I vaguely recall speaking Norwegian to my Great Grandmother,
who never learned much more than "Hallo!" in English.
Before I could spell "Hello", I had forgotten more Norwegian
than my Great Grandmother had learned of English.
Later, when I went to college, I took a semester of Norwegian,
and that stuck to me like everything else academic did: it didn't.
It was not until I was a college teacher that I asked to sit in
on Norwegian language courses, where I began to understand
some of the rhythms of my own peculiar English speech.
Then I lived in Norway a couple of times, and even taught
in a college in Lillehammer, in lame Norwegian, but in Norwegian.
As a child of an immigrant, and a grandchild of other immigrants--
my mother having been born in Washington State--I heard
about Lutheran churches that still, or very recently, conducted
church services in Norwegian, sometimes regularly, sometimes
as reminders of what they used to do regularly. Later, I even
attended one of the latter, somewhere, and was amused by
the old-fashioned, long-preserved, sometimes regional Norwegian
the preacher used, and even more curiously, learned how
old-fashioned and fundamentalistic the religion itself was.
In the Twin Cities today, in October 2011, the old-fashioned
Archbishop of the St. Paul diocese is about to announce
a massive overhaul of the parish distribution of the Catholic Church.
There is every good reason for having to do so. The Archbishop
is a fierce defender of a view of Catholicism that is almost
anachronistic in the world today, except that it is surrounded
by a catechetical and patriarchal and sexually hamstrung moat
so deep and wide and polluted that it manages to protect the castle.
Inner city churches are dying: urbanism does things to one's mind.
The suburbs are growing: suburbs do things to one's mind, too.
Wherever there are Catholic immigrants, the Church is strong.
Today, in October 2011, the Archdiocese of St. Paul conducts
mass in nine languages. Lutherans were largely German and
Scandinavian. Catholicism is much more widespread.
The Catholic Church in America once had to decide whether
it would be a German- or an English-language church.
It decided, or drifted into, being an English-language Church.
Like every other immigrant group into this country, eventually
everybody young enough to have time to learn English did so.
The demand by our political neanderthals and social conspirators
is that we must insist that only English be used, if you want to belong.
That is an ignorance of what naturally happens that is so mindless
that it beggars the mind! It just happens! It almost always happens!
I don't think it is just political expediency that fuels "English only!".
It is also a humiliating ignorance of history, a blindness to what
is happening all around, and a fear for what is going on that
requires something to lash out about: a society in transition,
and economy in transition, a world coming together uneasily.
who never learned much more than "Hallo!" in English.
Before I could spell "Hello", I had forgotten more Norwegian
than my Great Grandmother had learned of English.
Later, when I went to college, I took a semester of Norwegian,
and that stuck to me like everything else academic did: it didn't.
It was not until I was a college teacher that I asked to sit in
on Norwegian language courses, where I began to understand
some of the rhythms of my own peculiar English speech.
Then I lived in Norway a couple of times, and even taught
in a college in Lillehammer, in lame Norwegian, but in Norwegian.
As a child of an immigrant, and a grandchild of other immigrants--
my mother having been born in Washington State--I heard
about Lutheran churches that still, or very recently, conducted
church services in Norwegian, sometimes regularly, sometimes
as reminders of what they used to do regularly. Later, I even
attended one of the latter, somewhere, and was amused by
the old-fashioned, long-preserved, sometimes regional Norwegian
the preacher used, and even more curiously, learned how
old-fashioned and fundamentalistic the religion itself was.
In the Twin Cities today, in October 2011, the old-fashioned
Archbishop of the St. Paul diocese is about to announce
a massive overhaul of the parish distribution of the Catholic Church.
There is every good reason for having to do so. The Archbishop
is a fierce defender of a view of Catholicism that is almost
anachronistic in the world today, except that it is surrounded
by a catechetical and patriarchal and sexually hamstrung moat
so deep and wide and polluted that it manages to protect the castle.
Inner city churches are dying: urbanism does things to one's mind.
The suburbs are growing: suburbs do things to one's mind, too.
Wherever there are Catholic immigrants, the Church is strong.
Today, in October 2011, the Archdiocese of St. Paul conducts
mass in nine languages. Lutherans were largely German and
Scandinavian. Catholicism is much more widespread.
The Catholic Church in America once had to decide whether
it would be a German- or an English-language church.
It decided, or drifted into, being an English-language Church.
Like every other immigrant group into this country, eventually
everybody young enough to have time to learn English did so.
The demand by our political neanderthals and social conspirators
is that we must insist that only English be used, if you want to belong.
That is an ignorance of what naturally happens that is so mindless
that it beggars the mind! It just happens! It almost always happens!
I don't think it is just political expediency that fuels "English only!".
It is also a humiliating ignorance of history, a blindness to what
is happening all around, and a fear for what is going on that
requires something to lash out about: a society in transition,
and economy in transition, a world coming together uneasily.
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