Perhaps because I have a headcold and everything seems a bit echoey, including my thought process, but for some reason, anyway: outside just now I was chanting in my mind, "Dominus vobiscum," and the response, "et cum spiritu tuo." And my thoughts wafted into the memory of how we used to as kids have fun saying pretend-Latin, using English words to make nonsense Latin chants, using words like "Domino Nabisco" and "Animal Cracker." And just now I was considering that the reason it is possible to do that is that Latin is a significant ancestor of our language, such a foundational aspect of what we say that our own language gives us the tools to make fun of it. As children of course we did so in innocence, simply for fun and knowing we were in some way ignorant of the truth and using our ignorance to jest about it.
Now as I write all this out, it occurs to me that we are doing the same thing as grown ups, not with language but with our culture, which came from the same source. In many ways the rhetoric and concepts we string together to mock and diminish the Roman Church are tools which she herself cultivated and gave to society. I don't have the brainwidth to take this further, but it is a thought that echoes in my head with the resonance of truth. "Hmnn, there's something in that. . ."
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