A Limerickal Commentary on the Second Vatican Council - Paperback

by Hugh Somerville Knapman (Editor), George Cardinal Pell (Foreword by)

Separating the occasional high points of the formal sessions of Vatican II were long stretches of procedural tedium and usually ponderous Latin speeches. Some of the anglophone council fathers found fleeting relief in recording their reactions, frustrations and opinions in limerick form. Many of these were collected in a typed manuscript together with their translations into Latin by Bishop Bernard Wall of Brentwood. The English limericks are a whimsical primary source for the history of Vatican II which add a little extra humour, colour and insight to the formal record of the council's proceedings; their contemporary Latin translations remind us that Latin is far from being a dead language. The editor has provided notes that situate the limericks in a clearer context.

As I am preparing to research matters relating to the Council, it seemed to me a pity that these limericks (with concluding verse not of the limerick form) were not more widely known. They offer an insight into the experience of at least some of the anglophone bishops at the Council, as well as their humanity, wit and creativity. In Bishop Wall's case, they show a knowledge of Latin of which we see far less in these enlightened days. They also offer a contemporaneous micro-commentary on some of the personalities and issues of the Council, adding a dash of colour to later and more conventional, wider-ranging commentary. The limericks reveal that bishops were exercised most, not surprisingly, by matters affecting themselves.