By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing - Every few years, I reread a couple of my favorite authors. George Orwell, despite his disdain for things Catholic, has always been on my list. This time I paid special attention to his essay, “The Principles of Newspeak.” He appended it to his dystopian novel 1984. As Orwell noted in his text, Newspeak – the language of Oceania’s Airstrip One (formerly the UK) – had three distinct vocabularies; A, B, and C. The B vocabulary “had been deliberately constructed for political purposes.” Its words “had, in every sense, a political implication.” They were designed to impose a desired mental attitude upon the user.