The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

1

The Wretched of the Earth

For many years whitebread Americans have struggled to find a place at the American table. Such outcasts of society do not even have a name they can call themselves without setting off a storm of reprisals. Euro-American? Not hardly. Whites? The very word might get you firebombed.

2

Wednesday’s Child: The Fretful Angler

Contemplative inaction, as the gentle reader may be reminded by the calls to patience back in the days when he was a boisterous child, is of the essence. But then, when at last the fish takes the bait, it’s dexterous action that is of the essence, with the angler jerking his rod at just the right moment to set the hook and eventually landing the catch in the hand net.

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

8

Wednesday’s Child: Algorithms

The big reason I welcome colder weather is that after the inescapable shorts and sleeveless shirts of Sicilian summer I can wear jackets and suits again. But not only because a jacket lends respectability – my vaguely professorial look has on occasion helped me get credit from merchants and of course I would never go see the bank manager dressed for a budget excursion – but also because a gentleman’s jacket is like a lady’s handbag. It safeguards the algorithms.

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.