A writing consultant wrote me something this week that, all too often, may be equally true of the Church:
"As I say in my book ... prescriptivists who decry language change are not purists (as they like to make out); they are just conservatives. To see this, just note that they always want to preserve the English they were taught. It’s never “Let’s go back to Milton … or Shakespeare … or Chaucer”. No, it’s the battery of rules beaten into them in the classroom they long for. They use nostalgia as a weapon."
OBSERVATION: Likewise, prescriptivists in the Church may not be purists. They may merely be interested in their own selfish desire for what they themselves once knew -- "the classroom they long for". It's nostalgia, nothing more. Purism is something else.
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