The continental stage's working document - published by the Vatican in October - is meant to be a summary and synthesis of texts from bishops' conferences around the world, which themselves are drawn from diocesan summaries of discussions in parishes and diocesan meetings.

But how well does the "Working Document for the Continental Stage" actually reflect the synodal reports of the world's bishops' conferences?

When bishops' conferences submitted their national reports to the Vatican last year, 18 conferences submitted their texts in English. These came from every inhabited continent except South America.

The Pillar applied a quantitative textual analysis approach - called correspondence analysis - to both conference-level synodal summaries, and to the global "Working Document for the Continental Stage."

Correspondence analysis looks at the frequency with which different words and phrases appear in different documents, and then produces a visual representation of how unique particular phrases are to particular documents.

When words appear with equal frequency across all the documents, they are shown near a graph's origin point — shown as 0,0 on the X,Y axes of the graph.

Words common in some documents but not others are plotted further from the centre, near to the names of the documents in which they appear most frequently.

So what did we learn?

Well, on one hand, correspondence analysis shows nothing but patterns, and frequency relationships — data that by itself might prove very little.

But on the other hand, those patterns make suggestions — and in the case of the synod on synodality, they suggest differences in concern and emphasis among the reports of countries around the world, which were taken up with varying degrees of frequency by the drafters of the "Working Document for the Continental Stage."

Let's take a look

In the following correspondence analysis graph, we have magnified the central area of a correspondence graph, to separate words crowded in that area.

These words - such as "dialogue", "faithful", "people", "want" and "feel" - appeared with similar frequency across episcopal conference documents and the Vatican's "continental document."

Korea and the Nordic countries had the most average usage of terms, and are thus plotted near the center of the graph. Other conference documents fell into particular sets, which suggested some interesting similarities and contrasts.

Correspondence analysis suggested groupings of nations whose episcopal conferences clustered around certain themes.

The U.S., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, and Malta (whose official languages are Maltese and English) formed a cluster. Those countries mentioned leadership, the abuse crisis in the Church, young people, and families, more than reports from other regions did.

A second group of synodal reports consisted of Germany, alongside a set of countries from what is sometimes called the Global South — in this case, Malaysia, the Philippines, Zimbabwe, and Antilles). The reports from those countries spoke about bishops, the poor, and the laity more often than other regions.

Three smaller groups consisted of Scotland and Japan, the Nordic countries and Korea, and England, Wales, France.

But the global "Working Document" stood apart from any of the national reports analyzed by The Pillar, talking more about topics such as women, Christ, and synodality, and speaking less about bishops, the abuse crisis, and the laity. Continue reading

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 oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, posthouses, post, everything."

Realizing that he was running out of words, the nobleman switched to English slang. He eventually exhausted his reserves and fell silent.

At that moment, the gently spoken cardinal is said to have uttered these crushing words: "And is that all?"

The prince of the Church then unleashed a seemingly unending stream of London slang, much of it unknown to the poet.

Lord Byron described the cardinal later as "a monster of languages … a walking polyglot … who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter."

The cursing contest story is told by Charles William Russell in his monumental 1858 biography "The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti."

Russell, an Irish Catholic priest, added a note of scepticism, saying that while the anecdote was "still current in Rome," it was "doubtless a mere exaggeration of the real story."

Cardinal Mezzofanti is regarded as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — language learners of all time.

He was not merely a polyglot, or speaker of multiple languages, but a "hyperpolyglot," a person fluent in six or more languages.

Mezzofanti's nephew claimed that the cardinal was acquainted with 114 languages.

Russell himself estimated that Mezzofanti spoke 30 languages with "rare excellence," including Armenian and Maltese, a further nine fluently (including Algonquin), and 11 "less perfectly."

Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti was born on Bologna's Via Malcontenti on Sept. 17, 1774.

A precocious learner, he was ordained a priest in 1797 and named a professor at the venerable University of Bologna.

Briefly removed from the post after refusing to swear loyalty to Napoleon Bonaparte's Cisalpine Republic, he ministered to foreigners wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, expanding his knowledge of European languages.

Mezzofanti claimed that he could familiarize himself with a new language in two weeks by asking the recuperating soldiers to recite well-known prayers in their native languages, which he would then use to build up his mastery.

He credited God, not just his native skills, with helping him to pick up foreign tongues.

"Through the grace of God," he said, "assisted by my private studies, and by a retentive memory, I came to know not merely the generic languages of the nations to which the several invalids belonged but even the peculiar dialects of their various provinces."

Mezzofanti moved to Rome in 1831, serving as a member of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Continue reading

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 find at the beginning of the mission of Jesus as it is presented in Mark's gospel (1:15): "Repent (metanoeite) and believe in the good news."

Renewing our language

Renewal can take many forms: fasting, prayer, and alms-giving. These are the three classic Lenten practices.

But renewal can also take the form of becoming less sloppy with our language.

Language, as we use it in our everyday conversation, is usually imprecise. We use words without thinking about whether or not we are being true to what we mean or just using familiar short-hands.

Moreover, a word I associate with one meaning can convey a very different impression in the mind of the one listening to me.

Therefore, being careful with our language is a type of ascetic practice that can be an important part of our Lenten renewal.

But do we need to do this?

Surely most of the words we use, even within Christian discourse, are clear and unambiguous!

But it is a simple fact that words often become tired!

What might be a life-giving word that communicates the mystery in one age, is just religious jargon in another.

I suggest we just think about these two words: "Christ" and "Church".

"Christ"

For many people, this is just a name or a surname! It answers the question "who is the central figure in Christianity?"

So we say: "in Christ's time" or "as Christ said" or "Christ is".

But the name of One whom Christians look to as their Lord is Jesus. His name was Jesus and he came from Nazareth.

So let us call Lord by his name when we want to name him: Jesus. Jesus is the name of the saviour "for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

What we declare to be the heart of our belief is that Jesus is the Christ - the anointed of the Father. The Christ, Jesus, is the one who presents us to the Father.

"The Christ" along with "the Lord" are the fundamental titles we give to Jesus.

The sloppiness of using "Jesus Christ" as the equivalent to "John Smith" results in our forgetting that when we want to refer to a historical individual, a rabbi from Nazareth, we should use his historical name.

But when we want to confess and relate to him as our hope and the one who presents us to the Father, then we should make our confession that he is, for us who are baptized, the Christ/the Anointed One/the Messiah.

At Eastertime the lectionary presents us with a continuous reading of the Acts of the Apostles, so let us note this "ideal sermon" that Luke — the author of Acts — places on the lips of Peter.

This is the first sermon preached on the day of Pentecost and its conclusion is worth quoting:

Therefore let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ' (Acts 2:36).

"Church"

The word means an assembly of people, a gathering, a group with a common identity.

But as we often use it, it means a building, an organization, or a shorthand for an ideology.

Well, surely, only those outside would confuse the community of the baptized - either in one place or the whole oikoumene - with a building!

Here is a little test.

Watch and listen for all the uses of the word "church" you hear or read between now and Easter.

How many times will it be for a building?

"The Easter ceremonies will not take place in this church but only take place in the parish church this year," said a message on a notice board I saw yesterday.

How many times will it be used as an abstraction? For instance, "we must guard the separation of Church and state".

How many times will it be used for the structures that minister to the churches? "The Church should speak out clearly," we might say when, in fact, we mean the pope or a bishop should speak out.

Watching our language

I recall the number of times I was told as a child, "Watch your language!"

It was far more profound advice than I realized because sloppy language is often a sign of sloppy thinking.

Sloppy thinking in matters of faith can be a betrayal of the good news.

If we all are careful in how we use these two words — Christ and Church — we might find that we have helped people deepen their understanding and overcome their denominational fears - if they are already Christians.

And we might discover that we have helped those who are not Christians get a better insight into what Christians actually believe.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

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 using is the language of warfare and of terrorism itself.

Obviously, there can be no justification for what was done in Nice. But in wanting to explain the causes of such violence they are looking no further than Islam.

In a recent BBC Hardtalk programme, Stephen Sackur interviewed French professor of sociology and political advisor, Dominique Schnapper, who explained what she called the French form of secularism, which she assured us is superior to what we find in Britain and USA.

Most of us accept the separation of Church and State, including agencies of the State, and rightly. But laïcité goes further by including "the public sphere" with the State. Consequently, religion is mainly for the private sphere.

According to the Professor, curtailing the scope of religion in the public sphere gives people freedom!!

I suggest, on the contrary, that the State and the public forum are not the same; the public forum belongs to the people, to society.

It is where minds meet to be enriched by each other; it is where proper integration takes place.

Relegating religion and cultural diversity to the private sphere prevents integration! In fact, it is a recipe for creating ghettos! I would have thought this was obvious, though she did mention that she would not expect the English to understand!

I suggest that institutions dedicated to health care, social welfare and education, though administered by the State, are also not agencies of the State: they too belong to society, to the people, and therefore should be allowed to reflect society, including its pluralism, and not have to avoid or banish religious and cultural expressions.

Perhaps they should be called "State-run" institutions, not "State institutions".

The professor points out that the French understanding of secularism is a "product" of the French revolution and its rejection of previous forms of authoritarianism (of aristocracy and Church).

True, but that makes it a form of push-back, and a product of negative experience. It needs to move beyond its origins, and become positive. But that requires dialogue at every level, which is what laicite inhibits!

She is surely justified in allowing criticism of other people's views, including religious views, and she is right to say that criticising people's views is not necessarily insulting the people who hold them. But somewhere there is a line between critique and mockery?

It seems to me mere sophistry to say that mocking what is sacred to other people is not disrespecting those people.

Pope Francis' latest encyclical letter (especially chapter 6) is spot on where he talks of the crucial role of dialogue and need for greater respect and kindness within cultures and within politics.

It is within a culture of genuine respect for others, kindness and dialogue, that we instinctively know the difference between critique and mockery, between fair comment and incitement, between free speech and hate speech…

Schnapper is genuinely concerned that some kind of aberration seems to have taken place within Islam. But might she also need to ask whether there is some kind of aberration within the French form of secularism?

• Bishop Peter Cullinane, Bishop Emeritus, Diocese of Palmerston North, New Zealand.

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".

"But I believe maybe people have this orientation that God has given them and for this reason they should not be ostracised from society," the Archbishop of Mumbai said.

He said he supports the repeal of a section of India's penal code that criminalises homosexual acts.

Cardinal Gracias also rejected judgmental language about LGBT people, and said the Church and Indian society should be more welcoming towards them.

"Asian society is very traditional and the Indian society, in particular, is very traditional and resists change. [It] doesn't want to be destabilised perhaps.

"That is why I think sometimes that if society is not ready then maybe we shouldn't push against it as there will be a backlash.

"But on the other hand, a group should not suffer because of that. We have to get these people integrated into society."

He said he recently ordered a priest to tone down his language in speaking publicly on the issue.

"The Church in India and also worldwide has a role to play in forming the mentality of people and the thinking of people," Cardinal Gracias said.

"We should be more welcoming of people from the LGBT community and certainly less judgemental in our approach.

"In fact, we just had a meeting of bishops last month where frankly everybody agreed that we have been speaking a little too harshly about them.

"The Church also has an important role to play in providing [LGBT people with] a sense of security.

"It's not just that they should be tolerated, they should also be accepted. For many of them, through no fault of their own, this is a great suffering."

Cardinal Gracias, who is a member of the Pope's advisory C9 council of cardinals, noted that the Church does not accept gay marriage.

Sources

• The Hindu
• Pink News
• La Stampa
• Image: Church Militant

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 part of others that it is somehow against the concrete individual men and women who have a different viewpoint," the archbishop said.

"This is made more complex if Church leaders, or self-appointed Church spokespersons, use language which is insensitive and over judgmental," he added.

The Church must voice its criticism "in language which respects her Master, Jesus Christ", he explained.

Jesus "never criticised those with whom he may have disagreed about their morals, except with those who were hypocritical . . .".

Archbishop Martin observed that "all too often the hypocrites in Jesus' judgement, it is clear in the Gospels, were the religious leaders".

Archbishop Martin said he is struck by the way Pope Francis operates, in contrast to the model he had just outlined.

"Pope Francis seems to be able to speak clearly about doctrine, and yet respect and embrace those who cannot find their way to follow that doctrine," the archbishop said.

"His starting point is usually not that of being head of the Catholic Church, but that of being a sinner."

Pope Francis, he said, "has the ability to see that truth and mercy are not mutually exclusive in absolutist terms".

"Pope Francis does not think in the black and white categories that we tend to.

"He sees that most of us live in the grey areas of life where compromise may often be almost inevitable."

Archbishop Martin cited the way Francis sees Christians who may live together before marriage, or who live in civil marriages.

The Pope sees that such persons "may indeed share more of the vision of Christian marriage than we often think", the archbishop said.

"We will attain more by reaching out to them rather than by simply condemning."

In May, Ireland is to have a referendum on legal same-sex marriage.

Sources

• Irish Times
• The Guardian
• Image: Irish Central

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 as Christians we follow Jesus," said Australian Cardinal George Pell.

The Church has to be intellectually coherent and consistent, he said, adding that "Catholics are people who stand under the Scriptures, we are people of tradition".

"But we believe in the development of doctrine, not in doctrinal back-flips," the Table reported him saying.

Cardinal Pell added: "I confess that I might have been tempted to hope that Jesus might have been a little softer on divorce; he wasn't, and I'm speaking with him."

Last week, synod members said the Church should stop using "harsh language" such as " living in sin", "intrinsically disordered" and "contraceptive mentality" in aspects of its teaching.

Too often the theology of marriage was "filtered through harsh language", members said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said the question of language had been a major part of discussions in the gathering's opening days.

He said it is a question of the consistency and immutability of the Church's truth.

"But our burning desire is to find a language that can present it in a more gracious, compelling and cogent way."

Both the cardinals stressed that bishops at the synod were acutely aware of the problems facing family life in their communities.

Australian Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne told Vatican Radio that what is needed is language that is faithful to Church teaching, but which also engages with the experiences of families.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Crux Now

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 has not been greeted with joy among some traditionalists, though the number of participants at the Synod who can actually understand Latin, let alone speak it, is small. De facto, the working language of the Vatican is Italian already.

Partisans of Latin say it is unchanging and therefore dependable.

But that is only true because it is dead, though new words must be added from time to time because ancient Romans and medieval Europeans had no words for such things as popcorn (máizae grana tosta), snack bar (thermopólium potórium et gustatórium) or karate (oppugnátio inermis Iapónica).

All those Latin neologisms come, by the way, from the Vatican website.

In fact, there is not one Latin, because when it was a living language, it changed as much as any living language does. "Calix," or chalice, was originally used by Church fathers to describe the tantalizing but poisoned temptation of heresy.

Later, it became the word used for the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper and that we use in the liturgy.

Which Latin do its partisans want? The classical language of Cicero?

The later varieties that were evolving into French, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish etc? Ecclesiastical Latin, so-called, is actually one product of that evolution along the road from classical Latin to Italian.

So, whether Latin or a modern language be the lingua franca of the Church, choices must be made, and a move from Latin to its modern Italian iteration is a step in the right direction, but too small a step.

The pope has joined those who decry careerism among clergy.

The Extraordinary Synod for Asia in 1998 called for broader membership and influence in the Roman bureaucracy.

Both problems are linked at least in part to the fact that the Vatican's actual language for conducting business is Italian, the language of a mere 64 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom are native speakers.

In other words, in order to work in the central administration of the Catholic Church, one must be either an Italian, a non-Italian raised by Italian speakers (like the pope) or someone who has intentionally studied the language as an adult, too often with an eye to ecclesiastical career advancement.

Since the number of those linguistically qualified to work at the Vatican is small, once someone is ensconced in a job, he probably has a lifetime sinecure.

Because bishops are ultimately chosen by the Italian speakers, some facility with that language becomes either explicitly or unconsciously a job requirement for leadership even in Churches geographically and culturally remote from Rome.

In a Church with some 1.2 billion members, the talent pool from which leaders are chosen is, in reality, no more than a parking lot puddle.

The United Nations functions with six languages that represent the majority of people in the world - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The working languages of the UN Secretariat are two, English and French.

While all six of those languages are spoken by Catholics, of course not all of them are used by large numbers of us.

Should not the Church imitate the UN in broadening the population from which it can draw talent and allow spiritual and intellectual input from languages and cultures that are too often alien to Church bureaucrats — languages and cultures that in fact shape the world in which we are to proclaim the Gospel?

There are two languages that should be the working languages of the Church today. One of them is among those "corrupt provincial dialects" my teacher pooh-poohed, the native tongue of the pope.

It is estimated that there are more than half a billion speakers of Spanish as either a first or second language. The majority of them are Catholics, and it is probably the most common first language in the Church.

The other language that should be used as an official language of the Church has sometimes been disparaged in Rome as "Protestant," though it is, for example, the working language of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences.

That is English, spoken by at least one billion people with varying degrees of fluency from basic to native.

It is the language of the internet and other information technology, science, business, diplomacy and most other elements of the globalization of communication and culture.

When the pope flies into Rome from an overseas trip, his Italian pilot receives landing instructions from an Italian flight controller in English.

Pope Francis has taken a step forward in admitting that the language of the Church's leadership is not Latin, but Italian.

The next step is to change that language and leadership to better reflect the reality of a Church that lives, worships and proclaims in a world better represented by Spanish and English.

Maryknoll Father William Grimm is the publisher of ucanews.com.
Used with permission.

Among the examples of "harsh" rhetoric that bishops discussed as doing more harm than good in terms of "inviting people to draw closer to the church" were "living in sin" for cohabitating couples, as well as calling homosexuality "intrinsically disordered" and references to a "contraceptive mentality."

The rejection of this last phrase is especially significant because it's not merely an outdated expression like "living in sin"—it was Pope John Paul II's seminal contribution to the church's theology of women and reproduction over the last 35 years.

Contraceptive Mentality

John Paul's "contraceptive mentality" conflated abortion and contraception, laying the groundwork for much of the anti-contraception mentality that exists on the right today, while his other great rhetorical sleight-of-hand was to place both abortion and contraception under what he labeled a "culture of death" that valued expediency and personal fulfillment.

"Contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree," he wrote in Evangelium Vitae, saying, "such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality unwilling to accept responsibility in matters of sexuality, and they imply a self-centered concept of freedom, which regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfillment."

The suggestion that women who used contraception were selfish, rejecting the will of God that they be mothers and instead pursuing their own pleasure and self-fulfillment, helped alienate a generation (or two) of Catholic women from the church.

Not only were women who used contraception selfish harlots, but the very use of contraception was leading them to have abortions:

It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the "contraceptive mentality"… are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. … The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs, and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception.

Contraception: "Abortion lite"

This is the thinking about women and contraception that has guided the Catholic Church since Ronald Reagan was in office and explains much of the bishops' irrational hostility to contraception—John Paul taught that it was "abortion lite."

It stands in sharp contrast to the attitude toward contraception taken by the American bishops in the decade after Humanae Vitae, when they urged the church to take a graduated approach toward contraception that maintained the teaching that it was wrong but adopted a pastoral approach that was more in keeping with the real-life experiences of Catholics.

Following the tumultuous release of Humane Vitae in 1968, they told Catholics that if they tried to follow the teaching in good faith and found they couldn't, "they may reasonably decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible."

At the 1980 bishops' synod, the last time the church officially grappled with "family" issues, Archbishop John Quinn, head of the U.S. bishops' conference, urged a more nuanced approach to the contraception teaching that emphasized "greater pastoral insights" but was rebuked by John Paul.

Graduality is the word

Now, it appears that "graduality" is back in, as is the idea of using pastoral practices to soften the real-world application of doctrine.

The bishops are talking about the need to meet Catholics where they are and guide them toward a vision of "perfect" practice that they may or may not reach.

Pope Francis already demonstrated this by marrying couples who were "living in sin"—welcoming them to grow into the church's vision of the marriage ideal rather than turning them away for not having met it as a precondition of a church marriage.

This approach, however, may have more doctrinal significance than it appears. It may be a matter of the pastoral cart leading the doctrinal horse. Continue reading

- Patricia Miller is the author of Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church. Her work on the intersection of sex, religion, and politics has appeared in The Nation, Ms., and Huffington Post. She was the editor of Consciencemagazine and the editor-in-chief of the National Journal's health care briefings.