Nihil Obstat
Yesterday and today, LOML's been attending a mandatory alcohol awareness thing. Arizona is one fucked up state when it comes to "zero tolerance", "three strikes" and, oh, "at the officer's discretion". I'm sure LOML will tell you the details—it's his story to tell—but suffice it to say that I've gotten a glimpse as to how free republics make that switch-over to military states. Imperialism begins at home, people.
Tonight begins the 24 hours of the biggest part of The Consequences. I've already started scouring iTunes Music Store for Johnny Cash songs, and song by fat black women whose men done gone.
I've been in Tucson for not even sixty hours, and we've run the gamut of laughing, smiling, fucking, arguing, making love, SPENDING (lordy, lordy, we've been spending), gazing silently (which is where the smiling comes in). It's a crazy, event-dense time. I'm not complaining. I'm worrying about tonight, but not for myself.
He may be spending time in the pokey tonight, but last night (and maybe this afternoon), I myself spent some time in the pokee.
It's all good [un]clean fun.
"Nihil Obstat", by the way, is Latin for "no problem" (essentially). It's a form and a process in the Roman Catholic Church that "mixed couples" (meaning one of the two isn't Catholic, in this context) must suffer so that a priest—and in fact, an entire diocesan marriage tribunal!—can permit the sacrament of marriage. It's not just quite judgy: judgment, in fact, is its raison d'être (English and Latin and French in one entry?? No one can live at that speed!)
The phrase "Nihil Obstat" is used in many Catholic documents, not just the marriage one. It signals official approval. The other phrases in common usage with the RC bureaucracy are "Imprimatur" and "Imprimi Potest". The first is something a bishop would use to sign off on a document, basically allowing it to be printed. The second is something an entire religious order would give to signal an official ok to go to the printers.
I used to work in the Rectory office at the church were I grew up, with Father Joseph Sammons, who was one of the finest human beings I have ever known. He was a man who believed in basic ethics, knowing that the fusion of ethics and dogma into a morality was ultimately a personal, private task. Tremendous man. I miss him.
Anyhow, I would fill out some of the forms, write checks, etc. I would also privately take note of the more arcane and just plain weird aspects of some of the Church processes. For example, there is official wording—the Catholics have official wording for everything—that accompanies the Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur and Imprimi Potest judgments, which reads, "The NIHIL OBSTAT and IMPRIMATUR are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the NIHIL OBSTAT and the IMPRIMATUR agree with the content, opinions or statements expressed."
It always made me wonder how a priest, a bishop and/or a religious order could find a text "free of doctrinal or moral error", yet refuse to even imply agreement with said text. Tricky. Very tricky.
Lest I start (start?) sounding like I'm channelling the Catholic Church's A-Number-One gay bottomboy, Andrew Sullivan—and trust, I don't like thinking about Andrew's channel...something that has no lock (think: Schlage) but probably has locks (think: Panama)—I should stop talking about the RC's. I feel sad that the doctrinairish ones are so limited; I feel anger that they are self-limited.