They had a visting priest at Mass this weekend, and he preached a really good homily (for the most part). His celebration of the liturgy of the Eucharist was also generally good, but he had a few quirks in how he said thing.
Most notably, he used the wrong mood when in greeting the congregation.
When the priest does this, he is supposed to say "The Lord be with you."
This gentleman, unfortunately, said "The Lord is with you."
He may not know enough grammar to understand the shift in meaning and simply thought that the latter is a more contemporary, vivid way of saying the same thing as the former.
It’s not.
The "be" in "The Lord be with you" is an example of the subjunctive mood, while the "is" in "The Lord is with you" is the indicative mood, and there is a marked difference in meaning between the two moods.
In English (and in many other languages) the indicative mood is used to make statements about the way world is. In other words, to state facts. (It also is used to ask questions about the way the world is, but the above isn’t a question.)
The subjunctive mood, however, is more tentative than the indicative. It doesn’t claim to state the way the world is, but the way it might be. Thus it gets used in hypothetical clauses ("If I were a rich man . . . "). It also is used to expres wishes. That’s what it’s doing in "The Lord be with you." The priest is expressing a wish that God be with the people, not stating for a fact that he is.
English has been losing it’s subjunctive mood and its functions have begun to be taken over by auxiliary verbs like "may," "let," and "should." Sometimes an auxiliary appears in the same sentence as a subjunctive verb, calling attention to it. Thus "May the Lord be with you" conveys the same meaning as "The Lord be with you."
Unfortunately, as the subjunctive has weakened in English, many people don’t recognize it if one of the auxiliaries isn’t present. That may be what happened with this priest. In the absence of "may" or "let" in front of "The Lord be with you," he may have thought that the latter is just a stuffy, old fashioned way of saying that "The Lord is with you."
But it’s not. While the Lord is omnipresent and thus present with all people everywhere in that sense, he is also "present with" certain people in additional senses. He may be "present with" people in blessing, approval, etc.
That’s what’s happening here. To say "The Lord be with you" means something like "May the Lord bless you, approve of your moral conduct, comfort you with his presence" or something along these lines. In any event, it’s the expression of a wish that God do something good for the people.
It’s therefore presumptuous for the priest to shift the mood to the indicative and simply up and declare that God will do this good thing (whatever it is understood to be) with respect to the people.
I teach English to highschoolers, and I am beginning to believe that the English language is a lost cause at this point.
I regularly get sentences like: “Aquinas was an infamous saint who left an example we should all follow.”
My most common error involves confusion with the words “definitely” and “defiantly.” I suspect that this error has to do with my students misspelling “definitely” as “definately,” then running Spell Check and clicking “OK” for whatever comes up at the top of the suggested corrections list.
Even when I was in college, mastery of the English language could not be counted on. I remember having a history teacher–a doctor–who was exceptionately fond of the word, “decimate.” During his lectures, he would use that word in such cases as; “The Carthaginians totally decimated the Roman forces.” This left me wondering whether the Carthaginians “nearly wiped out” or only “destroyed a tenth of” the Roman forces. The only way I could find out for sure was to go to my college history teacher and ask if he, an educated man of letters, was using the word correctly or incorrectly in his lectures. As I was too shy to do this, I never found out what, exactly, the Carthaginians did to the Romans.
This all may seem to be a digression from Jimmy’s post, but I don’t think that it is. The reality of the situation is that defiantly most people in the English-speaking world have no idea how there is a difference between “The Lord be with you” and “The Lord is with you.”
It would be the same as asking them, what’s the difference between, “The Lord ain’t with you” and “The Lord aren’t with you.”
People don’t speak English anymore. They just ain’t gonna do it. So I have three preliminary conclusions:
1) English defiantly are over.
2) Emoticons as future of communication are = 😉
3) Carthago delenda est!
All along, I though pirates were using bad grammar when in fact they were just stating facts as they might be in the subjunctive mood…
Yar, yee be a filthy land lubber!
Jimmy:
How did you nuance all this out of “Dominus vobiscum”, which is neither indicative nor subjunctive? It has no verb at all.
The verb is an understood “sit”; this can be seen in any number parallel expressions where the verb is included. The most obvious one that comes to mind is “pax Domini sit semper vobiscum” (“the peace of the Lord be with you always.”)
pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
Heehee, I’ve half a mind to use that at the sign of Peace next Sunday and see how people react. 😀
The interesting bit is that “be” is present in extremely similar forms in English, Welsh, and Russian. In Welsh it’s “bi”, IIRC, and in Russian it’s “bih” (with ‘ih’ representing a funky tied-together umlautish Cyrillic letter).
I know Tolkien wrote a little something about this, but the notes just said his take had been disproved; they didn’t say what the current take was….
*Googles around*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_copula#.2AbhuH-
Look at bhuH. Then scroll on down and look at the tables of verb forms in various language groups. (I have no clue why they have Ukrainian and Old Church Slavonic, but not Russian.)
Wow! Look at the all the pretty variations! Okay, I guess it is an Indo-European thing… though you do notice that there aren’t huge numbers of language with a bias towards bhuH-derived verbs.
Question: When you say “God bless you”, is it infinitive or subjunctive?
Dios les bendiga
In English, “God bless you” uses a subjunctive verb, in this case, “bless.”
For most verbs (other than the verb “to be”) the subjunctive form is identical with the base form of the infinitive, minus the “to.”
Thus for the infinitive “to bless,” the subjunctive form is just “bless.”
The fact that “bless” is also used as an indicative verb (“You bless the people”) is one of the reason English uses auxiliaries or “helper words” like “may” to clarify that the word is being used subjunctively. Thus: “May God bless you.” If you see a “may” like that, it tells you that the verb is subjunctive rather than indicative.
OK, reading the post today reminded me of something I’ve come across before involving Luke 2:14. Sorry if this is a little bit off topic (hopefully not too much.)
I’ve heard two different stories regarding why this verse reads differently in different bibles. One has something to do with preference in translating the text (being biased against the way the Church would do it for example), and the other reason has to do with the source texts used for translation.
KJV – Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
DRC – Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.
Can anybody shed some light on this for me? Thanks.
btw – speaking of using spell checkers, I have to confess that I copied this post into Word to make sure it had no spelling errors. It had some.
I forgot to say that Russian doesn’t usually need a present tense of the verb “to be” any more than it usually needs definite or indefinite articles. If you want to say “This is a book”, you just say “eto kniga”, and there you are. If you really need a present tense “to be”, though, you use “est'”, which is usually used as the verb “to eat”. (I think that’s a sound-alike verb thing, but heck, it could be the same word for all I know.)
http://www.du.edu/langlit/russian/verbs.htm
Verbs in Russian. Nothing like having to deal with imperfective and perfective, determinate and indeterminate!
http://www.learningrussian.com/grammar/verbs.htm
And voices! And moods! And participles! And gerunds! It’s almost as complicated as English!
(Now you can see why it’s tons easier to translate stuff out of Russian than to go the other way!)
Seriously, though, a lot of this stuff is harder to explain than to learn. We’re wired to make this sort of thing second nature, just by being humans. If you teach a baby Sanskrit or Klingon or Basque, the baby will learn it. We adults just don’t like to spend as much time and energy on language learning as the average baby. (Me included.)
There are times when I think the entire business of linguistics is just to verbalize and systemize brain processes that are inchoate and intuitive. Pretty much everybody knows how to talk, but nobody knows how we think of things to say and ways to say them.
All of these grammer lessons are great but I suspect the priest knew exactly what he was saying and the gramatical difference. I know of a couple Deacons who do the same thing before reading the Gospel and it is very much on purpose (I’ve asked about it).
Edward – “Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum” is actually the priest’s line (hence the plural “vobiscum”); if you do use it, make sure to change it to the singular “tecum” when giving peace to your neighbor.
Jimmy – I don’t think that the verb “to be” is actually an exception to the rule on this one. The “be” of “The Lord be with you” is the subjunctive (and so is formed like all the others); the “were” of “if I were a rich man” is the conditional.
DJ – re: Luke 2:14 (and the beginning of the Gloria), the most literal rendition of the Greek “eirene en anthropois eudokias” (Lat. “pax hominibus bonae voluntatis”) is “peace to/among men of good will”, since “eudokias”/”bonae voluntatis” is a descriptive genitive, modifying “men”.
The disagreement arises over the verbal idea in the word “will” – whose will? That is, are the “men” modified by the phrase the subject or the object of the willing? If they are the subject, then we should translate “men of good will” – i.e., men who have good will (toward God, presumably). If they are the object, then the translation is a bit more awkward – we’d have to go with something like the old “men on whom His favor rests” or perhaps “men of [His] approval” (Gk. eudokia basically means something like “satisfaction” or “approval” in Classical Greek; though of course this meaning, too, could go either way…) I’ll leave it to the Scriptural scholars to sort out which one is actually meant here, though the current consensus seems to favor the latter.
As for ICEL’s “peace to His people on earth”, well, perhaps I had best leave that one alone….
Maureen – oddly enough “est” is both “he/she/it is” (with a short e) and “he/she/it eats” (with a long e) in Latin as well…. They come from two different roots (as I presume they must in Russian as well), but ended up looking the same. Hence the bad Latin joke: “mater mea sus est mala”, which might be translated either “my mother is an evil sow” or “oh my mother, the pig is eating apples”.
Ken – I agree; I have encountered this before, and it always struck me as being deliberate.
This is no small thing. Saying “The Lord is with you” rather than “The Lord be with you” could have new-agey connotations, you know – the LORD is with all of us, if we will just look within… blah, blah, blah…
It’s the same POV that seeks to diminish emphasis on the Eucharist by pointing out that Christ is present in the Word and in the congregation, and so one “mode” of his presence is not superior to another. Ugh.
A small correction to my above post: the “were” of “If I were a rich man…” is referred to by some grammarians as “conditional” and by others as “past subjunctive”. I suspect that one of these terms is meant to refer to the historical-linguistic origin, while the other is meant to refer to its common usage (though I cannot be sure). In any event, the point is that the verb “to be” seems to behave fairly regularly in these instances.
My apologies if I created any confusion.
Christopher:
ICEL?
International Commission on English in the Liturgy. The group responsible for the current English liturgical texts, and the poor translations of the Latin originals contained therein.
These translations are soon (hope we all) to be revised and/or replaced, as a result of the late pontiff’s insistence (in Liturgiam Authenticam) on accuracy in the translations – as opposed to ICEL’s preference for “dynamic equivalence” – and his establishment of the Vox Clara commission. I don’t think that the revised translations will look quite like what the English side of a 1950’s era Latin-English missal had, but they’ll probably be a lot closer.
I’ve loved grammar ever since I started studying German in High School.
I’ve heard plenty of people complain that saying “God bless America” is presumptuous and hyper-nationalistic, etc. They think it means “God blesses America, without question”. Wrong.
I agree with Ken that the change is deliberate, and more to the point, I have always interpreted it as not merely a move towards more up-to-date language, but as a rejection of the priest’s role to bless us the people, and therefore an attack on the distinction between the ordained priesthood and the priesthood of all believers.
I regularly get sentences like: “Aquinas was an infamous saint…”
People do think of Aquinas that way in some circles! 😉
During his lectures, he would use that word in such cases as; “The Carthaginians totally decimated the Roman forces.” This left me wondering whether the Carthaginians “nearly wiped out” or only “destroyed a tenth of” the Roman forces.
I think it is reasonable to assume he was using one of the common dictionary definitions: “kill or destroy a large proportion of” or “severely reduce the strength of.” I see no reason to assume he’s using an atypical or non-English definition.
Saying “The Lord is with you” rather than “The Lord be with you” could have new-agey connotations, you know
But do not neglect, in your suspicion, that it is actually true, however liturgically incorrect. New Agers did not invent the idea that God is omnipresent, nor the idea that He loves all human beings without exception.
The sentence may not communicate what the liturgy intends, but it does not communicate an untruth.
Thanks very much for this. This is something i’ve been noticing priests do more often. And folks that’re normally pretty decent. I guess they are trying to state in some small way that God’s with you all the time and won’t leave you, but it ends up being rather pedantic and comes off as so much smoke (imho–but I’m personally tired of the humanist smokescreens)
pha –
Of course I understand that God is with us all everywhere and at all times. He is “with us”, though, in a special sense in the Mass, which this phrasing diminishes.
The question is not whether He is with us, but whether we are with Him.
Ry,
I’m with ya! I also teach High School English (in Canada, eh?) The literacy of the average Sophomore is enough to make stones weep. There’s more blood on the floor (or there ought to be) after I read a set of essays than when we finish reading Hamlet.
I’m teaching some Latin courses for the first time this year (first time at the school, actually.) I’m hoping the Latin helps those who study it.
And, ladies and gentlemen, it’s comment threads like this that make me love the com boxes.
As I said, the sentence may not communicate what the liturgy intends, but it does not communicate an untruth.
I’m wondering if there’s another element active in the confusion here: namely the characteristic manner in which some African-American dialects of English use “be,” as in the wonderful zinger: “You making sense, but you don’t *be* making sense.” (Limpingly translated into Standard English as “You’re making sense, for a change.”) Someone not familiar with the subjunctive use of “be” in Standard English could think that it’s a mistake, and try to “correct” it.
(Interestingly, the African-American usage of “be” is an example of aspect rather than tense or mood. It’s parallel to the perfective and imperfective aspects in the Slavic languages — as I can attest as a former Russian Language and Literature/Russian and East European Studies major, who had to spend many hours memorizing aspectual pairs of verbs in both Russian and Polish, and struggling not to confuse the two.)
pha-
Your reasoning could be interpreted as, “Well, what he said is technically not false, therefore it’s okay.”
Anything that might encourage this “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” kind of spirituality needs to be nipped in the bud, whether it is technically true or not.
Your reasoning could be interpreted as, “Well, what he said is technically not false, therefore it’s okay.”
The statement is both true and liturgically incorrect.
If you don’t understand what I mean, just ask.
In the meantime, I will elaborate.
“The Lord is with you” is more than “technically not false,” it is a very important theological truth. It’s not merely acceptable but good to proclaim this in appropriate circumstances.
It is very similar, in fact, to the traditional Eastern Christian (Catholic & Orthodox) greeting “Christ is among us!” There is certainly no good reason to suspiciously regard or denounce it as either “new age-y” or “‘I’m OK, You’re OK’ spirituality.”
At the same time, it is not, as I said, what the liturgy is designed to communicate when the priest is instructed to say “the Lord be with you,” so the priest has no right to insert it, regardless of its truth.
Sacrosantum Concilium is very clear: “Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, that is, on the Apostolic See and, as laws may determine, on the bishop. In virtue of power conceded by the law, the regulation of the liturgy within certain defined limits belongs also to various kinds of competent territorial bodies of bishops legitimately established. Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority,” (no. 22).
There are any number of very true comments that should not be inserted willy-nilly into the liturgy. There is nothing even remotely offensive about the statement “Jesus Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Amen!” It is true, and a central tenet of our faith. But it would be very wrong indeed for a priest to insert this phrase into the middle of Lenten liturgies.
Priests are not allowed to change the wording of the liturgy. It violates the right of the faithful to an authentic liturgy of the Chruch.
This being said, members of the faithful should be very careful which liturgical problems they choose to address and how they will address them.
“The Lord is with you” in place of “the Lord be with you” is not, for example, so heinous a violation of the liturgy as altering the Eucharistic prayer, especially words of consecration. Many priests, if approached respectfully and charitably, would be glad to fix the problem, but some would resist, and some may even become hostile. If asking the priest to conform to the Sacramentary would cause a conflict, the is/be difference is probably not worth the consequences, though the Eucharistic prayer is. So we need to choose the things we will address carefully.
The bigger problem, for many Catholics, is not choosing which issues to address but addressing them correctly.
Someone who’s angry, itching for an argument or debate, and liable to beat other people over the head with a Sacramentary is definitely not suited for the task. Neither is someone who is pleasant and respectful but refuses to follow Church protocol.
In the case of the former, time, prayer, or perhaps cooler heads are helpful.
There are also good resources to help with the latter problem, like Catholics United for the Faith’s Effective Lay Witness Protocol and “Defending Our Rites: Constructively Dealing with Liturgical Abuse” Faith Fact.
Jimmy!
“English has been losing it’s subjunctive mood…”
its! its! no apostrophe!
Not on a post about grammar!
(its = possessive. it’s = it is.)