"Anglo-Saxons" in the Church

[steve-b]

steve-b:

For clarification, when you say “Anglo-Saxon” Catholic, are you Catholic who is English or are you Anglican?

I am a Roman Catholic, born and raised in the United States, of mostly English stock.

thanks for the clarification

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Are “Anglo-Saxon” Catholics disliked by the rest of the Church?

By this I mean Catholics in countries that derive their social structure and philosophy, ideas of law and justice, and even language from Britain — the UK, the United States,

The Church in USA is not very “Anglo-Saxon”. It’s heavily Hispanic, has a large Asian presence as well, and even when we talk about people from Europe, I don’t think the Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans think of themselves as “Anglo-Saxon” and the Irish-Americans, who might actually be Anglo-Saxon, don’t exactly like being called that.

“Anglo-Saxon” to me is more like the Anglican Ordinariate or the typical “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” (WASPS) like my husband’s and father’s families.

 

[Londoner]

In England itself we tend to identify three kinds of Catholics: recusants, immigrants, converts. Obviously the latter two categories include the descendants of those people. In the case of the rest of the English-speaking world it obviously makes no sense to talk about recusants (as there is there no established church) or immigrants (as the indigenous peoples now make up a small minority). It was therefore never really the case that the Catholic Church in England was the Italian mission to the Irish. There always were also recusants and English converts. There were also, of course, immigrants who were not Irish. Until the influx of Poles around the period of the Second World War, I think that Italians would in fact have been the most numerous Catholic immigrants after the Irish.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

The Church in USA is not very “Anglo-Saxon”. It’s heavily Hispanic, has a large Asian presence as well, and even when we talk about people from Europe, I don’t think the Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans think of themselves as “Anglo-Saxon” and the Irish-Americans, who might actually be Anglo-Saxon, don’t exactly like being called that.

“Anglo-Saxon” to me is more like the Anglican Ordinariate or the typical “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” (WASPS) like my husband’s and father’s families.

The Church in the United States is not “Anglo-Saxon” at all. I was referring more to the legal environment, and the attitude towards law and justice, that prevails in social systems founded and maintained in large part by Anglo-Saxons and by those who have inherited this system. Again, on these couple of occasions when I heard murmurs of “those Anglo-Saxons”, I got the vibe that “the British and the Americans, those Anglo-Saxons, are really embarrassing the Church by their insistence upon strict and impartial justice, and bringing all of this out in the open”. Or something like that. At least that’s how I read it.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I thought the Irish in Ireland were pushing heavily for openness for a long time. I have Irish (in Ireland) social media friends who post constantly for years about sex abuse, baby selling, child abuse and the Magdalene Laundries. Irish like I said would probably not consider themselves Anglo-Saxon.

 

[StillWandering]

I guess the reason why we are so obsessed with the actions of the Church in the past is because it was so recent. I’m 28, and as a child the priests ran everything. They were regarded as gods. Mass wasn’t about prayer, the Eucharist, saving your soul. It was about the priests. I remember my teachers telling us to watch the priest at the consecration. You had to arrive at the church 30 mins before Mass to hope to get a seat. It was insane how much power and authority they wielded, and it was unquestionable. Its hard to explain to people who didn’t live through it, but to make the point clear, I made my first communion in a country where divorce, contraception and homosexuality were illegal. As I said, I’m not 30 for another 2 years. And remember, this is western Europe.

We were a nation in thrall to a priesthood that frankly was a shadow of its former self, and secretly we knew it. The bishops were obsessed with protecting their power, and they moved pedophile priests around like chess pieces, even when it was obvious that these boys were literally satanic. In a small country like ours, it meant that there were few parishes that didn’t suffer as a result.

When it emerged on TV that a bishop had had a child, the veil fell (it was like a 9/11 moment, everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news). Then the Tsunami of abuse came out, we’ve went through two decades of non stop scandal and it literally shattered the form of Catholic faith that we held so so dearly, because Irish Catholicism centred on the priest. The inquiries have been through most of the dioceses and the residential schools, now they are doing the laundries and the mother & baby homes. Here is the crux of the matter, this isn’t ancient history. The Magdalene Laundries operated until 1996. My father has cousins whose children were sold by the nuns to America. There are people in their 40s who were incarcerated for getting pregnant outside marriage.

 

[BartholomewB]

Half of my Irish ancestors came from County Leix (Laois)

#metoo. Specifically from Mountmellick. But they left there and moved to London when it was still called Queen’s County.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m 28, and as a child the priests ran everything. They were regarded as gods. Mass wasn’t about prayer, the Eucharist, saving your soul. It was about the priests.

This is interesting. I’m old enough to be your mom and when I was a kid, the priests were NOT regarded as gods, at least in my family. They were regarded as humans, and my mother, who as the cradle Catholic in the house was kind of setting the tone, thought some of them were nice, some were admirable, some were bumblers, and a lot (especially the post-Vatican II set) were just plain on the wrong track. I am so far not aware of any abusers in our parish although there have been two reported in the neighboring parishes, but there was one pastor who was alcoholic and was reportedly having an affair with a female parishioner and was replaced, there was one who caused scandal by slow-dancing romantically with a young Sister at a parish event. I’m sure there was other stuff that I as a kid didn’t hear about or didn’t pay attention to.

My mother’s semi- regular Sunday activity was being annoyed at something the priest said in his sermon. She used to constantly remind me that “We go to Mass to take part in the Unbloody Sacrifice of Jesus. We DON’T go there to listen to the priest!” This was in the late 60s/ early 70s she would say these things. She regularly told stories of her own family members’ tiffs with their local pastor in the 40s 0r 50s.

So I think this whole “Priests are God” thing is more a function of the family environment you grew up in. They sure weren’t God in my family. My mother spent a lot of time praying for patience with some of their antics. Of course when we did get one who impressed my mother she also said so, and we had a few who fell in that category, but she wasn’t running down to church to see them.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have a copy of the citizenship oath taken by one of my Irish great-grandfathers. Among all the flowery wording, it says he renounces all allegiance to all foreign rulers and especially to … then follows a blank where the officer filled in the ruler where the person was from and his says:

“…and especially to Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland…” He said that was the easiest oath he ever took.

His headstone says he was born in “Queen’s County, Ireland”. He was from a town called Timahoe. His wife was from Tullamore in “King’s County” (Offaly now) Ireland.

Those from County Mayo weren’t in any town. They lived in the country and “their backyard was the sea”, literally. The “next parish west was Boston”.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m old enough to be your mom and when I was a kid, the priests were NOT regarded as gods, at least in my family

My Irish grandmother had a saying about clergy and religious. “Treat them civil but strange.” She was a very religious woman and was very kind to clergy and religious, but always at arm’s length. She felt a significant amount of personal relationship with them was inappropriate.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

My mother, aunts and grands were the same way. Unless the priest was actually your blood relative, you didn’t go around trying to be his best friend. My mother looked askance at some of the women in the parish who for various reasons were trying to hang around the priests or be their right-hand helpers.

 

[Bradskii]

Ridgerunner:

I’m not sure Anglo-Saxons are disliked as such by people in other countries. Americans often are, and are probably all considered “Anglo-Saxons” in a way. I do think Americans have a fondness for the language, just as Irish seem to.

I deliberately omitted Ireland from that list because, first of all, they are not Anglo-Saxons, and the relationship of Ireland to Britain has been fractious throughout the centuries (and that is putting it mildly).

I have a bit of Scots-Irish heritage as well. My AncestryDNA results placed a huge blue circle straight over Belfast, and I’m reasonably sure they were Protestants.

I think that you need to omit the Welsh and the Scottish as well. We’re Celts. Maybe you should just refer to England as opposed to Britain. Britain (or Great Britain) is not a country but just references the island comprising England, Scotland and Wales. And the UK is those three plus Northern Ireland. And to confuse everyone a little more, the British Isles compromise those 4 plus the Republic of Ireland (and includes all the smaller islands like the Isle of Man).

 

[Ridgerunner]

I read somewhere that from the DNA standpoint, people in England are much more Celtic than they are Anglo-Saxon. Makes some sense. For the most part, ancient invasions were either on the part of tribal groups moving into relatively underpopulated territory (as with northern Gaul at the end of the Empire) or on the part of a warrior society that moved in for the purpose of ruling and living off the peasants. Oftentimes, the peasants, knowing they were going to serve some lord or other, no matter what, didn’t care who resided in the castle. But sometimes the new rulers insisted on use of their language or at least a “patois” incorporating elements of both languages.

English is very much a “patois” of Anglo-Saxon (more probably a version of Frisian) a smattering of Celtic, a great deal of French and a moderate helping of Latin.

Of possibly passing interest, the English Common Law, which persists in Britain, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and to some degree in India and some African countries, is a consequence of an invasion. The largely Danish Normans picked up the French language in the 100 years they all lived in Normandy. When William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxon lords, he promised them (among other things) as a “peace offering” that they would be governed by the laws in existence on the day when the Anglo-Saxon King Edward was “both alive and dead”. And so, in the courts, anchoring to “precedent” is the result of that agreement.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I think that you need to omit the Welsh and the Scottish as well. We’re Celts. Maybe you should just refer to England as opposed to Britain. Britain (or Great Britain) is not a country but just references the island comprising England, Scotland and Wales. And the UK is those three plus Northern Ireland. And to confuse everyone a little more, the British Isles compromise those 4 plus the Republic of Ireland (and includes all the smaller islands like the Isle of Man).

I am well aware of the distinctions you cite. Perhaps it would have been better for me to say “UK” instead of “Britain”. I was referring to the persecution and attempted domination of Ireland, and in particular the Church in Ireland, by the United Kingdom.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

I think that you need to omit the Welsh and the Scottish as well. We’re Celts. Maybe you should just refer to England as opposed to Britain. Britain (or Great Britain) is not a country but just references the island comprising England, Scotland and Wales. And the UK is those three plus Northern Ireland. And to confuse everyone a little more, the British Isles compromise those 4 plus the Republic of Ireland (and includes all the smaller islands like the Isle of Man).

I am well aware of the distinctions you cite. Perhaps it would have been better for me to say “UK” instead of “Britain”. I was referring to the persecution and attempted domination of Ireland, and in particular the Church in Ireland, by the United Kingdom.

No problem. Being originally Welsh I tend to get a little picky when we’re included with the English. Not that I have anything against them. Some of my best friends etc.

 

[tomarin]

Not to nitpick, but English isn’t a patois at all (a patois is what happens when two speech communities speak a simplified, mixed-up version of their two languages in order to find common ground to communicate - that is, they create what’s called a pidgin - and then when the pidgin is adopted by some of those people and spoken at home by whole families, it becomes a patois): it is a direct descendant of Anglo-Saxon. So modern English is Germanic mostly and structurally with just some loan words from French, Latin, and Greek (and other languages such as Hindi, Malay, etc.). It’s like the scaffolding (ie rafters and beams) is Anglo-Saxon or Germanic and some of the decorative architecture is Latinate. (There are almost no Celtic loan words in English either.)

 

[HomeschoolDad]

It’s like the scaffolding is Anglo-Saxon or Germanic and some of the decorative architecture is Latinate.

That is an excellent way to put it! I’d never thought of it that way.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

I don’t know any Gaelic other than the sign of the cross and the Hail Mary. But I sometimes wonder whether my father’s perception of time was lengthened by the fact that he couldn’t understand the Gaelic.

Gaelic is definitely a language for story telling, which is maybe why the Irish are so good at telling stories (even when speaking English). Gaelic can get long winded at times and sometimes it can take a long time to say something, but you can use that length to add a lot of subtle innuendo.

 

[tomarin]

Gaelic is definitely a language for story telling, which is maybe why the Irish are so good at telling stories (even when speaking English). Gaelic can get long winded at times and sometimes it can take a long time to say something, but you can use that length to add a lot of subtle innuendo.

I think I’ve read somewhere that Gaelic has no words for yes or no, which is why answers to even simple questions are always so discursive and roundabout. I’m not sure I believe that though.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m not a linguist. I have only read that English is about 1/3 Anglo-Saxon, 1/3 French and 1/3 Latin. It varies with the subject matter. If we’re talking about family or football, it’s mostly Anglo-Saxon. If we’re talking business, it’s mostly French. If we’re talking about medicine or science generally, it will be mostly Latinate.

I don’t know anything about the structure of Anglo-Saxon. (I can’t read Beowulf) but I have studied French, and the structure of French and English are almost exactly the same. I am told that modern German structure is very different from that of English.

And a lot of words in English are of French origin. Essentially all the “ion”-ending words, plus many more. That’s why you can look at a French text and understand a good part of it.

Reminds me of an old joke about German strructure. An English speaker had a German friend whom he visited in Germany. They were to go out to dinner, but the German wanted to attend a lecture first. So both went to it, even though the English speaker couldn’t understand a word of the lecture.

After about an hour, the English speaker turned to the German and asked “how long did he think it would go on”. “Shhhhhh” said the German “I’m waiting for the verb”.

But I’ll admit if you look at a text in German an English speaker can figure a lot of it out, just as one can with French.

Hail Mary in French:
Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grace
Le Seigneur est avec vous.
Vous etes benie entre toutes les femmes
et benie est le fruit de vos entrailles, Jesu.

Sainte Marie, mere de Dieu
priez pour nous pecheurs
maintenant et a l’heure de notre mort.

In German, then:
Gegrüsset seist du, Maria, voll der Gnade, der Herr ist mit dir. Du bist gebenedeit unter den Frauen, und gebenedeit ist die Frucht deines Leibes, Jesus.

Heilige Maria, Mutter Gottes, bitte für uns Sünder jetzt und in der Stunde unseres Todes. Amen.

You can sort of figure both out, but in my mind, the French is easier because so many of those words are root words for English words, like:

salue-salute, hail
pleine-full, plenary
vous-you
femmes-females
heure-hour
priez-pray
maintenant-maintain, now
benie-benediction, beneficent

To my eye, German is a bit less so.