The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): February 2010

February 19, 2010

News From The World of Saints

If you take the set of all Australians and put the criminals and Irishmen over here, the remainder over there is your first Australian saint, Mary McKillop ("Mother" to her confederates).

It's noted in the news that during the course of a lifetime of good behavior Mother Mary of the Cross ("Mama Marie Delacroix" as the francophone would have it) was excommunicated briefly by a bishop for insubordination. I wasn't aware that the power of excommunication had devolved to mere bishops. I always thought only the pope or his designated staff could strike people officially from the rolls of the organization, but that may be due to my admittedly insufficient attention to what I'm sure are the condign rulings of the Church on the matter. Perhaps any altar boy has the authority when going about his appointed rounds.

I remember the story of the ex-seminarian who pressed the Vatican for an official certificate of excommunication, which he recieved in due course from whatever tribunal handles those matters back there on the home acres of the Roman Catholic Church, although not without a measure of bother on his part. It turns out that perhaps all along he could have just chosen one of the local platoon of bishops in the San Francisco Bay Area to get the job done with authority. Even those who've sidled away from the Church without engaging in the formalities observed by the ex-seminarian will appreciate, however, the coolness factor of having a writ directly from the pope's own penmen recognizing the sundered tie.

In the case of Mary McKillop the bishop apparently retracted his act of excommunication shortly after he issued it, retroactively nullifying its effect. Thus, after three days or so, Mary McKillip rose from those listed as dead to the Church, it being revealed to all that she had only seemed to be gone during that time, when in fact she had been present continuously in substance and spirit within the folds of Holy Mother the Church the whole while.

February 17, 2010

Pitchers and Catchers Report Today!

February 16, 2010

Pinnipeds Spending More Time With Their Families, Study Shows

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For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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The ideas expressed here, and the words used to express them here, are the ideas and words of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), which is to say "peter ramus," which is to say, me. Naturally, given their ultimate source, the ideas are half-formed at times, provisional always, and subject on mature reflection to substantial revision and, often enough, to outright repudiation by the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), by "peter ramus," and by me.

The words themselves, however, in the precise carnival train order in which they appear, and such original images which may from time to time be displayed here, excepting of course for those attributed materials the provenance of which, as duly noted, originate elsewhere, are owned by and are the property of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," or me, and are subject to the terms of Creative Commons License 2.5 , by which license (in the unlikely event that such words and original images appearing here are taken up and displayed elsewhere) clear attribution must be attached to those words or images indicating their ownership, to wit: the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," but not me.