the 6th Commandment and sinning against God in a sexual way.
Evidently Pope Francis knows and is alarmed by it and wants to clean things up in Italian seminaries. But as usual, trying to do something good, while using crass language that doesn’t promote moral and doctrinal clarity but debases it, he steps on a good message of ridding seminaries those seminarians and priests who want the LGBTQF+++ ideology shoved down the throat of the institutional Church and with no protection whatsoever!
By the way, may I recommend that the LGBTQF+++ ideologues redeem the word fag as they have redeemed the word queer? I’ve added the F to their never ending list of letters for them.
By the way, too, when I was a young teenager in the south, Augusta, Ga, the word fag, as the word queer, had multiple meanings, some not derogatory. Fag in the south could also refer to a cigarette! Now you know.
2 comments:
Fag meant a smoke, a faggot a bundle of sticks for a campfire or torch, gay meant happy, etc.
Although always bad in large cities amongst the poor, ever fluid trendy language really took hold in American youth through mass media in the 40s and 50s, and then went cultural in the 60s-70s, and here is a 1970 lament on the changes which made quite the rounds, and you might recall it.
Remember when hippie meant big in the hips
And a trip involved travel in cars, planes, and ships?
When pot was a vessel for cooking things in
And hooked was what grandmother’s rug might have been?
When square meant a 90-degree angle form
And cool was a temperature not quite warm?
When roll meant a bun and rock was a stone
And hang-up was something you did to the phone?
When fixed was a verb that meant mend or repair
And be-in meant simply existing somewhere?
When neat meant well-organized, tidy, and clean
And grass was ground cover, normally green?
When lights and not people were switched on and off
And the pill might have been what you took for your cough?
When camp was to quarter outdoors in a tent
And pop was what the weasel went?
When groovy meant furrowed with channels and hollows
And birds were winged creatures like robins and swallows?
When fuzz was a substance that’s fluffy like lint
And bread came from bakeries, not from the mint?
When jam was preserves that you spread on your bread
And crazy meant balmy – not right in the head?
When swinger was someone who swung in a swing
And pad was a soft sort of cushiony thing?
When far-out meant distant, way up in the blue
And making the scene was a rude thing to do?
When dig meant to shovel and spade in the dirt
And put-on is what you would do with a shirt?
Words once so sensible, sober, and serious
Are making the freak scene like psychodelirious.
It’s groovy, man, groovy, but English it’s not.
Methinks that our language is going to pot.
I don't know, the pope acting more majestically, as befits his office, might cause indignities and even embarrassments. Better to not, we're not in Baroque times anymore.
Nick
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