Posts Tagged ‘language’

Synod vocabulary: Are the synodal reports speaking the same language?

Thursday, February 16th, 2023

As the Church’s global “synod on synodality” continues, groups of bishops and laity are now staging continental-level discussions of the “Working Document for the Continental Stage,” a synthesis document created by a Vatican-appointed working group. The continental stage’s working document – published by the Vatican in October –  is meant to be a summary and Read more

The cardinal who won a cursing contest, allegedly

Thursday, October 6th, 2022
cardinal cursing contest

In 1817, Lord Byron is said to have challenged an Italian cardinal to a multilingual cursing contest. The English poet reputedly opened the contest by uttering as many different imprecations as he could in the languages he had studied. Byron recalled later that he swore “in all the tongues in which I knew a single Read more

Do not betray our faith with sloppy words

Monday, April 11th, 2022
sloppy words

As Lent comes towards its climax in the celebration of Easter, we might revisit the energy of Ash Wednesday and renew our renewal for this final week. This process of making changes in our lives, having a new outlook, repenting, converting, turning over a new leaf — all render the command, metanoeite — that we Read more

Language, love, laïcité and violence

Monday, November 9th, 2020
clamour and silence

I write in support of Imam Gamal Foude’s comments on the need for love and respect in combatting violence. With all due respect to French leaders, I think they could start by reviewing the implications of laïcité. At this time, they have much to say about “Islamic terrorism”.  Worse, some of the language they are Read more

Cardinal says homosexual orientation God-given

Friday, December 11th, 2015

An Indian cardinal has said he believes that the sexual orientation of homosexual people might well be given by God. In an interview with The Hindu, Cardinal Oswald Gracias said he knows “there is still research being done whether it’s a matter of choice or matter of orientation and there are two opinions on this matter”. Read more

Prelate warns Church leaders to mind language on marriage

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015

Dublin’s archbishop has warned Church leaders not to use insensitive and over-judgemental language in debates on marriage and family. Speaking in a Lenten talk in Country Kerry, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s warning also extended to those he called the Church’s “self-appointed spokespeople”. “Where the Church argues from general principles, there is inevitably the feeling on the Read more

Softer language doesn’t mean softer teaching, cardinals say

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014

Momentum is building at the synod on the family for a change in the language the Church uses in its teaching on sexuality. But that doesn’t mean a change in Church doctrine, two leading cardinals have said. “Everybody wants to show God’s love and mercy, but it also brings you to very difficult situations and Read more

A minority language does not work for a global Church

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014
synod

A Latin teacher at the seminary I attended described Italian and the other modern Romance languages as “corrupt provincial dialects of Latin”. Pope Francis has decided that the working language of the Extraordinary Synod for the Family being held at the Vatican should not be Latin, but one of those modern descendants, Italian. That decision Read more

RIP Pope John Paul’s “contraceptive mentality”: 1979-2014

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014

The biggest news to come out of the bishops’ synod in Rome so far is the acknowledgement that when it comes to talking about issues of family and sexuality, language matters. Among the examples of “harsh” rhetoric that bishops discussed as doing more harm than good in terms of “inviting people to draw closer to Read more

The Aramaic language is being resurrected in Israel

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Two Israeli television channels are trying to see to it that Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his contemporaries in that region of the Roman Empire, will once again become a living language and not just be an almost extinct curiosity for scholars of Semitic languages to study.

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