So, how did the new translation go down at your parish?

[JReducation]

That’s how people should be saying it. God is not a he. God is God. It was a male dominated society hundreds of years ago which made God a he. I for one, and I think most Catholics of my generation and my parents generation, understand this and make the appropriate changes to refer to God as God.

That for one is one thing I wish they would have fixed the God/he in the new translation. But that would be the Vatican looking forward with the rest of society to the 21st century, vs backwards to the 14th century.

Nooooooooo

The first generation Christians understood that the first person of the Trinity is Father, not mother and that this is not a cultural relativism, but a revealed reality. In the Torah and the Talmudic commentaries, it is very clear that God revealed himself as a Father. In the New Testament, Christ reveals the Father reveals himself as one with the Father. Christ is masculine.

Do not confuse biological gender with ontological gender. They are not the same thing. Ontologically, God the Father is just that, Father. This has always been the faith of the Church, not just a cultural custom. It is required belief for Christians, Muslims and Jews.

To say anything other than Father, in the liturgy, would be heresy. It would deny the ontology that has been revealed. We do not adapt God to our culture. We adapt our culture to God’s self-disclosure.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Digitonomy]

Ontologically, God the Father is just that, Father. This has always been the faith of the Church, not just a cultural custom. It is required belief for Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Muslims view God as male, but not as a father.

Here’s a brief Wikipedia snippet on this:

Muslim theology rejects the Judeo-Christian concept of God as a “father”, particularly in regard to his relationship to prophet Issa (Jesus in Islam).

According to the Qur’an:[28]

"Say: He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him." (Sura 112:1-4, Yusuf Ali)

 

[Digitonomy]

When we have a discussion the constitution says that you get 90 seconds to make your point, you may not raise your voice above a loud whisper, you must never confront your brother, you can only talk about the point on the table and you may never question the other person’s motives. Everyone gets to speak twice and the discussion is over, unless the Guardian believes it is fruitful to take it around one more time.

This is intriguing. Is it a global Franciscan constitution, or is it a local constitution? And it seems like this doesn’t lend itself to much depth of discussion. E.g. your post #301 could not easily be spoken in 90 seconds.

 

[odile53]

I guess you wouldn’t like living in my community then.

When we have a discussion the constitution says that you get 90 seconds to make your point, you may not raise your voice above a loud whisper, you must never confront your brother, you can only talk about the point on the table and you may never question the other person’s motives. Everyone gets to speak twice and the discussion is over, unless the Guardian believes it is fruitful to take it around one more time.

Oh yeah, the Guardian decides the conclusion.

In my world, the whole back and forth thing is arguing.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Brother, that sounds as close to heaven as I think you can get when living on this earth! We had a staff meeting at the hospital where I’m employed the other day, and it went on and on and on, nearly every possible tangential trajectory was launched, little was accomplished, we took three hours of time that could have been more productively employed, nasty rejoinders were hurled back and forth (at least people did stop short of casting aspersions about their opponents’ ancestors,) and at the very end, as I mentioned, little was actually done. It could have just been solved with an e-mail. The headache I had lasted well into the evening. Ninety seconds is perfectly adequate to get a well-formulated point across to someone else, in my opinion.

Do you think St. Francis would mind terribly if I posted that excerpt of your community’s Rule on the agenda that gets passed out before NEXT month’s meeting? He sounds like, among other things, he was an absolute genius at group dynamics!

 

[opus101]

Reminds me of another thing. Buddhists in China, Korea and Japan even today recite holy texts as they were, translated/transliterated from Pali or Sanskrit into Classical Chinese, about a thousand years ago. For China of course this is understandable, but in Korea and Japan they aren’t using any further translations in the native language: they recite the Chinese texts as they are, each in their respective methods of reading the Chinese characters. Sure they read the characters slightly differently (something much more evident now that all three languages had further evolved since the transmission of Buddhism in those lands and the phonological differences are more marked), but since they read from the same texts, this brings about a sort of uncanny sense of continuity between the Buddhists of these three countries. To give a concrete example, the so-called Heart Sutra: here it is in (Mandarin) Chinese, then in Korean, then in Japanese. Note that all three are using pretty much the same text, albeit with different pronunciations and different methods of chanting.

One of these translators, the famous travelling monk Xuanzang, followed a rule of not translating five categories of words and phrases (五種不翻, loosely rendered, the “Five Non-Translatables” ), opting instead to retain them in their original Sanskrit through transliteration into Chinese characters.

• Ritual speech, such as mantras and dharanis
• Polysemic words (i.e. words that have multiple and different meanings, depending on context)
• Words not originally found in China
• Words that were traditionally transcribed and not translated
• Words perceived to be lofty and subtle, which a translation might devalue and obscure

This is one of those places where I honestly feel that non-Christians beat us.

EXTREMELY interesting and useful information! Write an article for the New York Times! At least send a letter. Seriously.

 

[opus101]

In many languages words have gender, which does not always coincide with the gender of the object. Just because we use masculine words and concepts to talk about God does not mean that God is a man or a woman.

For a modern example, in French you would say “Tom Cruise est une grande vedette (Tom Cruise is a big movie star).” The word “vedette (movie star)” is feminine, even though Tom is a man. You could then go on to say this about Tom: “La vedette vive à Hollywood où elle travaille à Paramount Pictures (The movie star lives in Hollywood where she works at Paramount Pictures).” Even though Tom is still a man, the sentence uses “she” because it refers back to the word “la vedette,” which is feminine.

A similar example would be the word “le bébé (the baby),” which is masculine even when talking about a little girl.

Another great bit of information that needs to be disseminated widely. We Americans can be so myopic, often thinking “We are the world”. This pokes holes in many of the ridiculous criticisms that are going around. We think the world should conform to us and our (faulty and incomplete) understanding of things.

 

[CB_Catholic]

Muslims view God as male, but not as a father.

Here’s a brief Wikipedia snippet on this:

I remember, off the top of my head, Scott Hahn telling a story where he and a friend of his (can’t remember who) were meeting with a couple of Muslim men for discussion at a restaurant, and the meeting was cut short by the Muslims because Scott kept referring to God as Father, and the Muslims were highly insulted and considered that an insult to Allah. They got up and left and refused to speak any more with them. They apparently do not consider God in fatherly terms as we do, but more as a Master-slave relationship. I am sorry, but I cannot remember which TV program on EWTN this was.

 

[JReducation]

Muslims view God as male, but not as a father.

Here’s a brief Wikipedia snippet on this:

This is intriguing. Is it a global Franciscan constitution, or is it a local constitution? And it seems like this doesn’t lend itself to much depth of discussion. E.g. your post #301 could not easily be spoken in 90 seconds.

Francis borrowed the concept of the chapter from the Benedictines. It’s not a Franciscan concept. Each Franciscan and Benedictine community has its rules on such things as the amount of time that you have to make your point and how many times you can go around. But chapters all follow the same format.

1. The question or issue is put on the table by the chair, usually the superior.
2. The discussion goes around the room once.
3. Then there is a second round to respond to what was said the first time.
4. Either the constitutions or the chapter rules, which is like a handbook on procedures, will say how often the chair can allow the discussion to go around the room. It will also state whether or not there is an opportunity for questions put to the floor.
5. You follow these rules, which will vary from one constitution to another, but the format is the same.

• Put the point the table
• Go around the room as often as allowed
• Open the floor to questions, if allowed
• Take a vote if needed or the superior draws the conclusion
• Conversation is over and may not be brought up again.

NEST SUBJECT.

Brother, that sounds as close to heaven . . .

It’s heavenly in the sense that it places great emphasis on internal discipline. You train to think as the angels think. Angels are very single minded in their focus. If we look at the Scriptures, each of the Archangels has a very specific role. In addition, when they appear to man, they have something to say about a very specific topic. They don’t allow themselves to get sidetracked into tangents. The best example of this is Gabriel and Zachariah. Zachariah started with, "But . . . " Gabriel shuts him up for nine months.

Jacob says to the angel that he won’t release him until he blesses him. The angel does so and the whole thing comes to an end. It’s not dragged out.

Jesus himself never dragged a discussion ad nauseam. They asked him a question and he answered the question. They acted like jerks, he called them jerks and moved on.

Do you think St. Francis would mind terribly if I posted that excerpt of your community’s Rule on the agenda that gets passed out before NEXT month’s meeting? He sounds like, among other things, he was an absolute genius at group dynamics!

St. Francis was certainly a very intelligent man. His intelligence came from very astute observation of the people in Scripture. As the order grew, he would gather the brethren for chapters. There were topics that needed to be discussed. He borrowed the format used by the monks and applied it outside of the cloister.

Francis, Dominic and Ignatius of Loyola were excellent at group dynamics. But Francis actually writes into his rule a prohibition on argumentation. You are not allowed to argue.

If I were at a community meeting (chapter) I would have to condense all of this into 90 seconds. That forces me to talk in bullets. It forces the listener to pay very close attention. There requires discipline on both sides. If the listener does not understand, he can ask for clarity when his turn comes up. I would try to clarify when my turn comes up again. The bigger the group, the tighter the rules. Only superiors can talk without time limit.

The Dominicans have longer chapters than we do, because they govern by consensus. They too have time restraints on how long you can talk. They just go around and around more times. It’s not a situation of “let’s talk about this until we all agree.” That’s never going to happen. At some point, either the prior closes the discussion or a vote closes the discussion. They just allow more rounds than other communities. It’s the same principle. You don’t drag something on when it becomes obvious that it’s going nowhere. The person in charge has the authority to bring the discussion to a close. Or someone in the community makes a motion that we bring this to a close.

I wish that government would take lessons from religious communities. They would probably save time and money.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF :christmastree1:

 

[vz71]

It’s really the English speaking Catholic who has to join the rest of the Latin Church by praying with the same words and the same meanings. Even though things made sense to us, the sense that they made to us was not the sense that the Church wanted.

I see another problem coming though.
We are coming in line with the rest of the church as far as speaking the words, but there needs to be an effort to educate what the words mean.

For now there will be a lot of people that will hold to the incorrect ideas and think the church is simply using a backward way of wording it.
They may have no idea that their own idea may not be correct and that the translation is not at all odd to reflect what should be in the first place.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Nooooooooo

The first generation Christians understood that the first person of the Trinity is Father, not mother and that this is not a cultural relativism, but a revealed reality. In the Torah and the Talmudic commentaries, it is very clear that God revealed himself as a Father. In the New Testament, Christ reveals the Father reveals himself as one with the Father. Christ is masculine.

Do not confuse biological gender with ontological gender. They are not the same thing. Ontologically, God the Father is just that, Father. This has always been the faith of the Church, not just a cultural custom. It is required belief for Christians, Muslims and Jews.

To say anything other than Father, in the liturgy, would be heresy. It would deny the ontology that has been revealed. We do not adapt God to our culture. We adapt our culture to God’s self-disclosure.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Just to add to this, I think a good thing to remember is that fatherhood and, more rarely, bridegroomhood (if that’s a word) are applied to God in the Christian tradition not as a nice little metaphor that appeals to us and which might be changed to fit changing sensibilities but because those human relationships actually reflect in a special way the relationship between God and the universe or God and the human soul. Family relationships are a reflection of the relationships pertaining to God, not the other way around, and so calling God Father is not an arbitrary choice but really does reflect the reality of God’s relationship to us better than 'Mother" for instance.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

I see another problem coming though.
We are coming in line with the rest of the church as far as speaking the words, but there needs to be an effort to educate what the words mean.

For now there will be a lot of people that will hold to the incorrect ideas and think the church is simply using a backward way of wording it.
They may have no idea that their own idea may not be correct and that the translation is not at all odd to reflect what should be in the first place.

In my parish they passed out with the bulletin a glossary of “new” words we would find in the liturgy which might be unfamiliar, which was almost insulting in its completeness (do some people really not know what “implore” or “precursor” mean?). The problem is I doubt many people actually read the glossary. We do need to make an effort to make resources available, but ultimately there’s also a responsibility on the part of the people to take advantage of those resources.

 

[Chatter163]

In my parish they passed out with the bulletin a glossary of “new” words we would find in the liturgy which might be unfamiliar, which was almost insulting in its completeness (do some people really not know what “implore” or “precursor” mean?). The problem is I doubt many people actually read the glossary. We do need to make an effort to make resources available, but ultimately there’s also a responsibility on the part of the people to take advantage of those resources.

I understand completely what you are saying, but also can assure you that in this day and age, sadly, many people–especially young people–do not know what words such as implore and especially precursor, mean. :sad_yes:

 

[Miriam1947]

I understand completely what you are saying, but also can assure you that in this day and age, sadly, many people–especially young people–do not know what words such as implore and especially precursor, mean. :sad_yes:

Well we can blame parents or we can blame schools. It is absolutely amazing to me how uneducated our educated children are.

 

[YoungTradCath]

I understand completely what you are saying, but also can assure you that in this day and age, sadly, many people–especially young people–do not know what words such as implore and especially precursor, mean. :sad_yes:

I do. I’m 18 and I went to a public school in the South.

 

[NorthTexan88]

I do. I’m 18 and I went to a public school in the South.

Same here…Alabama is about as South as you can get ha. But I understand them.

 

[Chatter163]

Of course, there are plenty of intelligent, well-read young people who have been given the blessing of model parents and teachers, and who learned to read with enthusiasm. Alas, our society as a whole has not encouraged reading in recent years, and without recreational reading to support educational reading, vocabulary development is not what it once was among the non-readers. And the non-readers, thanks to a mainly visual, less textual, culture, are growing in number.

 

[MissRose73]

At the parish I went to today for Saturday evening Mass, things went much smoother compared to the first week where I attended Mass that had no projection system & used only pew cards. This church projected the people’s responses on the large screen, and it seems like more people got them right than wrong. This church did the Nicene Creed compared to last week the other parish chose the Apostles’ Creed, and I could tell some people were trying to say the previous version from memory even though the words were projected for all to see & read. Its a matter of time before the responses are ingrained in us for sure.

 

[JReducation]

I see another problem coming though.
We are coming in line with the rest of the church as far as speaking the words, but there needs to be an effort to educate what the words mean.

For now there will be a lot of people that will hold to the incorrect ideas and think the church is simply using a backward way of wording it.
They may have no idea that their own idea may not be correct and that the translation is not at all odd to reflect what should be in the first place.

That’s going to vary from parish to parish. The Franciscans (all the congregations in the USA) had workshops for the laity to teach them the meaning. I taught one where only 11 people showed up in a parish of 3,000. They contracted seven educators to do seven workshops at different times and one different days for people with different schedules. They were short, two hours. Some Catholic newspapers put the glossaries into their papers weeks in advance. The USCCB put the whole explanation on its website. Many dioceses did too. Many parishes had them taught in CCD. You can drag people out of their homes. It’s tempting.

Just to add to this, I think a good thing to remember is that fatherhood and, more rarely, bridegroomhood (if that’s a word) are applied to God in the Christian tradition not as a nice little metaphor that appeals to us and which might be changed to fit changing sensibilities but because those human relationships actually reflect in a special way the relationship between God and the universe or God and the human soul. Family relationships are a reflection of the relationships pertaining to God, not the other way around, and so calling God Father is not an arbitrary choice but really does reflect the reality of God’s relationship to us better than 'Mother" for instance.

You are correct. This is the way that God revealed himself. We cannot adapt God to culture. We use culture to help us understand. That’s another story. However, God is not the fabrication of culture.

At the parish I went to today for Saturday evening Mass, things went much smoother compared to the first week where I attended Mass that had no projection system & used only pew cards. This church projected the people’s responses on the large screen, and it seems like more people got them right than wrong. This church did the Nicene Creed compared to last week the other parish chose the Apostles’ Creed, and I could tell some people were trying to say the previous version from memory even though the words were projected for all to see & read. Its a matter of time before the responses are ingrained in us for sure.

I think that it’s going to get smoother. Personally, I found myself forgetting to look at the card when I suddenly heard everyone around me saying something different. We’re not used to holding the cards. Soon, we won’t need the cards.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[ProVobis]

As I was standing in the confessional line today, there was a baptismal event occuring at the same time. About 50 attendees for two baptisms in English. Anyway, the priest started “The Lord be with you” and I just heard a somewhat subdued “And also with you.”

Although this wasn’t a liturgy per se, it does seem inconsistent to have one response for the Mass and another for other occasions.

 

[YoungTradCath]

As I was standing in the confessional line today, there was a baptismal event occuring at the same time. About 50 attendees for two baptisms in English. Anyway, the priest started “The Lord be with you” and I just heard a somewhat subdued “And also with you.”

Although this wasn’t a liturgy per se, it does seem inconsistent to have one response for the Mass and another for other occasions.

I agree, but until a temporary document comes from the Vatican or the Bishops’ Conference with approval from the Vatican, the response must be “And also with you” until a new translation of the Rituale comes out.

Or, the priest could simply use Latin!