IMHO*

Yes, I confess to learning a few texting terms to communicate with younger people at the office. But most of the time, in my capacity as vice postulator of the sainthood cause of Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, I am immersed in language of the late 19th century. Not the polished prose or elevated verse of the Victorian masters, nor even the rural dialects of Dickens or the ironic lines of Dickinson. Rather, I am studying Father McGivney’s life and times through his personal correspondence, as well as perusing yellowed newspaper clippings and official signed documents—the stuff of an ordinary workday in the bustling factory and shipping towns of New Haven, Waterbury, and Thomaston, Connecticut. Yet the style and idiom that characterize these archival sources would strike today’s teen as positively Shakespearean.

LOL*

“By permission of our Rt. Rev. Bishop, and in accordance with an Act of the Legislature of the State of Connecticut, we have formed an organization under the name of the Knights of Columbus,” Father McGivney wrote fellow priests in April 1882, announcing the formation of a new Catholic fraternal order, and asking his confreres to form a council in their parishes.

He continued: “Our primary object is to prevent people from entering Secret Societies, by offering the same, if not better, advantages to our members. Secondly, to unite the men of our Faith throughout the diocese of Hartford, that we may thereby gain strength to aid each other in time of sickness; to provide for decent burial, and to render pecuniary assistance to the families of deceased members.”

For its brevity and precise language devoted wholly to conveying the purpose of his new initiative, I would offer the above two sentences as a model mission statement. Indeed, at the New Haven headquarters of the Knights of Columbus, we often return to these words of the founder to reorient ourselves as we embark on introducing a new program to our now worldwide society of more than two-million members who are active in some 16,000 councils.

Of course, Michael Joseph McGivney had the advantage of a first-class education. In fact, there is evidence that his mother, Mary, an immigrant from Ireland who married Irishman Patrick McGivney in 1850, was an accomplished homeschooler. She taught Michael—the first of 13 children—to read before he entered formal school in Waterbury, a manufacturing hub once known as the most Catholic city in America. Due to this early version of preschool, young Michael passed the public school’s entrance exam with flying colors and skipped ahead two grades. After graduating at age 13, he worked for three years in a spoon factory before winning his father’s approval to enter seminary. Taking classes at three different institutions, with heavy doses of Latin, Classics, and Rhetoric, he completed the equivalent of a college curriculum and then finished theology studies at America’s first Catholic seminary, St. Mary’s in Baltimore. He was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of the National Shrine of the Assumption (the nation’s first Catholic cathedral, consecrated in 1876 and designated a minor basilica in 1937 by Pope Pius XI) at the hands of Archbishop (later Cardinal) James Gibbons on Dec. 22, 1877.

So, yes, Father McGivney had a sterling education, during which he developed not only his writing skills, but also his oral presentation. Local newspapers wrote about his homilies, praising him for his attractive tone and diction, which, they reported, drew even non-Catholics to church to hear “that voice.” During my research, I have also come across numerous newsclips notable for their descriptions of daily events in a charming, now lost-to-us language. Here are two favorite examples:

“On Saturday evening, Jan. 27th [1872], Miss Marcia Painter, visiting at J.R. Crampton’s, Waterville, went up the front stairs in the dark, intending to come down the same way; but, mistaking her chamber door, she pitched headlong down the backstairs, dislocating a shoulder, and otherwise bruising herself.”

“A few days since, as Mr. Horatio Benton was coming home from fox-hunting, and crossing the old reservoir . . . the ice broke and let him in. He was rescued by his companion with considerable difficulty.”

LMAO?*

Humor also marks an otherwise serious report on the “grippe” from February 1892 (not long after Father McGivney and thousands of others died during the Russian flu epidemic of 1889-90). “Grippe, according to all accounts, still seems to reign supreme in this town. Some of the doctors say that four-fifths of the cases are made up of nine-tenths imagination and one-tenth sore throat, and we guess it is just so.”

TNTL*

Time will tell whether texting shorthand will become a modern art form (like the stick-figure graffiti of Keith Haring in the 1980s) or an artifact (ditto). Our speed-of-light communications create viral sensations that can end up in digital backwaters within a year—sometimes even a week.

Yes, coming up with new texting abbreviations can be fun and challenging, and I admit to spending more time bemused by the latest “virality” on Facebook and YouTube than I should. But the overall trends in online living are not good. Numerous studies and congressional hearings have documented the negative effects of internet addiction: shorter attention spans, social media bullying, and increased levels depression and obesity, especially among the younger generations. When the brain’s pleasure chemicals are released through virtual interactions, there is a strong temptation to favor the digital world over the physical one, and to think and communicate in the limited language of text and meme.

Yet there is evidence of a backlash against the online life or at least a growing awareness of its problems, epitomized by the “Off Facebook for Lent” movement among Christians. Even on my son’s college campus, there are groups that turn off phones when meeting in person or eating together. Perhaps texting while walking on crowded streets will become as socially unacceptable as smoking while walking on crowded streets. And actually talking on a telephone will be seen as appealingly “retro.”

STHH*

In the shorthand of my generation: Nuff said.

* In my honest opinion

* Laugh out loud

* Laughing my ass off

* Trying not to laugh

* Stranger things have happened