Category: Latin
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Abusus non tollit usum
The abuse of a thing is no argument against its proper use. For example, the occasional abuse of State power by its agents is entirely consistent with the State's moral legitimacy. You say you don't like the roundup of illegal aliens and their incarceration in detention centers such as the one in the heart of…
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No Exit
Vita mutatur non tollitur.
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Do I Repeat Myself?
Repetitio est mater studiorum.
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Soul Survivalism
Vita mutatur non tollitur.
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Vincit qui se vincit
"He conquers who conquers himself." Or as a cognate aphorism of mine has it: Self-mastery is the highest mastery. Self-mastery requires the mastery of both desire and aversion, not unto their extirpation as in Pali Buddhism, but sufficiently to render ordinate what is inordinate. The problem is not desire as such, but inordinate desire. Similarly…
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A Classicist Misanthrope Opens a Bar . . .
. . . and names it: Margaritas Ante Porcos.
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An Argument for the Preservation of the Latin Rite
Étienne Gilson, writing in 1962: Latin is the language of the Church. The sorry degradation of the liturgical texts by their translation into a gradually deteriorating vernacular emphasizes the need for the preservation of a sacred language whose very immutability protects them from the decay of taste. (The Philosopher and Theology, Cluny Media, 2020, p.…
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USA 2024
Manebant vestigia morientis libertatis: there still remained traces of dying liberty (Tacitus). Liberty on the wane, yet traces remain. Traces enough for a foothold forward. Time to join the fight, Fight, FIGHT. Which side are you on? Trump-Vance 2024. Long live the republic!
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Melum ut in pluribus
I am having trouble understanding the above Latin expression. I encountered it in Theodor Haecker, Kierkegaard the Cripple (tr. C. Van O. Bruyn, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950) in the passage: Not only for Augustine, but also for that Christian whose teaching is most perfectly harmonious, Thomas Aquinas, the evil in the world was always…
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Novus Ordo?
Giving a Latin name to the destruction of the ancient Latin rite smacks of mockery.
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On Settling: Political and Marital
In politics, as in marriage, at some point you have to settle on the best available candidate, not the best. Politics is about better and worse, not about perfect and imperfect. Qui habet aures audiendi audiat. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
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Too Old to Lead
Bede, History of the Abbots, 16 (on Abbot Ceolfrith; tr. Christopher Grocock): Now he saw that, being old and full of days, he could no longer prove to be an appropriate model of spiritual exercise for those under him either by teaching or by example because he was so aged and infirm. He thought over the…
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Ultra posse nemo obligatur
Ought implies can. Not first with Kant!
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On Strictu Dictu and Holus Bolus
Dubious Latin questioned over at Substack.
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If you need an app to pray . . .
. . . I will say a prayer for you. You don't even need the 'closet' referred to at Matt 6:6: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee…