Daaaaaay-O!

A friend called the other night and asked if I’m DaFedSez, which made me laugh. I said, “He’s way too smart for me.” I’m pretty sure he agrees.

DaFedSez said. . .

Mark, I’m truly disappointed in you, have you learned nothing under my pedagogy?

By changing your header and admitting you had done so because of my advice you showed yourself to be both teachable and capable of error. When have you ever seen one of the truly great dematheagogues of the FV do such a thing?! NEVER! It is impossible that they would do so — who presumes to more accurately teach those incapable of error? (Keeping in mind we do not and never have claimed to be infallible, just that we have to date and for the foreseeable future never actually erred — neither are we untaught, as autodidacts we have learned from the best of all teachers!)

You had several viable options but you chose none of them:

1. Change the Header and Claim You Haven’t — I never actually told you to do that and don’t even think of claiming I did.


2. Refuse to Change the Header, but claim that “Federal” was in fact already Latin. If someone presented evidence to the contrary, you could easily show how the evidence came from a line of modern baptistic Latin that was an adulteration of the sacramental Latin of the early reformers. You could then have called upon other members of the FV community to independently verify this or any claim no matter how ludicrous (few people truly appreciate the many benefits of membership in Club FV, the autographed copy of the Call of Grace is cool of course but only the beginning). Then write a doctoral-length essay proving your point, being careful to use out-of-context quotations and Bible references from the Minor Prophets that don’t actually prove your point but depend on the absurd length and ponderous and pontifical style of the tract to dissuade anyone from checking your quotations or even reading beyond the first two paragraphs. I myself have profitably employed this method, sometimes even inserting pages of text from small-engine repair manuals without ever being found out. Or as Heinrich Bullinger famously said in his commentary on Obadiah, “If a coil pack dies, the car will generally quit and won’t restart, especially if the engine is warm. When first diagnosing the engine, remove a spark plug and, still connected to the spark plug wire, lay it on the engine. Crank the engine over and look for spark to jump across the plug!” I also take the precaution of noting how brilliant I am at the beginning and how mean-spirited and frankly unread the plebeian bumpkins opposing me are at the beginning, and the rest takes care of itself.


3. Simply begin an ad hominem rant featuring loud claims of small-mindedness, cronyism (some wonderful irony there, eh?) and persecution, darkly hinting that “the fix is in” and that the comments are stacked. Always use the word “sectarian” and if possible PAROCHIAL (which is a doubly delicious word because it reminds our enemies they are simpletons whilst reminding us of parochial schools and giving us warm fuzzies).


4. Claim that the Header was supposed to read “Foedero” but that Federal was inserted via a typesetting error that you never noticed before. Point out that oversights like this are bound to happen given that you publish 8 new blogs challenging conventional orthodoxy every week and can’t be expected to keep track of what they all say, after all your schedule demands that some of them were written and published while you were asleep.

By the way, Blake? What on earth were you thinking? While it appeals to our wannabeeishness it screams of Protestantism and does nothing to engender the right mood of bogus medieval asceticism. Try a Gothic cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox Icon, or something else that would have made the Puritans hopping mad.

By the way I’m working on a new liturgy for thirteenth Sunday after St. Pretsels day:

Priest: Day-O!
Celebrants: Daaaaaay-O!
All: Daylight hath Come and Our Hearts Yearn for Home!
Priest: Say You!
Celebrants: Say Me!
All: Say it Together!
Priest: That is the way it should be.
Amen.

I’m still working on it, but if you have suggestions, remember, I’m way smarter than you.

Thank you.