Category: Feature

4

Journalists and Other Liars, Part I

Why do journalists lie?  I do not ask this question as a joke with a punchline waiting in the wings or even as an illustration of mankind’s general propensity to lie, cheat, and steal.  My question is intended to go to the heart of what journalism is, fundamentally: a “profession” in which men and women, without any particular skills or qualifications, spend their time at work making and repeating statements that they either know are untrue or, if they are so obtuse as not to know they are telling lies, they should be required to keep silent.

2

Why Four Gospels?

Why does the Church authorize four Gospels?  Of course there were many other versions, and some of them, surely, contained useful details.  And, on the other hand, if we could not be permitted to read a dozen, why not one comprehensive story, which would avoid confusion and discourage the sneers of skeptics who search the texts for discrepancies?

0

Ukraine War Endgame

The end of a war often is the nastiest part. Look at the Afghanistan fiasco just over two years ago. Or the helicopters lifting off from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, followed by the exodus of the Boat People…. Which is why the Ukraine War, as it enters its final phase, could get nasty.

19

The Latin of the Latin Mass IV

Latin is not a magic bullet that will kill the demons destroying Christendom.  But it is a fact that so long as the literate classes of Europe and North America were brought up learning Latin, writers knew how to write clearly and effectively, and even ordinary people who had studied 4 years of Latin were more open to logical argument, more interested in truth than educated people are today

15

The Latin of the Latin Mass, III: Clarity, Correctness, and Traditions

Then it should be obvious to all that clarity, one of the rhetoricians’ requirements for good prose, is particularly important in translations of Scriptures and liturgies.  Another primary requirement, correctness, is related to clarity, because languages with prescriptive rules are less ambiguous than languages where “I say potayto, you say potahto,” and where a majority of speakers do not know the difference between relative clauses introduced by which and those introduced by that.