On Tuesday, February 8, 1994 at 7:09:04 PM UTC-5, Clay Spinuzzi wrote:   
   > I read sometime back this amusing story about the origin of this famous   
   > phrase:   
   >    
   > When the Catholic church routinely held Mass in Latin only, the peasants   
   > (who of course didn't know Latin) would filter in and listen to the Mass,   
   > but of course understand none of it. They tended to regard it as magic --   
   > after all, it was sort of an incantation to them. So when the priest intoned   
   > the words of Christ:   
   >    
   >   "This is my body..."   
   >    
   > in LATIN:   
   >    
   >   "Hoc est corpus..."   
   >    
   > the common people heard:   
   >    
   >   "Hocus pocus..."   
   >    
   > Can anyone confirm this story and give a citation?   
   >    
   > --    
   > Clay Spinuzzi   
   > spinuzzi@ponder.csci.unt.edu * spinuzzi@twlab.unt.edu * spinuz   
   i@gab.unt.edu             
   >      "If I want your opinion, I'll divine it from your entrails."   
      
   The peasants knew the Latin of the Mass. They were taught it before they were   
   permitted to receive First Communion. Back then, they had to demonstrate that   
   they understood it, and parents were more involved in passing on the   
   knowledge. By the 1950s we    
   see more Catholic kids in the U.S. who ignored their lessons in schools, and   
   their own parents had been taught entirely by the nuns because for some   
   reason, the latest thought in education in the early part of the 20th Century   
   was that all teaching was    
   best left to the professionals. The parents of the 1950s might have understood   
   it, but they didn't pass the knowledge to their children, and the children   
   were more interested in worldly things like cruising and eating at fast food   
   joints and talking with    
   their friends on the phone, so they are largely ignorant of Latin...which led   
   to the myth that the peasants of earlier times didn't understand the basics of   
   the Mass. Because of course our own experience interprets the past...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)