Sympathetic readers taxed Diogenes with nit-picking when he exposed a simpleminded CMRI priest's ignorance of the meaning of pace. The reason is simple: the Roman Catholic Church, in the good old days, sweated the "small stuff." It is a characteristic of the Roman mind. Whether She was predicating the properties of both natures of the one Person Jesus Christ or precisely explaining the post-partum perpetual virginity of our Lady, the Church was a stickler for the minutest of details. Getting it right, down to the smallest point, used to be the hallmark of Catholic scholarship and liturgical praxis. Anyone who attended a pre-Vatican II Catholic university or seminary will attest to the high standards of accuracy demanded of both the professoriate and the students.
Therefore, in today's post we offer another small (but really immense) example of the unfitness of Mater Dei and its staff to train priests. This anecdote comes to us from Europe:
On the evening before a seminary candidate boarded his flight to Omaha, a European Catholic with first-hand knowledge of Mater Dei called to warn him about the seminary's severe deficiencies as a Catholic institution of learning. Among the caller's many specific complaints was: "They don't even know how to spell Philosophy!"
Notwithstanding the friendly caution, the young man flew to Omaha. A few days after his arrival, he received the workbook for his philosophy class. Inscribed on the title page, in dark, bold-face print, the new seminarian, to his great dismay, read this disgrace to American traditional Catholicism:
P H Y L O S O P H Y
Not only is the faculty beyond remediation, the Mater Dei word-processor's spell check must be permanently disabled. Mater Dei is disgraceful. Bp. Pivarunas must step down as rector, the faculty removed to country chapels, and the institution rebuilt afresh.
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