Posted on 04/04/2016 8:04:19 PM PDT by ebb tide
Oh dear. Wrong again. I had a wager with myself that Libidinis gaudium would be the title of our Holy Father's imminent bombshell. Instead ... Amoris laetitia ... he does so let one down ...
According to Lewis & Short, a highly useful dictionary for lucky pupils learning the delights of Latin Prose and Verse Composition and for their instructors, Gaudium and Laetitia do differ in meaning. The former suggests the internal Joy one feels; the latter, a Joy which expresses itself externally. So the Sovereign Pontiff's first magis quam magnum opus, entitled Evangelii gaudium, implied that the Gospel makes one feel all jolly inside, while next Friday's opus etiam maius suggests that Sexual Love is manifested externally.
So ... according to these texts, we keep the Joy of the Gospel bottled up inside us, while rushing over to the extrovert side of our personalities for the Joy of Sex (wasn't there some much celebrated booklet with that title back in the seventies? Controversial, I seem to recall, because it included diagrams?). What an interesting distinction. The nuances of Christian anthropology gradually open out before us, like daisies in the dewfall.
Apart from these highly suggestive initial words, leaks of the text are in short supply. If you're interested, I can leak to you the reason for this. Translators, printers, and journalists have been taken, batch after batch, down into the dungeons beneath the Sant'Angelo ... probably the same dungeons where Pope Urban VI, enlightened Pontiff, had some of his Cardinals tortured to death ... and have been encouraged to look through the peep-holes into the cells where the defendants in the Vatileaks trial are being held 'languishing' (as journalists would put it) in irons and dreadful conditions (please forgive the zeugma). The penalties for leaking Pontifical Secrets are then explained to them. Robert Mickens, formerly of the Tablet, was given a specially extended tour which incorporated the unlit lower levels of the prison where the local Biodiversitas (cfr Laudato si) breeds in tenebris et laetitia (please forgive the zeugma). He no longer makes jokes about the Rats.
Personally, I just can't wait to read it. I would be most aw'fly grateful if some kind reader could keep watch and let me know when the official Latin text is 'released'.
April 8 is the release date.
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