By what label should historians refer to the “Catholic side” during the era of the Protestant Reformation? In John O’Malley’s, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in The Early Modern Era, the reader is introduced to the complexities surrounding the nomenclature of distinct historical eras, and more specifically, to the problem of naming the Catholicism of the late medieval/early modern era. The author admits that he was once ambivalent to the semantics of Catholic nomenclature for this period, but practical decisions (such as what to name Encyclopedia entries and monographs that he was working on) led him to reexamine the significance of the issue. As a result, O’Malley eventually came to the conclusion that the two most frequent designations in the English language for the Catholicism of this era, (i.e., “Counter Reformation” and “Catholic Reformation”) were inadequate and misleading, especially “when [they were] taken as all-inclusive terms for the much larger reality of Catholicism itself” (John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 2). Throughout the work, the author argues that terms are not neutral; they invite investigation in certain directions but they also direct attention away from other avenues of inquiry. In other words, they filter and exclude just as much as they allegedly describe. Consequently, O’Malley is disturbed by the careless and cavalier way that terms like “Reformation” are being applied to the Catholicism of this milieu. In response to this concern, he argues for a three-fold solution to this taxonomic dilemma: 1) a welcome acceptance of the multiplicity of names that have arisen as positive descriptors of the era; 2) a more careful reflection in the employment of these terms by historians; and 3) the addition of “Early Modern Catholicism” as a more comprehensive designation than the others. He attempts to persuade the reader to accept his proposal principally by tracing the history of the various terms for the Catholic side, and indeed this review of the naming process constitutes the vast majority of the book. In the author’s own words, however, he suggests that, more than a mere acceptance of his proposal, he hopes that the main contribution of the book will be to:

“…help us view ‘the Catholic side’ with new eyes, so that we become more aware of a breadth, depth, and complexity that earlier historians frequently either missed or, more often, forced into an inappropriate or inadequate interpretive framework–by inadequate naming” (O’Malley, Trent and All That, pp. 9-10).

With this ultimate goal in mind, the author introduces the reader to the problem of names – “where they came from, who used them, [and] what prejudices they entailed” (O’Malley, Trent and All That, p. 6).
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The New Yorker has just revealed a fake word in the New Oxford American Dictionary. Apparently, this has been a fairly common practice among encyclopedia and dictionary publishers in order to determine if their content is being copied.

Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled “Flags Up!” Mountweazel, the encyclopedia indicates, was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1942, only to die “at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”

Mountweazel never existed and neither does the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word esquivalience (def. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities). It looks like the NOAD’s efforts have paid off at least in part - Dictionary.com has been caught serving the word up to its visitors.

Beware those seeking to spruce up their publications with a trip to the thesaurus! You might end up “Mountweazeled”.

Jim Bublitz, a self-proclaimed “refugee” from the seeker-sensitive / Purpose-Driven movement has posted an interesting comparison of Joel Osteen with personal success infomercial star Anthony Robbins. This all started over at reformation21 when Rick Phillips made the comparison following an early morning run-in with an Anthony Robbins infomercial.

Osteen has been growing in popularity and it’s not hard to figure out why. He’s preaching a blend of humanism and new-age teaching peppered with the occassional Christian keyword. In much the same way as many contemporary Christian songs have made their way onto the Christian airwaves, Osteen has included just enough of the right “keywords” to slip in and be considered a “Christian” message. There really is no Biblical basis for this teaching, which likens itself to Imagine 21, a business success philosophy promoted by The Pacific Institute’s Lou Tice and preached within the walls of a number of Fortune 500 companies. This isn’t Godly; it’s human.

Here are a few of my favorite Osteen quotes from his book Your Best Life Now:

Fear is a force just like faith is a force. If you give into fear and start to dwell on that junk and start to act on it, that fear can actually bring things to pass just like faith can bring things to pass.

and again…

It’s the same way with us. We have to conceive it on the inside before we’re ever going to receive it on the outside. If you don’t think you can have something good, then you never will. The barrier is in your mind.