Alickadoo!

I encountered this word for the first time yesterday, while reading a memoir. It describes a member of a sports club who doesn't actually play, but who helps out and hangs around the clubhouse. It comes from Irish rugby, although the guy who's memoir I'm reading used it in the context of a rowing club.

You can read a discussion of alickadoos here, from a rugby fan forum.

There's a charming theory of its origin, which seems too good to be true. It's explained in the Dictionary of Irish Biography entry for the person who supposedly first used it, William Ernie Crawford:

One of the great characters of Irish rugby, Crawford is credited with inventing the word ‘alickadoo’ (meaning a non-playing rugby aficionado): when a team-mate preferred to read his book about an oriental potentate than to play poker, Crawford, in his annoyance, exclaimed, ‘You and your bloody Ali Khadu.’

Another theory is that it comes from the phrase "it's all I can do", as spoken by overworked club hangers-on.

The memoir I was reading was written by an Irish doctor, who began his career after World War Two. He mentions that, at that time, it was customary for a doctor to give his first fee from a private client to his mother. But he didn't, both because he was too hard-up and because the banknote was too grubby.

Words and traditions! Two subjects that fascinate me endlessly. I have realized, from sad experience, that other people are less interested. But hopefully my blog readers will indulge me.

What Has the Catholic Church Been Vindicated About?

I entered this query into a search engine, and it returned the following answer. (Obviously AI-generated, which I generally avoid, but its very impersonality might be appropriate here. I'm well aware that AI tells you what you want to hear, but this is all stuff that anyone could independently verify.)

1) The Big Bang Theory: The prevailing scientific consensus is that the universe originated in a massive expansion event. This model was actually first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and astronomer. Initially, the scientific community resisted his theory (with Albert Einstein notably dismissing it), but decades of astrophysical data ultimately proved the church-affiliated scientist correct. (My comment: obviously this wasn't just a Belgian priest being vindicated, it was the doctrine of creation ex nihilo itself.)

2) The Origins of Early Christianity: For centuries, skeptics theorized that the divinity of Jesus and early Catholic theology were fabricated much later by medieval institutions. However, the discovery of early Christian writings (like the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch from circa 107 AD) provided historical confirmation that the earliest church possessed an explicitly Catholic structure and sacramental theology. (My comment: a little bit of research shows that these were discovered in the seventeenth century, partly as a result of the work of Archbishop James Ussher, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh. This is the same gent who dated the creation of the world to my birth-date in 4004 BC-- a theory that I've heard defended by at least one eminent scientist as a very good guess based on the knowledge available to him at the time.)

3) Preservation of Western Civilization: Historical consensus has shifted regarding the "Dark Ages." Historians now widely credit Catholic monasteries as the intellectual repositories of antiquity. Irish and European monks diligently copied and preserved classical literature and philosophy, laying the foundational texts for the Renaissance. (I'm actually kind of sick of hearing about this one; nobody really talks about the Dark Ages anymore, and so this claim has become a bit of an Aunt Sally, and an occasion for Catholic triumphalism, which irritates me.)

4) Societal Predictions on the Family: In 1968, Pope Paul VI released the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which controversially banned artificial contraception. It famously predicted that widespread contraceptive use would lead to a general lowering of moral standards, a rise in marital infidelity, and governments coercing citizens' reproductive rights. Today, Reddit discussions among conservative theologians and cultural critics highlight how societal shifts and subsequent demographic crises have led some to view these specific socio-cultural predictions as vindicated. (OK, Reddit is hardly an authority, but anyone who's being honest can observe that Pope Paul was abundantly vindicated about this-- even when the report of the Pontifical Commission that preceded the encyclical famously supported artificial birth control. A source of hope in our synodal times.)

And Google left one out: the widespread predictions of global overpopulation, which even the UN now admits were unfounded. This uncanny ability of the Catholic Church to be right when all the clever, well-spoken, throat-clearing types are completely convinced it's wrong is part of why I believe it's the true Church.

Excerpts from Idylls of the King (I)

As when we dwell upon a word we know,
Repeating, till the word we know so well
Becomes a wonder, and we know not why,
So dwelt the father on her face, and thought
'Is this Elaine?'

That's from the few pages of Tennyson's Idylls of the King that I read tonight. It describes a phenomenon that I think we've all experienced: saying a familiar word over and over until it seems strange.

I've been reading a few pages of Idylls of the King every day, as far as I can manage it. Poetry should be a part of daily life, in my view. And yet I'm not great at living up to this. The truth is that it's easier to read ten pages of prose than one page of poetry, because poetry is more demanding.

But it's much more rewarding, when it's good poetry. And, in my view, Idylls of the King is wonderful poetry. People don't read it because it doesn't have the same reputation as Paradise Lost or The Canterbury Tales, but it deserves to be one of the great landmarks of English poetry.

I especially like it because it speaks to my priggishness. Idylls of the King is the highest of high romance, all valiant knights and courtly ladies and coats of arms and lofty ideals. Nothing about it is ironic or self-parodic or subversive. Here is its idealism at its most lyrical:

I made them lay their hands in mine, and swear
To reverence the King as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honor his own word as if his God’s,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Not that the poem is sugar-coated at all. In fact, it's quite dark and pessimistic. Tennyson seems to have been a depressive and the suggestion in Idylls of the Kings is that Camelot was too good for this world. Nearly all of Arthur's knights, noble as they are, fail to live up to his high standards for them, leading to the final battle where everybody except Arthur and Sir Bedivere are slaughtered (and King Arthur has to be carried to the island of Avalon by the Lady of the Lake, to recover from his wounds).

My plan is for this to be the first in a series of excerpts I take from the poem.

That's How the Digestive Disintegrates

I just used this phrase, as a humorous substitute for "that's how the cookie crumbles". I did a quick check of the internet and nobody else seems to have used it. I hereby claim it.

If you don't know, digestives are a plain biscuit (cookie). Barely worth eating unless they have chocolate on one side (but pretty good in that case).

Seriously, who eats plain biscuits? Plain digestives, Rich Tea (the worst of the worst), ginger nuts, Lincoln greens, Nice...the sort of biscuits that you might eat if they're available, sure, but who goes into a shop and buys them?

In recent years, I've been gluten free by choice (to coin a phrase), so there haven't been a whole lot of biscuits in my life anyway. But I don't miss any of the above.

(A nice Scottish shortbread is the exception, I'll allow.)

Tell Me Your Traditions

I have an endless appetite for traditions. So...tell me your traditions.

I'm interested in personal traditions, family traditions, school traditions, university traditions, local traditions, parish traditions, tertiary 

They can be anything at all. Go on. Tell me! (No facetious answers, please.)

All This Has Happened Before

I'm always hearing Traditionalist Catholics complain that Vatican II actually called for the continued use of Latin, and that this was ignored in the liturgical reforms. And when I mean "always", I really do mean "always". I could retreat to a cave in the Himalayas, I could shun all computers and radios and telephones, and I think some young chap in a blazer and a St. Christopher's medal would still clamber into my hideaway to complain about St. Paul VI.

So I was intrigued in this passage from a book about an Irish-American priest who died in the nineteen-twenties:

The liturgy had once been a great educational force and he believed that it should retain this function. He pointed out that in the early days of Christianity the liturgy, even more than schools, had been the great instructor in Christian doctrine. The educational function of the liturgy had declined largely due to the loss of the vernacular. And when the Council of Trent reformed so much, it failed here because the use of the vernacular was associated in the minds of the Council Fathers with the Protestant denial of the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the Sacrament of the Mass. Even so the decree which ordered the retention of Latin insisted on proper instruction of the things that are read in the Mass. Fr. Slattery dryly remarked that this injunction is honoured more in the breach than the observance.

Interesting, eh? Eh? The pendulum swings from age to age.

Attempt at an Aphorism

A surprise is only a surprise if it's a surprise that it's a surprise.