tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post5593611355531298489..comments2023-10-29T06:41:23.910-07:00Comments on Halfway There: Speaking truth to priesthoodZenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-79478967727787263242008-12-31T18:00:00.000-08:002008-12-31T18:00:00.000-08:00Thanks for the kind words, Anonymous. I always enj...Thanks for the kind words, Anonymous. I always enjoy reading what comments others have to share, but I especially like the nice ones.<BR/><BR/>Some academic rules are enforced to the point of absurdity, like my friend who was admitted to a college English program with advanced placement and whose graduation was later held up because he had not taken Introductory English Comp (although the English department had specifically waived it when he signed up).<BR/><BR/>That leads up to an important truth that I learned thirty years ago in grad school: you can petition for <I>anything</I>. Sure, they might turn you down, but the academic bureaucracy seems to have a form for every imaginable (and unimaginable) contingency. The trick is to get the right signatures on it. Get the signatures and all is well, no matter what you're asking for. My English major friend got the chair of the English department to admit there was a graduation petition codicil that he could sign that would waive (or waive <I>again</I>, in this case) any specific graduation requirement. With the signatures of the chair and academic advisor, the petition was hand-carried by the petitioner to the admin building where some bored functionary time-stamped it and my friend graduated.<BR/><BR/>Bizarre.Zenohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-86015376712628136102008-12-31T17:44:00.000-08:002008-12-31T17:44:00.000-08:00I guess I was less "honest" than Zeno. I would pre...I guess I was less "honest" than Zeno. I would prefer the rosary, as I could rather easily fake it, while the Latin mass was torture for me. <BR/><BR/>As it turns out, going to Jesuit high school, Latin is the only foreign lanuage I studied - 4 years in high school. I guess that mass was not so bad after all.<BR/><BR/>BTW - I am new to reading this blog, I do enjoy in some manner your student stories as I see some of myself in each of the poor souls you describe. Although, I had the advantage or disadvantage of seemingly being smart enough to get by anyway - I did second semester Physics at U of Wisconsin and never made any classes, labs, or TA sessions and passed with a C based soley on acing the exams. The class conflicted with other classes and work $$ both necessary for my continued enrollment. But at that time I was a 3rd year electrical engineering student who needed the physics because of credit mismatch from Vermont to Wisconsin so I hated re-taking the class so to speak.<BR/><BR/>Ah we poor students are so persecuted by these acedemic rules that are so inflexible.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, keep it up. I love the stories. Makes me feel a bit better about my own adventures.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-57933468554397712702008-12-31T08:22:00.000-08:002008-12-31T08:22:00.000-08:00I don't know much about Catholicism, but I had tho...I don't know much about Catholicism, but I had thought 10-bead rosaries were taken into battle by German Catholic soldiers in WWI, as well as by German Catholics during the 19th century.llewellyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16001213921499191213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-48080955189936263942008-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:002008-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:00My brother-in-law did something similar, Karen, in...My brother-in-law did something similar, Karen, in attending Sunday mass regularly with my sister for 25 years just because he thought it was something the family should do as a group. He therefore had much better church attendance than most Catholics during that first quarter-century of their marriage. Then he finally converted, so his attendance doesn't impress me quite as much as it did before it became a solemn obligation instead of just a devotion to his spouse.Zenohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-9808318821314449012008-12-30T12:50:00.000-08:002008-12-30T12:50:00.000-08:00My parents lived in a neighborhood with a lot of r...My parents lived in a neighborhood with a lot of retirees, and quite a few Catholics. In the late '90s, they started up a Rosary group, where they all gathered in someone's home once a week for coffee, cookies, and praying the Rosary.<BR/><BR/>What amazed me was not that my mother attended -- she was a big Rosary fan -- but that my father, not Catholic, went along too. Prayed along with the rest of them, apparently. That's one of the biggest demonstrations of devotion to one's spouse I've ever seen.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-8010318895758786412008-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:002008-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:00Yes, I was an altar boy, but memorizing the Latin ...Yes, I was an <A HREF="http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-in-heaven.html" REL="nofollow">altar boy</A>, but memorizing the Latin mass was no sweat. I was already bilingual by the time I was recruited into the ranks of lace-clad boys, so what was one language more? The mass also had quite a bit of variety to it and was more fundamental to the faith that I still accepted in those days, while the rosary was just boring, boring, boring (and I knew it was really intended for shriveled up little old ladies from the Old Country, who were never without their clicking beads).Zenohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-19006565926872818962008-12-30T08:36:00.000-08:002008-12-30T08:36:00.000-08:00Okay, so were you an altar boy. Did you have to me...Okay, so were you an altar boy. Did you have to memorize the Latin mass? That was true torture.<BR/><BR/>There were a few goods that came from being an altar boy. One I guess I was lucky to miss the "bad" priests. Then there was the incense burner for the stations of the cross (among a few other uses) ceremony. I have no idea, but a friend and I both found that hysterical (irrationally so of course) but none the less hysterical. Needless to say we were not asked to do the stations ceremony very often after the first time that we smirked our way around the church with a highly irked priest.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com