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October 17, 2006
Fr. Foster and the Silliness of Modern Spoken Latin
Gosh am I tired of the cult of personality that surrounds Fr. Reginald Foster who has recently been let go from a job for failing to generate revenue - and have been since the first profile I read of him in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or wherever it was and I realized that he was a a classic example (pun entirely intended) of the dissenting Catholic bureaucrat.
This is a man who made his living (and let's not forget that someone let this American live in Rome all these years!) off our tithe money and enjoyed saying shocking things about what he believed.
So he said 'em in Latin. Cute. Let me ask any of his followers - how many of you actually find an opportunity to speak Latin regularly? Me, I read it. A lot. Some of you might do that, too. Me, I read and speak Italian as much as I can - once a week if I'm lucky. If I went to a bit more trouble I could watch the news all the time in Italian (RAI might help me retain linguistic competence, even if it made me dumber by doing so).
Repeat after me - spoken Latin in the 21st century is an indulgence. If Fr. Reggie really loved the poor as much as he loved Cicero he'd be feeding 'em full-time. I don't think there's much wrong with indulgence, but I recognize that the possibility for a man with Fr. Foster's university degrees to wear workman's clothes and sit in the gutter with the poor reflects as carefully crafted a persona as my tweed and service on civic committees. This article suggests that Fr. Foster starts with about 100 students a year. One of the comments in this link suggests that he had an attrition rate of about 50%. This is not someone who is going to change the state of a langauge.
Spoken languages have to be spoken constantly to be real. Go read about the reinvention of Hebrew* to see how it can and did work. Compare that to summer Latin experiences separated by 11 months of monoglottery and get back to us about how much you luv Latin.
We all have our hobbies. Mine is listening to murder mysteries on iPod while I walk the dog. Some people like to talk about rubrics they'll never live out without becoming bishops themselves. Some people spend their energy on an attempt to bring back spoken Latin. Let's not pretend these enterprises are much more than hobbies or hobby horses.
By the way, I have nothing against Fr. Foster - he's evidently an amazing teacher or he wouldn't have generated the cult of personality. But if it were all about spoken Latin for itself, Americans would have responded the same way to that other Carmelite promulgator of spoken Latin, Fr. Suitbert Seidl
*My favorite version of this shocking story is Herman Wouk's in This is my God.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 17, 2006 10:58 PM
Comments
I'm inclined to agree with you, Cranky. Fr. Foster has a set of devoted followers. Great! At the same time, I don't see why folks couldn't pay for instruction in some way. While it's charming to be a free spirit and give away your services (basically subsidized by someone else), it would make more sense to have arrived at an accommodation for "auditing fees" or whatever. My other recollection of Fr. Foster from various articles is that he is/was a ferocious opponent of the traditional rite and just about anything pre-Vatican II. Considering that, why would I want to learn to chat in Latin?
Posted by: Mary Jane at October 18, 2006 5:40 AM
Please, reread what you've written, Mr. Cranky. It's so embittered and petty! You do live up to your name. I pity you. I think you need a holiday.
Posted by: non-cranky at February 17, 2007 9:15 AM