The only good preacher is a dead preacher

"The preacher is like an ass.  So long as he lives, he produces a repulsive bray.  [But once] he is dead one can make out of what is left of him musical instruments that produce a beautiful sound.  Conclusion:  the preacher must be a mortified man!"

     Peter Damian, De sancta simplicitate scientiae inflanti anteponenda 4, [Quid in concionatore requiratur [in a preacher]], as translated into German by Otto Hermann Pesch, "Theologie des Wortes bei Thomas von Aquin," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66, no. 4 (1969):  447 (437-465).  De divina omnipotentia e altri opuscoli, ed. Paolo Brezzi, trans. Bruno Nardi, Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero italiano 5 (Firenze:  Vallecchi Editore, 1943), 174 (163-201):

Tu quoque, fili mi, ut praedicandi sortiaris officium, imitare vel asini, de quo dictum est, vel etiam ovis exemplum.  Quae nimirum cum vivit, turpiter beat, mortua vero in instrumentis musicis suaviter cantat; sic et qui carnaliter vivunt, balare cum ovibus inaniter possunt, naviter explere praedicatoris officium nequeunt.

You, too, my son, in order that you may be allotted/obtain the office of preaching, imitate the example of the ass, as they say [(de quo dictum est)], or even of the sheep.  Which, of course, while it lives, gapes [(beat < beo = Fr. avoir bouche ouverte, béer > bayer acc. to Blaise)] in an unsightly manner, [but once] dead, in [the form of] musical instruments sings very beautifully.  So also those who live carnally are able to bleat with sheep in vain [(inaniter)], [but] are wholly [(naviter)] unable to perform the office of preacher. 

Also  PL 145, col. 697.
     See also here.
     Although Peter speaks of instrumenta musica, he seems to have mainly those that can be made out of a corium (skin or hide), for example the tympanum (tambourine or kettle drum) and the stringed instruments supplied with chorda (cat gut).
     In sec. 3 he says that "God omnipotent does not need our philology [(grammatica)]", as evidenced by the fact that Samson converted (figuratively speaking, of course!) a thousand Philistines by flinging about (iacere can also mean to let fall in speaking or utter, though Peter does not draw attention to this) the jawbone of an ass.

"The word is something which 'batters the air [(aerem verberat)]; hence it is also called a word [(verbum)]'."

     Bernard of Clairvaux, In sollemnitate apostolorum Petri et Pauli sermo 2, as quoted by Otto Hermann Pesch, "Theologie des Wortes bei Thomas von Aquin," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66, no. 4 (1969):  449-450 (437-465).  Cf. Bernhard von Clairvaux:  Sämtliche Werke lateinisch/deutsch, ed. Gerhard B. Winkler, vol. 8 (Insbruck:  Tyrolia-Verlag, 1997), p. 454, l. 2:  "Aerem verberat, unde et verbum dicitur".  According to Pesch, this was then a common etymological derivation.

Wootton on the 15th-century (i.e. post-1492) reevaluation of the theory of "'the terraqueous globe'"

"In the nineteenth century it was claimed, in all seriousness, that Columbus's contemporaries thought the world was flat and expected him to sail over the edge.  This story is balderdash.  But the fact that everyone (or at least every properly educated person) thought that you could in principle sail around the world (and in 1519-22 Magellan did just that) does not mean that they thought it was round."

     David Wootton, The invention of science:  a new history of the scientific revolution (New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 111.  Wootton outlines the five available theories (111-117), of which only the fifth ("held by Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Andalo di Negro (1260-1334), Themo Judaei (mid fourteenth century) and Marsilius of Inghen (1340-96)") corresponds to the "the modern conception" of "'the terraqueous globe'" (117).  Yet "this last belief found no support in the fifteenth century", and was only rehabilitated in the wake of the Columbian discovery of 1492.  The first of the five, that of Sacrobosco (c. 1195-c. 1256), is represented by the illustration, taken from p. 119 of a 1585 printing of Christophorus Clavius' In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius (Wootton reproduces this from the 2nd edition of 1581), where it is rejected (124).
     For an earlier critique of Wootton on this (who, however, seems to rise to it here), go here.

Mere nostalgia for the Good as "the root of despair"

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"It is the desire for Good that evil little by little destroys in us, but it is prevented from destroying with it the nostalgia for that Good of which we are no longer capable.  On the contrary it nourishes it and cultivates it, for it is already the root of despair—of that despair which alone is capable of completing our destruction by snatching us from God."

     Georges Bernanos, "Brother Martin," trans. Erwin W. Geissman, Cross currents 2, no. 4 (Summer 1952):  7 (1-9).  All of this appeared originally in Esprit 19, no. 10 =no. 183 (Octobre 1951):  (433-435).

"one reforms nothing in the Church by ordinary means."

Pharisaic "Indignation has never redeemed anyone, but it has probably lost many souls.  All the simoniacal bacchanals of sixteenth century Rome would not have been of great profit for the devil if they had not succeeded in the unique coup of hurling Luther into despair and, along with this dauntless monk, two-thirds of unhappy Christendom.  Luther and his followers despaired of the Church, and it is a curious fact that one who despairs of the Church runs the risk of sooner or later despairing of mankind.  From this point of view Protestantism appears to me like a compromise with despair. . . .
     "A moment ago I wrote that the scandal of Renaissance Rome hurled Luther into despair.  No doubt that is true only in part.  For a monk of his time that sort of danse macabre [(presumably the scandal)] had nothing about it to disconcert either reason or conscience, and the awaited inevitable end found itself inscribed in stone upon the portals of cathedrals.  The people of the Church would have willingly tolerated his joining his voice to so many other more illustrious or more saintly voices which never ceased to denounce these disorders.  The unhappiness of Martin Luther was to aspire to reform. . . . [Now] It is . . . a fact of experience that one reforms nothing in the Church by ordinary means.  Whoever pretends to reform the Church by these means, by the very means through which one reforms a temporal society, not only fails in his undertaking, but infallibly ends by finding himself outside the Church.  I say that he finds himself outside the Church before anyone takes the trouble of excluding him.  I say that he excludes himself by a sort of tragic fatality.  He renounces the Church's spirit, he renounces her dogmas, he becomes her enemy almost without his own knowledge, and if he tries to return each step only separates him the more.  It seems as if his very good will itself is accursed.  This, I repeat, is a fact of experience that everyone can verify for himself if he will only take the trouble of studying the lives of heresiarchs great and small.  One reforms the Church only by suffering for her.  One reforms the visible Church only by suffering for the invisible Church.  One reforms the vices of the Church only by being prodigal of the example of her most heroic virtues.  It is possible that St. Francis Assisi was not less revolted than Luther by the debauchery and by the simony of prelates.  It is even certain that he suffered more cruelly because of them, for his nature was very different from that of the monk of Weimar.  But he did not challenge the iniquity, he did not try to confront it with himself.  He hurled himself into poverty, plunged into it as deeply as he could, along with his followers, as into the source of all purity.  Instead of trying to snatch from the Church her ill-gained goods, he overwhelmed her with invisible treasures, and under the gentle hand of this mendicant the heap of gold and luxury began to blossom like an April hedge. . . .
     "The Church has need not of reformers, but of saints.  Martin was the reformer born.  There are reformers whose tragic destiny seems explicable to us, Lamennais for example. . . . He was made for despair. . . . He filled himself to the brim with despair.  But Luther, Martin Luther, he was rather made for joy. . . .  Ah well, this strong man held out no longer than the other.  He too became infatuated with himself.  We have seen him take the bit in his teeth, like a drayhorse which has set its huge hoof in a wasp's nest.  He took off kicking clumsily with his four hooves, belly to the ground.  And when he came to a halt—not out of weariness certainly, but to see where he was, to recover his breath, to smell out his wounds—the old Church was already far behind him, at an immense distance, incalculable, separated from him by all of eternity, and he—ah, rage, stupefaction, heart-rending misfortune."

     Georges Bernanos, "Brother Martin," trans. Erwin W. Geissman, Cross currents 2, no. 4 (Summer 1952):  5-7 (1-9).  All of this appeared originally in Esprit 19, no. 10 =no. 183 (Octobre 1951):  (433-445).  "in common medical parlance, the words 'acute crisis' soon evoke another word, 'fever'.  But pharisaism is a suppuration without fever, a cold and painless abscess" (4).
     But as for Luther himself, "I believe that there is here rather something to make us dream on the mysterious designs of the all-powerful mercy towards this strange man.  I prefer to try to understand something of the scenes of a drama whose true dénouement will always remain unknown to us in this world and perhaps also in the next.  Who can tell, indeed, where the gentle pity of God will hid those He has snatched from Hell by some irresistible stratagem, to the eternal confusion of the just and the wise" (5).

Suffering at the hands of the Church

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"Something rather more than the courage of optimists is necessary to suffer through [(par, by or at the hands of)] the Church at a time when appearances lead men to believe that the Church is not with those who suffer."

     Albert Béguin, introductory note to Georges Bernanos, "Brother Martin," trans. Erwin W. Geissman, Cross currents 2, no. 4 (Summer 1952):  2 (1-9).  All of this appeared originally in Esprit 19, no. 10 =no. 183 (Octobre 1951):  434 (433-445).
     As for the phrase "to suffer through the Church", Béguin got that through Bernanos from "a young Dominican slain at Verdun, Father Clérissac":  "'To suffer for the Church is nothing; it is necessary to suffer through her'" (4:  "Cela n’est rien de souffrir pour l’Eglise, il faut avoir souffert par Elle", It is nothing to suffer for the Church; it is neccessary to have suffered at her hands (437)).

'If our bodies are temples, we should not fear to fill them with smoke."

New Liturgical Movement

     Matthew Schmitz, response to Curt R. Craton in "Blowing smoke," "Letters," First things no. 267 (November 2016):  14 (13-14).  "Now, incense is not tobacco, and I consider smoking a beautiful indulgence but an ugly habit.  Still, . . ."  (What is more, smoking does not do to a temple what it does to a body.)