When Morality Censors Liturgical Latin
Some days you just can’t win…
When I was still a struggling young canonist within the Ecclesia Dei movement, a certain older priest and respected canonist sympathetic toward the Latin liturgy took me under his wing. He believed in the importance of educating young people in the official language of the Church, especially as it concerns the sacred sciences. So I trusted him to help me work through the canonical baggage I had brought back into the Church with me when I left the SSPX. We became good friends and have kept up regular correspondence through which we always exchange the customary Latin greeting from the liturgy of the Mass. Usually we correspond via our private email accounts, but something came up at work last Friday, so he contacted me from his diocesan email account.
Well I replied to his email over the weekend and thought all was well. When I got into the office this morning, I quickly discovered that his diocese’s anti-porn and anti-spam software had intercepted my email for objectionable content. Needless to say, I found this quite strange, but figured my free webmail provider had just tagged some objectionable spamvertisement, as is sometime the case. I was going to reply from a private email account tommorrow, however, I just got an apology from the diocese in question. It was quickly followed by a furious email from my friend (not at me, but at the diocese’s computer department.) It turns out the automatic anti-porn filter won’t allow the traditional response in the Latin liturgy to “Dominus Vobiscum” to get through. Sigh! Some days a Catholic faithful to Church Tradition just cannot seem to win…