Am I obligated to capitalize Him and He?

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Many times when I answer posts, I will use pronouns when talking about Christ. To be honest, capitalizing the He and Him each time can be tedious and distracting. I understand it is a form of respect, but is there a norm or rule that states that we should capitalize those pronouns?

I certainly don’t want to discontinue the practice out of disrespect. The primary reason I have not is for reasons of scandal. Many of the folks I communicate with are non-Catholics and I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, leading people to believe I don’t respect Jesus because I used ‘he’ instead of ‘He’.

I am all for capitalizing proper names (e.g God not a concept, it is a proper name). It is just the pronouns.
 
fermat said:
Many times when I answer posts, I will use pronouns when talking about Christ. To be honest, capitalizing the He and Him each time can be tedious and distracting. I understand it is a form of respect, but is there a norm or rule that states that we should capitalize those pronouns?

I certainly don’t want to discontinue the practice out of disrespect. The primary reason I have not is for reasons of scandal. Many of the folks I communicate with are non-Catholics and I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, leading people to believe I don’t respect Jesus because I used ‘he’ instead of ‘He’.

I am all for capitalizing proper names (e.g God not a concept, it is a proper name). It is just the pronouns.
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I believe the Church traditionally does not capitalize pronouns, at least in certain works. The Catechism, for example, does not.
 
This is a very interesting question.

I am somewhat confused about capitals (upper case), e.g. church, gentiles, bible, scripture, biblical etc.

I see recently Jesus being referred to as he.

I look forward to more replies.
 
They say “respect has to be earned”. I think God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit have “earned” the right to have Him and He capitalized.
 
I see that it is becoming less and less common to captialize pronouns when referring to Our Lord. This really bothers me. He deserves every respect that can be paid! Compare the suffering of His Passion to any suffering caused by taking the time to capitalize a few words. It’s minor.

I am not trying to attack you, fermat, but this has been bothering me lately! I have been discussing this with some Catholics who do not think we should capitalize the pronouns. The Lectionary does not even capitalize any pronouns :confused:
 
I ALWAYS capitalize He and Him when referring to Christ, God and the Holy Spirit unless I’m typing in a hurry and simply miss it. I was raised that even pronouns referring to our Lord should always, always be capitalized.
 
gee maybe we shouldnt use anything that makes us have to slow down you know no punctuation at all since it just takes time to do it would sure make things a lot easier heck why show respect to god at all after all it takes time to give him respect same goes for his son he just died for us thats not a big enough deal to show respect for either yes this is a good idea only next time im not even going to use the space barcuzthattakestoomuchtimetoo

Do you really feel that God and Jesus should not have that simple respect fermat, or are you just getting a discussion going?
 
fermat, you are not obliged to capitalize Him and He. Most translations of the Bible don’t… and as noted above the Catechism. I’m sure God doesn’t mind, He is not petty.

Having said that, I am in the habit of capitalizing more than most… It’s just my own little preference. I capitalize Heaven and Hell because they are specific places. Confession to distinguish it from a confession, say to someone you have wronged. And so on.
 
tuscany said:
gee maybe we shouldnt use anything that makes us have to slow down you know no punctuation at all since it just takes time to do it would sure make things a lot easier heck why show respect to god at all after all it takes time to give him respect same goes for his son he just died for us thats not a big enough deal to show respect for either yes this is a good idea only next time im not even going to use the space barcuzthattakestoomuchtimetoo

Do you really feel that God and Jesus should not have that simple respect fermat, or are you just getting a discussion going?
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I thought it was a fair question. The lectionary – even the Bible, does not capitalize these. I guess you think we should be better writers than the authors of the Bible?

I was brought up capitalizing pronouns, and I do it out of habit though sometimes it seems a bit pretentious. I’ve wondered the same thing.

Alsounoyourdualisticthinkingwhenuaskeither/or questionslikethat isnotgoingtotrapmeintothinkingtheopwasflawed.

Is this what you want to hear, “because I wonder whether I should capitalize a pronoun, clearly I have no respect for God?”

dontelevatepersonalhabitsasiftheyweredogma.

Alan
 
AlanFromWichita,
Yes of course it was a fair question, all questions are. And I gave him MY answer.

I never said the post was flawed, nor did I think fermat was speaking of dogma. He asked if he was obligated to capitalize. I took obligated in the general sense, not in the dogma “going to hell for it” sense.

Fermat is the one that said it was," tedious and distracting". I wasn’t putting him down, I was just trying to show how things would be if we only did things in life the easist way.

Fermat admits it is a " form of respect". Therefore, logically, if he does not use it is he not being dis-respectful?

I am sure that it must be tedious and distracting to have to wait in line and bow to the queen of England, bend over and kiss the Pope’s ring, or send out 150 thank you cards for wedding gifts, but you do these things out of respect.
 
tuscany,

I’m sorry; I don’t know why I took the tone I did. I must have gotten distracted or something and thought I read something I didn’t. :o

Alan
 
AlanFromWichita,

Your apology is absolutely accepted!!
Peace,
tuscany
 
When writing in a particular language, the rules of grammar govern the matter, not the notions of piety. One is never obliged by religion to usurp rules of grammar, in any case.

That having been said, there is a pious tradition of capitalizing “He”, "Him, and “His” when referring to the deity. Once upon a time, the same was done for the British monarch. It was a sign of respect. But to refuse to do so is by no means a sign of disrespect.

If you read even the very traditional Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible, you will not find “he”, “him”, or “his” capitalized when those pronouns refer to Our Lord. Not once.

Now, if the Bible can get away with not capitalizing personal pronouns which refer to God, so can you.
 
fermat said:
Many times when I answer posts, I will use pronouns when talking about Christ. To be honest, capitalizing the He and Him each time can be tedious and distracting. I understand it is a form of respect, but is there a norm or rule that states that we should capitalize those pronouns?

I certainly don’t want to discontinue the practice out of disrespect. The primary reason I have not is for reasons of scandal. Many of the folks I communicate with are non-Catholics and I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, leading people to believe I don’t respect Jesus because I used ‘he’ instead of ‘He’.

I am all for capitalizing proper names (e.g God not a concept, it is a proper name). It is just the pronouns.
Click to expand...
Well does anyone ever use a lower case ‘g’ when referring to Jesus’ Heavenly Father? Is it god or God? So if Jesus is God with an upper case ‘G’ then I would use upper cases for the letter h.

My two cents.
 
I tend to capitalize the pronouns when I think to do it, but there is certainly no obligation to do so. Even beyond the Catechism, take a look at any Church document and you will not find the pronouns capitalized. If the Church Herself* doesn’t do it, I certainly don’t think there’s an obligation to do so, let alone it being somehow disrespectful not to.

The various Catholic publishers seem to take differing stances on it in their publications. If you look at the editorial guidelines for a particular publisher, they usually make mention of it. Of course, the better Catholic publishers do tend to capitalize the pronouns. 😉

Capitalization is a convention, not an absolute. As I understand it, there is no such thing as capital letters (or even punctuation) in ancient Hebrew (not sure about the Greek), so it really wasn’t an issue for the biblical authors. 🙂

I think the more grammatically correct thing to do is to not capitalize the pronouns. That’s just how the English language goes. Capitalizing them is, I think, more of a form of personal piety than anything. I wonder if it’s just an American thing… 🤷
  • Yes, I also capitalize the feminine pronouns in speaking about the Church. 🙂
 
Pregustator said:
When writing in a particular language, the rules of grammar govern the matter, not the notions of piety. One is never obliged by religion to usurp rules of grammar, in any case.

That having been said, there is a pious tradition of capitalizing “He”, "Him, and “His” when referring to the deity. Once upon a time, the same was done for the British monarch. It was a sign of respect. But to refuse to do so is by no means a sign of disrespect.

If you read even the very traditional Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible, you will not find “he”, “him”, or “his” capitalized when those pronouns refer to Our Lord. Not once.

Now, if the Bible can get away with not capitalizing personal pronouns which refer to God, so can you.
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Right on. 👍 Welcome to CAF! 👋
 
The only Bible translations with pronouns in caps (that I can find) are

AMP
NASB
YLT
NKJV
HCSB
JPS
NLT
 
Thanks for all the feedback! There seems to be (about) two camps here: Those who feel that to not use capitalized pronouns is a sign of disrespect and those who feel that it doesn’t matter.

I am firmly in the ‘it doesn’t matter’ camp, but I have decided to continue using them primarily because most of the people I am trying to reach would feel it was disrespectful if I didn’t use it. Back to my original ‘scandal’ point, in some cases you don’t need to be doing anything wrong to cause scandal. Just the appearance of an impropriety is sufficient reason to avoid it.
 
Well said fermat, and very true!! 👍

(But I just noticed though, that everywhere you talk about yourself, you have capitalized the letter I. Why?? That takes as much time to do as making a capital H does.)! 🙂
 
In neither Hebrew or Koine Greek, there was no such a thing as is shown in capitalization. Tuscany was very close to the original writing of Greek in his original post on this thread. There was also no punctuation nor was there a space between words. This practice of capitalization is one that can change the meaning of passages as we read them. As an example, in Isaiah 7:14, the word “son” is not capitalized in many translations. The Gideons capitalize it in their Bibles that are put into hotel rooms. This certainly changes the meaning of the passage. In looking at modern evangelical translations, I do not find it a constant practice. For example, it is not in the Holman Standard Christian Bible or the New International Version.
 
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