Striking a Blow for Holiness AND Grammar: Lenten Madness!

Crusty Old Dean is doing a good job so far of holding to his Lenten devotions. To remind you, these are:

1) write about stuff other than questions stemming from the 1789 Constitution of the Episcopal Church and the equally important (but almost bereft of scholarly study) 1901 major revision, or, put more broadly, backing off what sucks about the structure of the Episcopal Church

2) auditioning as substitute nemesis for Scott Gunn while his arch-nemesis puts their battle on Lenten hiatus.

In fulfillment of #2, Crusty Old Dean unveils LENTEN MADNESS. Striking a blow for proper grammar (Lent is a noun, not an adjective) and correcting the grievous errors of a certain bracket which has been making its rounds.

To whit, here is an alternative to the current rounds so far. The abbreviations stand for:

GIB (grammatically in incorrect bracket, aka Lent Madness)
RLB (revisionist Lenten bracket)


Day 1:

GIB: Joan of Arc
RLB: If you want a female saint who struck a blow for women's spirituality in a time of patriarchy, why choose a young woman who was manipulated by the political forces of her day, executed as a heretic, and rehabilitated mainly because of a play by George Bernard Shaw and a reactionary, post Vatican 1 Catholic Church? How about Teresa of Avila?

Day 2: Jerome. Seriously? This is guy is the late antique period's version of the guy in Florida shouting, "Get off my lawn!" Disliked by most everyone but his rich patron, he holed up in his study with only a lion for company, spewing invective across Christendom, his main product an OK translation of the New Testament that would be treated as almost inerrant by the medieval Catholic Church.

RLB: Erasmus, whose 1516 critical edition of the New Testament made possible many of the theological foundations of the Reformation. Or John Patteson himself, who only lost this because of Jerome's name recognition, or perhaps the fact people confused him with the guy who holds the mirror for Morris Day of The Time in Purple Rain. I would vote for that Jerome.

Day 3: Martin de Porres v David Pendleton Oakerhater. No arguments here, either would be a fantastic choice. COD's objection is not with GIB but with the collect for Oakerhater in HWHM, its use of "captain" to play on Oakerhater's miltaristic past as a warrior is not the best translation of the term from Hebrew (COD prefers "pioneer") and does not do justice to the original context of the metaphor from Hebrews 2:10 (which is not militaristic at all). However, Oakerhater shouldn't have to go up against Emmagabohw in the second round (presuming Emmagabohw can knock off COD's namesake, but more on that later).

Until next time -- Lent is a noun, not an adjective!