[Apologetics] The Catholic Origin to Just About Everything

[Art Kelly]

I Believe in Ghosts
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
AT
http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker62.html

Someone said to me the other day, "that song sounds
like a dirge!" I immediately thought: hmm, "dirge,"
from the opening antiphon for the first nocturne for
the Office of the Dead for the hour of Matins:
"Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo mean,"
which means "Direct, Oh Lord, my God, my way in thy
sight."

Then someone gave me a rosemary plant in the shape of
a tree, and I thought: hmm, rosemary, named for the
plant on which Mary was said to have placed the
garments of Jesus to dry after washing them; God then
conferred on the plant a special aroma, and thus it
was called "Mary’s rose" or rosemary.

And that tree shape: hmm, originating from Medieval
liturgical dramas staged in church that featured
scenes from the Garden of Eden, featuring Adam, Eve,
and the tree—all to celebrate the coming of the new
Adam (Jesus) and the new Eve (Mary) at Christmas.
These plays were suppressed, and so the trees were
brought into the home.

Then I observed someone using careful table manners
and recalled that American manners were so influenced
by George Washington’s own fastidious ways, which were
picked up from the 1595 maxims written by French
Jesuits: Decency of Conversation among Men. It
circulated widely.

Now, anyone who would voice these observations would
either be considered the most erudite person in the
crowd or a huge pain in the neck. But after reading
Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday by Michael Foley,
there is nothing you can do to suppress such thoughts.
The feeling becomes overwhelming that you are
surrounded by the ghosts of monks, nuns, priests,
bishops, and popes from all ages.

In two hundred pages, Foley (who teaches at Baylor
University) covers the Catholic origins of everyday
objects, words, practices, and institutions in our
life, in entertainment, manners, food, music, sports,
flowers, science, technology, law, and language. The
title of the book is slightly misleading, since the
purpose is not to explain Catholic practices but
rather to show how we all practice Catholicism without
really knowing it.

We can quickly note the Catholic origins of the names
of certain cities: Los Angeles (Our Lady, Queen of
Angels), San Antonio (discovered on the Feast of St.
Anthony of Padua), and San Francisco (St. Francis),
but the town of Boston founded by the Puritans? Well,
it turns out that Boston is named for St. Botolph, a
Benedictine saint who founded the Ikanhoe monastery in
654, and after whom many English churches and town
centers were named, as in Botolphstown, later
Botolphson, and then Botoston, and finally Boston.

Not even the Puritans could fully escape their papist
history!

Apparently no one can.

The judge’s black gown derives from the clerical
cassock worn when the clergy studied and practiced
law. To be "born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth"
is a reference to the apostle spoon given by
godparents to newly baptized children. When we say
there is "not one iota" of difference between this and
that, we are recalling the debate at the Council of
Nicea in 325 as to whether Christ was the selfsame
substand as God (homoousious) or distinct substance
(homoiousios), where the difference between orthodoxy
and heresy was only one letter (i) or iota.

Do you see how this book can make you crazy? It sounds
slightly nuts at first, almost like the author is
obsessed with a single idea and can’t get it out of
his head and teaches it relentlessly to students who
can only roll their eyes.

I mean, how can the idea of autobiography be secretly
Catholic? Surely not.

And yet: the prototype for the Western autobiography
is St. Augustine’s amazing work Confessions, which is
addressed to God and tells of his painful path from
sinner to saint. Later the autobiographical genre was
subverted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who loathed
Catholicism and wrote a narcissistic revelation by the
same name that removed God completely from the
picture. When I first read the author’s point, I
thought: now that’s a stretch. But over time, the
point has sunk in.

Here is one you won’t believe. Bowling has Christian
origins in the form of a religious ceremony held in
the cloister of a church. In the 3rd and 4th
centuries, peasants placed the clubs they carried for
protection, called kegel in German, at the end of a
lane. The clubs were said to represent heathen and
were toppled. The clubs later became pins. Don’t
believe it? Then explain why a bowler is sometimes
called a kegler.

Do you knock on wood? The wood is the wood of the
Cross. Three times? It’s for the Trinity. The purpose
is to invoke the blessing of God on what one wishes to
be the case. Do you cross for fingers? It dates from
the 2nd century. You are hoping that the glory of the
cross of Calvary will cancel out the evil of the lie.
Do you worry about Friday the 13th? Friday is the day
Christ died, and 13 joins the number of Christ and his
apostles, one of whom was the traitor Judas Iscariot.

Do you see how this crazy obsession of this professor
is not so crazy after all, or, rather, how he works to
draw you into his obsessive world, and manages it
rather successfully? Of the sheer detail and expanse
of the volume, you can only say "Holy Smoke!" which of
course refers to the smoke that emanates from St.
Peter’s after the Pope is chosen.

Maybe you would be better off not reading this book
but rather watching something thoroughly non-Catholic
like watching television, except that television
stemmed from a technological breakthrough in 1862 by
Abbe Castelli, an Italian priest working in France.

Most of what you discover in this pithy volume you
won’t find out in college, even though colleges
themselves are Catholic in origin, as is the cap and
gown, which were both developed from medieval Catholic
prototypes (the same goes for the academic hood, which
derives from the cowls of the Middle Ages).

And there are the anti-Catholic bits here too. Hocus
Pocus is a reference to the words of institution at
the consecration of the blood ("Hoc est enim corpus
meum"). A Dunce cap is worn to reflect agreement with
the early modern attack on the work of Blessed John
Duns Scotus of the 14th century.

Remember the invisible ink you used when you were a
kid? You would write and not see it until you held it
up to the light or covered it with a special liquid.
This book is that light, that liquid, that brings into
sharp relief what was there and yet could not see.
These are the ghosts that surround us on all sides,
and they are here to stay and dwell among us so long
as we are civilized.

As to the origin of the idea of ghosts, well, just get
the book and turn to page 16.

December 15, 2005

Jeffrey Tucker [send him mail] is editorial vice
president of www.Mises.org.



ART KELLY, ATM-S
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