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Father Reginald Foster has died
- scop 6y agoA former student recounts some good memories on his blog: https://wdtprs.com/2020/12/r-i-p-fr-reginald-foster-ocd/ https://wdtprs.com/2020/12/r-i-p-fr-reginald-foster-ocd/ ...comments have some good ones as well.
- dang 6y agoA related thread from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8981557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8981557 I seem to recall others—anyone?
- Mlller 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14769758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14769758 ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103502 (short, but links to a book by Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D.).
- dang 6y agoNice—thanks! (I put a space before your semicolon to make the first URL work.)
- nsajko 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13789097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13789097
- dang 6y agoThank you!
- bitcharmer 6y agoApologies in advance, I am not familiar with that person. Why is his death relevant to a tech-focused site like HN?
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoFrom the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. ... Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. ... If you flag, please don't also comment that you did." [EDIT] By the obituary, this person was a master of his esoteric craft as well a talented educator and I found it worthwhile to take a moment to read about his life and to honor his passing.
- scop 6y agoHere are two reasons: - He was an intellectual juggernaut in the field of Latin. One in a lifetime kind of guy. - He never published a book but only provided sheets to his students. His students are now working together to piece together all of his worksheets so that a full catalog can be published. A very interesting project in its own right!
- bitcharmer 6y agoThanks, that's a good explanation. I guess HN is slowly becoming reddit - you get down-voted for asking genuine good-faith questions.
- macintux 6y agoI suspect it has more to do with not knowing the guidelines. Asking "why is this relevant to HN?" is a tired question that pops up too often.
- B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago"Tech" is a mean to achieve an end. Most here admire things well done, and other means are interesting. Plus, as it has been put before , "humani nihil a me alienum puto."
- cbfrench 6y agoVery sad to hear. I’d always hoped to have the time to take Latin with him but never did. Requiescat in pace.
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoI find it interesting reading about legendary language teachers. https://www.amazon.de/Chinese-Through-Poetry-introduction-traditional/dp/1904623514 https://www.amazon.de/Chinese-Through-Poetry-introduction-tr... for Classical Chinese and https://www.amazon.com/Familia-Romana-Lingua-Latina-Book-ebook/dp/B012HTEEDU https://www.amazon.com/Familia-Romana-Lingua-Latina-Book-ebo... for Latin are by amazing language teachers who refined their material over decades and finally published wonderful books that contain so much wisdom and good taste. ( If you know of similar books for other languages, please let me know! I didn't even have any interest in learning Classical Chinese, but was drawn in by Barnes's book more or less immediately... ). As much as language-learning is a lot about hard work, some people seem to be exceptionally good at teaching, and slaving away struggling to learn a language under a dreary teacher is the worst. Language teaching seems to have its own particular flavour of impact on the students and their relationship to their teachers? I guess it's far more common that their teaching will have a gigantic impact on someone's life, if they are going to be using the language every day, than many other things that people learn. Less likely of Latin, but it still seems that people can be nonetheless grateful to have a gifted teacher even there!
- schoen 6y agoReggie Foster did have a textbook come out before his death (unlike Ørberg's, which you mention, it is written in English rather than Latin), Ossa Latinitatis Sola. https://thelatinlanguage.org/ossa/ https://thelatinlanguage.org/ossa/ He also had a sequel (about reading Cicero) in press which is due out in January. It's called Ossium Carnes Multae. Daniel McCarthy, the editor, has been collecting materials by Foster with the aim of bringing out a five-part series: https://thelatinlanguage.org/latinitatis-corpus/ https://thelatinlanguage.org/latinitatis-corpus/ I'm not sure whether volumes III through V are ever going to appear. :-(
- ignoranceprior 6y agoHere's a list of similar books for other languages: https://blog.nina.coffee/2018/08/27/all_nature_method_books.html https://blog.nina.coffee/2018/08/27/all_nature_method_books....
- throw0101a 6y ago
- mikece 6y agoRequiem aeternam...
- schoen 6y agoI got to study with Foster at his very last Aestiva Latinitas Romae session, in 2008. (After his illness and retirement, he continued teaching in Wisconsin until last year.) He was a really amazing personality and so humble about probably knowing more Latin than any person in the twentieth century, as well as having had an inside view of decades of world events by writing several different popes' official reactions to them. He also wrote, among other things, the Vatican ATM UI translation and the Vatican heliport dedicatory plaque. https://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/2360283395 https://www.flickr.com/photos/thrillho/2360283395 (literally 'please insert card in order to find out what to do') https://orbiscatholicus.blogspot.com/2008/06/from-vatican-city-popes-private.html https://orbiscatholicus.blogspot.com/2008/06/from-vatican-ci... His death reminds me that he taught us to sing the "In Paradisum" Gregorian chant, which he considered very beautiful. Have a listen in his memory! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7F-N-Yd8dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7F-N-Yd8dE
- wyclif 6y agoI also studied with him at ALR but much earlier than that, after four years of Latin in high school and two years as an undergrad. Although he knew I was a Protestant, he was always gracious to me and I learned so much from him. He was famous for his advocacy of Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar and the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary. He would accept no substitutes.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoSit eo terra levis.
- schoen 6y agoSadly, the dative is "ei" rather than "eo".
- HarryHirsch 6y agoFather Reginald would have approved this comment.
- gregfjohnson 6y agoIt fills me with joy the HN is sufficiently eclectic to have an article such as this. Thank you, OP!
- blhack 6y agoAnd seemingly quite a few HNers who had a personal connection to him judging from these comments.
- igonvalue 6y agoSupposedly he got in trouble with the Church after appearing in the Bill Maher documentary Religulous. I looked up the video clip and thought it was refreshing how few fucks he seemed to give https://youtu.be/iTV-VgrbnZU https://youtu.be/iTV-VgrbnZU
- Torwald 6y agoThis comment on YouTube summs it up: <<Sean Wu: "This man trolled bill Maher when he bill Maher was trying to troll him.">>
- sramsay 6y agoFoster's brilliance and wit are legendary. Less well known, I think, is that he was a deeply religious man and a fearsome ascetic. It is not a coincidence that he joined the Discalced Carmelites -- among the more mystical, contemplative, and historically, among the more severely austere of the Catholic mendicant religious orders (it was founded by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross). He almost never wore the traditional habit of the Carmelites (or even "the blacks" of a priest), because he felt clerical garb no longer represented what it originally was (the dress of the poor). He owned almost nothing, gave anything given to him to the poor (except books!), dressed like a plumber, and slept on the floor. I read somewhere that his office had a dictionary, a telephone, and not much else. He was so famous for being "the Pope's Latinist." I have often wondered if anyone ever asked him about his faith or the pursuit of holiness. Because I sincerely think he took these matters just as seriously, and probably more seriously than Latin.
- jtpublic 6y agoSRamsay, I think I met you once, a long time ago, at my house, for a book discussion. Nice to see you here. I first learned of Fr. Reggie while looking for something on the Marquette theology webpages, so I'm ever grateful to whoever posted his info there. I was impressed with how he bore with good humor the inability of his order to care for him when his health declined. That's a degree of holiness that I don't find easy to enact. I'm sure there was more than this, but not knowing him well, this is what I saw in brief encounters.
- lqet 6y ago> dressed like a plumber The Swiss Guards at the Vatican called him "the tankward".
- mamab 6y agoI met Fr. Foster as a volunteer at the senior facility he resided in. Studied Latin with him. Ate olives and drank wine in his room. Was able to see him a few weeks ago. We planned on watching “Barbarians” on Netflix when this pandemic business was over. Talked about cross country train trips. He asked for a hug when I left. Told him I couldn’t get that close. Last thing we said to each other: “love you”. I have no words and I have so many words.
- jmeister 6y agoWow. This is heavy. Thanks for sharing!
- timeless91 6y agoOh look this site will post about some worthless worshipping cult member.
- pythohn12 6y agoHe touched my private parts and made me read a fairytale book.
- reige54 6y agoHe liked to where a gown but none of his cult members thought anything of it.
- gerry44 6y agoHN shouldn't protect a pedo member of a cult.
- tdumitrescu 6y agoLux perpetua luceat ei. I studied with Reggie during several of the summer sessions in Rome starting in 1998, and dedicated my edition+translation of a 16th-century treatise to him. He really transformed Latin into a living language for those lucky enough to study with him, and his courses leveled up one's fluency like nothing I've ever seen at university or elsewhere. What a force of nature. He used to say that if he became pope (ha!) He would take the name Leo, and would roar like a lion against the docile corrupters he encountered every day in the Vatican. I'm glad and honestly a little surprised he lived this long, because in those days wandering around Rome 20 years ago, he was really not taking care of his health at all. Used to claim he slept 2 hours a night, sitting in his cell in the dark watching tv and eating potato chips in his underwear into the wee hours of the morning. The world will never see another one like him.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoOf course no machine could compare, but this little humble-looking site does pretty well (with what few Latin phrases I can recall). https://www.translatero.com/latin-english/translate https://www.translatero.com/latin-english/translate
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- macinjosh 6y agoHow many kids did this priest abuse?
- phaemon 6y agoFrom previous comments I assume you're from the UK. And I also suspect you've grown up with anti-Catholic bigotry and have assumed that this is normal. I do understand this. My father would talk about Protestants as if was synonymous with Scum. It wasn't till my teenage years that I realized the problem with that. You need to get rid of that shallow thinking and understand that decent and intelligent people can disagree with your personal beliefs. It will make you a better person.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account. We're trying for something different here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- Damorian 6y agoThis is an area where there has actually been quite a bit of study. Catholic priests are pedophiles at roughly the same rate as the general male population. Compare this to gay men, which is roughly 10x the straight male population. I suggest you reevaluate your stereotypes.
- pstuart 6y agoI can't help but admire that devotion and concern, but also be bothered that it was in service of such a questionable religion.
- onethought 6y agoAs oppose to all those unquestionable ones?
- pstuart 6y agoI spoke inartfully, as this was a moment to recognize him and not to dump on his faith. My intent was to acknowledge the life of a good man in the service of an organization I disagree with. I think it's worth examining those institutions in a "hacker" sense but quite a few others here don't share that opinion.
- amalantony06 6y agoQuestionable how?
- pstuart 6y agoThe subject is a minefield because a lot of people self-identify with it and take any criticism of the institution as an attack on them. The failings of The Church are well documented and don't need to be repeated here. I'm more interested in what doesn't get talked about: the crowding of the marketplace of ideas. The belief system promulgated by it is antiquated and does not serve society well.
- amalantony06 6y ago> The failings of The Church are well documented and don't need to be repeated here. The failings of the Church does not make it questionable. Like with any endeavour of man, there are bound to be failings. Heck, the first Pope, Peter, chosen by Christ himself denied him thrice. So, why should the failings of the subsequent members of the clergy be of any surprise to anyone? The epistles in the New Testament talks about false teachers and immoral people within the early Church. So this is nothing new under the sun. > I'm more interested in what doesn't get talked about: the crowding of the marketplace of ideas. Not sure what century you live in, but in the 21st century, the Church and the ideas that it espouses are mostly rejected, esp of, but not limited to matters of chastity, teachings on what constitutes a valid marriage, divorce, religious piety etc. Your claim might have been valid in the 13th century, but we don't live in the middle ages any more. > The belief system promulgated by it is antiquated and does not serve society well. That is an opinion, and cannot be philosophically or scientifically proven.
- danielam 6y agoRequiescat in pace.
- pyuser583 6y agoAmen.
- base3 6y agoAve atque vale. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/950886281/reginald-foster-worlds-renowned-latinist-dies-at-81 https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/950886281/reginald-foster-wor...