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A British cardinal seen as the Pope’s “enforcer” in cracking down on the use of the traditional Latin Mass in Catholic churches has said it is an “overly elaborate” form of worship, in a rare comment on the controversy. Cardinal Arthur Roche, 75, who was born in West Yorkshire, has been prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments since 2021, placing him in charge of policing the restrictions reintroduced by the Pope on the use of the Tridentine or traditional Latin Mass. He said that his critics may be surprised to learn that he...

When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we'd be discussing them three centuries later. Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have been translated, transcribed, discussed and debated at length. But according to a philosopher of language and mathematics, we might have been interpreting Newton's precise wording of his first law of motion slightly wrong all along. Virginia Tech philosopher Daniel Hoek wanted to "set the record straight" after discovering what he describes as a "clumsy...

The Chinese Foreign Ministry berated the administration of President Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in particular, on Friday for addressing the threat of Chinese regime influence during a tour to Central America and the Caribbean this week. Rubio made his first international travel after being sworn into the top diplomat position a visit to Panama, followed by stops in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. The growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in these countries was a prominent topic of discussion, particularly in Panama, where Chinese influence over the Panama Canal has become...

Common in the Middle Ages, palimpsests are works written on calf hide vellum pages, where the earlier ink has been scraped off and replaced with new writing. While some underlying text can occasionally be made out with the naked eye, technologies such as infrared bring to light words that were lost centuries ago...Iceland's connections to Scandinavia led to some of the most well-preserved information from the Viking Age, including an overview of Norway's royal lineage through the death of Magnus V Erlingsson in 1184. The islands's ancient poets, known as Skalds, were highly sought after across the Norse world. Norwegian...

==CHAPTERS==0:00 Introduction0:10 The space between words1:34 What is punctuation?2:04 The first punctuation2:54 Period/full (.) stop & comma (,)5:11 Colon (:) & semicolon (;)6:57 NordVPN7:55 Question mark (?)10:12 Exclamation mark/point (!)11:47 Quotation marks (")13:50 Brackets (())14:57 Dash (–) & hyphen (-)16:00 Apostrophe (')17:28 Ellipsis (...)18:40 MERCH!Where does punctuation come from?! | 18:55RobWords | 538K subscribers | 144,436 views | August 17, 2024

[Catholic Caucus] New Zealand: Transalpine Redemptorists Kicked OutBishop Michael Gielen of Christchurch, New Zealand, has forced the Transalpine Redemptorists, who celebrate the Mass in the Roman Rite (the TLM), to leave the diocese.The decree of 14 July also removes their priestly faculties within the diocese. It is effective immediately: "Any ministry [...] will be unauthorised and liturgical celebrations will be illicit - that is, outside the rules of the Church."There are wishy-washy accusations of "spiritual and psychological abuse" and "unauthorised" exorcisms against the Redemptorists.Former Bishop Robert McGuckin of Toowoomba, Australia, carried out an Apostolic Visitation in November 2023. Subsequently, the...

In this episode, we'll trace English back to its oldest known ancestor: an ancestor it shares with almost all of Europe's languages, as well as some Asian languages. That ancestor is called Proto-Indo-European.I also talk about the controversial Nostratic language family and ask whether there could really be a "Proto-Earth" language. What is Proto-Indo-European? | Tracing English as far back as possible20:45 | RobWords | 515K subscribers | 126,562 views | July 13, 2024

Poem penned by U.S. Founding Father discovered in English schoolBy Simon Caldwell Catholic News Service LONDON (CNS) -- A poem written by one of the U.S. Founding Fathers has been discovered in the archives of a Catholic high school in England. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, wrote the poem in Latin in 1754 when he was a student in his final year of high school in Saint-Omer, France. It was found in the archives of Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe, England, by Maurice Whitehead, a professor at the University of Wales, Swansea,...

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The Korean alphabet, hangul, is “the most scientific writing system.” One often hears that in South Korea, a society that has taken to heart Asia scholar Edwin O. Reischauer’s description of hangul as “perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country.” But whatever their scientific credentials, all the other writing systems in use (and indeed out of use) have fascinating qualities of their own, a range of which are explained in the UsefulCharts video above on the writing systems of the world — not just the alphabets of the world, mind you, but also the...

A huge mysterious medieval book, penned by a Benedictine monk on animal skin with bizarre devilish illustration and incantation. But who has the missing pages, and why? Codex Gigas – literally translated means “Giant Book”, photograph below, with a box of matches resting on it, gives an idea of the scale of the almost metre long text, it takes two people to lift it, which makes it the largest medieval manuscript in the world. The book can be found in the National library in Stockholm – it has 600 pages – all made from animal (donkey) skin, the front and...

On September 17, in 1180 A.D., poet, composer and nun Hildegard Von Bingen died. Hildegard created the word Viriditas to describe the intrinsic ability to heal of plants, people and God. The word derives from the Latin adjective viridis meaning green. I believe that Hildegard's profoundly poetic imagination would also have had in mind the Latin noun vir meaning man. My thoughts today on Hildegard's language lead me to think she thought of men as being green in a truly healing way. God Bless Hildegard Von Bingen.

A delegation of “progressive” Democrats led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) met with Colombian radical leftist President Gustavo Petro on Monday on the last leg of a tour of friendly socialist governments in Latin America. During the encounter, Petro proposed to build an “alliance for life and nature” with the group and a “change of the economic system” to overcome “climate change.” Colombia was the last stop on the Democrat delegation’s weeklong Latin American tour sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) think tank. The lawmakers also visited Brazil and Chile, where they held meetings with...

Thus always to traitors!

On the feared date of 3 April, no new Roman document with further restrictions on the traditional liturgy has appeared. However, according to our source in Rome, this in no way means that no corresponding regulations will be issued. Perhaps Francis' hospitalisation upset the original timetable, perhaps there were last-minute changes - but the document, already rumoured since January, is now apparently ready and its publication can be expected in a few days, weeks at best.

In the autumn of 2021, archaeologists of the Museum of Cultural History investigated a grave field by Tyrifjorden in Ringerike. In one of the graves, they discovered a stone with several runic inscriptions. Burnt bones and charcoal from the grave reveal that the runes were inscribed between the years 1 and 250 AD. This makes it the earliest known rune stone...Sometime between 1,800 and 2,000 years ago, someone stood near Tyrifjorden and carved runes into the 31x32 cm block of reddish-brown Ringerike sandstone. They spoke an early form of the ancient Nordic language that is the ancestor language of modern...

In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and runes lived side by side. A new doctoral thesis challenges the notion that runes represent more of an oral and less of a learned form of written language....Johan Bollaert, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies... has investigated written language used in public inscriptions in Norway from the 1100s to the 1500s. Last autumn, he defended his doctoral thesis "Visuality and Literacy in the Medieval Epigraphy of Norway."The assumption that runes represent a more oral tradition is based on the idea that runic inscriptions are contextually bound and are...

The recent rescriptum approved by Francis and the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Roche, continues to elicit reactions. The new document, which reinforces the Motu Proprio, Traditinis custodes, establishes that the use of a parish church or the erection of a personal parish for the celebration of the Eucharist according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 and the granting of licence to priests ordained after the publication of the Motu proprio Traditionis custodes to celebrate according to the Missale Romanum of 1962, will be the responsibility of Rome.

Who can dispense with the regulations of "Traditionis custodes"? Pope Francis makes it clear that only the liturgical dicastery can do so. With the new decree now published, the Vatican can reclaim many local special permissions for the Old Mass. Pope Francis has determined that the dispensational power for Mass celebrations in the pre-conciliar form rests with the Apostolic See. A decree of the Pope published on Tuesday states that only the Vatican can grant dispensations for such Mass celebrations in parish churches or for the establishment of corresponding personal parishes.

Argentina's euphoric World Cup celebrations descended into chaos yesterday as violence broke out on the streets of Buenos Aires between fans and riot police after their star players were forced to evacuate to safety by helicopter. Officers armed with shields and batons were pelted with missiles at the Obelisco monument in the country's capital hours after fans tried to jump into the bus during the victory parade to meet Lionel Messi and his teammates. The World Cup heroes were met with a heaving crowd of an estimated five million fans who blocked their path to the Obelisco, then had to...