Brought to you by the letter I and the number...

A few tidbits from the Globe and Mail's Social Studies via Mirabilis via Dappled Things.

Father Reginald (Reggie) Foster, a Wisconsin native, is the Pope's senior Latinist, reports The (Milwaukee) Journal-Sentinel. The renowned Latin teacher and fluent speaker of complex Ciceronian Latin has served four popes over 36 years, despite a curmudgeonly temperament and intemperate outbursts of personal opinions. When Karol Wojtyla began signing papal documents in Latin as "Joannes Paulus II," instead of "Ioannes Paulus II" after being elected pope 26 years ago, Father Foster quickly pointed out to a papal adviser that there is no letter "J" in Latin. "I said, 'By the way, friend, there's no J,' " he recalled. "And the answer kind of came back that the pope said 'Well, now there is.' Well, fine, fine. He's the boss. And if you look at his tomb, the J is gone. One of my brethren said, 'Well, he enjoyed his J for 26 years, and now it's gone.' His tombstone has 'I'. "

Remember that part in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? "The Word of God. Only in the footsteps of God will he proceed... the Name of God... Jehovah!" (proceeds to step on the "J") "But in the Latin alphabet, "Jehovah" begins with an I!" Apparently the guardians of the grail anticipated future changes in orthography to foil the unworthy.

616: "A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups and television evangelists have got the wrong number," reports The Independent on Sunday. "Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616. The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt."

Oh snap! The folks at Remnant are going to have to redo all their calculations! Shouldn't be a problem though, they seem to have too much time on their hands already...

And so do I, apparently...