J
JMKC
Guest
The hymn Ubi Caritas begins with the phrase, “Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.” Translated to English it means, “Where charity and love are, God is there.” The trouble I’m having is finding a Catholic definition which distinguishes the difference between love and charity. The Catholic Encyclopedia (as far as I have read) refers to charity in its article about love, which suggests to me that they are the same thing. My question is, if there is no difference between love and charity then why is there a distinction in the lyrics of this hymn?
I once had a friend say that long ago there was a mistake in translation where the word “caritas” was used to translate a word (he might have been referring to St. Jerome translating the Vulgate) but that it was an inaccurate translation. The claim was that, since then, we have used the word charity where the original word means something else. Now, I am NOT inclined to believe this since I don’t know the original source of this information and I would assume that Biblical scholars and linguists would have caught onto this by now. I just thought I’d include this story to give some context to where my question comes from.
Thanks in advance!
I once had a friend say that long ago there was a mistake in translation where the word “caritas” was used to translate a word (he might have been referring to St. Jerome translating the Vulgate) but that it was an inaccurate translation. The claim was that, since then, we have used the word charity where the original word means something else. Now, I am NOT inclined to believe this since I don’t know the original source of this information and I would assume that Biblical scholars and linguists would have caught onto this by now. I just thought I’d include this story to give some context to where my question comes from.
Thanks in advance!
