Month: March 2006

Cat Dies, Nation Mourns

Humphrey

It is with regret that JimmyAkin.org announces the passing of Great Britain’s "mouser-in-chief" Humphrey the Cat. If you know anyone across the pond, be sure to extend your condolences because apparently the nation is in mourning.

"The black and white one-time ‘mouser in chief’ was perhaps the most famous pet in a country of animal worshippers.

"’World of politics mourns a legend,’ headlined the Sun, Britain’s largest circulation daily newspaper.

"’It is true. We learned last week that Humphrey has died,’ a spokesman confirmed. Humphrey was thought to be 18."

"He had wandered into No. 10 Downing Street under Margaret Thatcher and remained throughout the tenure of John Major. But he was sent away to live with a civil servant in ‘retirement’ months after Tony Blair was elected in 1997."

GET THE STORY.

The famous feline was the source of a surprising number of political scandals. Conservative party members accused Prime Minister Blair of having the cat put to sleep because his wife allegedly did not like the cat. Earlier the cat was suspected of killing a robin family, sparking an official denial from the government. The Daily Planet has not been able to verify whether a state funeral for Humphrey is planned.

Am I the only one who thinks the attention from the British government and press given to the life and death of a cat is a bit bizarre? Maybe I’m just a cranky American, but not even Socks Clinton got this kind of attention from the American government and press.

This Is All Just Rumor, But. . . .

Y’know how the Synod of Bishops met last October and discussed the Eucharist and the liturgy? And at the end of the meeting they presented the pope with a list of 50 propositions relating to these themes, some of which proposed changes in how the liturgy is celebrated? And how the pope is expected to issue an apostolic exhortation based on these?

It appears that this summer the pope will be presented with a final report from the heads of the Synod and that his apostolic exhortation may be out by October.

Rumors are already circulating about what the pope will say (so take all this with a spoonful of salt), but the rumors are encouraging.

EXCERPT:

The Vatican source said that the exhortation would include an invitation to greater use of Latin in the daily prayer of the Church and in the Mass—with the exception of the Liturgy of the Word—as well as in large public and international Masses. 

The document would also encourage a greater use of Gregorian chant and classical polyphonic music; the gradual elimination of the use of songs whose music or lyrics are secular in origin, as well as the elimination of instruments that are “inadequate for liturgical use,” such as the electric guitar or drums, although it is not likely that specific instruments will be mentioned.

Lastly, the Pope is expected to call for “more decorum and liturgical sobriety in the celebration of the Eucharist, excluding dance and, as much as possible, applause.”

GET THE STORY.

Unfortunately, rumors this far in advance about what a pope may choose to do based on the feedback he is provided have about as much weight as polls indicating who will be elected president that are conducted six months before Election Day.

New Encyclical?

The ink is barely dry on Deus Caritas Est, but word comes that B16 may already be preparing his next encyclical.

EXCERPTS:

Sources close the Holy See have indicated that Pope Benedict XVI is preparing his first social encyclical, which may be entitled “Labor Domini,” or, “The Work of the Lord.”

According to the report, which has not yet been officially confirmed by the Holy See, the encyclical would present a Christian vision of human work and address the importance of work for society. Likewise, it would explore the necessity and duty of the human person to work in some capacity.

Sources add that the document would probably not be issued until at least Christmas.

GET THE STORY.

The subject of work has certainly been on B16’s mind.

IF YOU WANT TO GET A PREVIEW OF WHAT HE MIGHT SAY IN THE ENCYCLICAL, CHECK THIS OUT.

More Action On The SSPX

EXCERPT:

According to Vatican sources, Pope Benedict XVI has scheduled an unplanned meeting with the presidents of the different Vatican dicasteries, at which he will discuss reforms of the Curia and relations with the Saint Pius X, Lefebvrist schism.

The extraordinary April 7th meeting announcement comes after an ordinary meeting which took place last month, at which the Holy Father asked the dicastery heads about universal approval of the Missal of St. Pius V, the rite which was in force prior to Vatican II.

During this unusual second meeting, the Pontiff is expected to solicit opinions about what to do with the Missal of St. Pius V and about a possible canonical formula for re-incorporating the followers of the schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre into the Church.

GET THE STORY.

New Appraisal Of The Crusades

The guys over at Little Green Footballs and the folks at the Times are making a bit too much out of this, but the following story is encouraging as an example of the rappraisal of the Crusades as something other than naked western aggression:

EXCERPTS:

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim-Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.

LITTLE GREEN FOOTBALLS PIECE.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

One can’t attribute papal support to every church conference in Rome or what gets said at it, but it’s still nice seeing an approach being taken towards the Crusades that regards them from a perspective other than western self-flagellation.

The debate is a healthy one.

The Angel Of The Lord

A reader writes:

I read your blog post "Tin-Eared Translators" but I was hoping you would address the entire phrase "angel of the Lord" as it’s used in Gn 22 (and elsewhere in the OT).   The phrase often seems to refer to God himself – for example, "you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" (v. 12, RSV-CE).  Could you comment on the use of this phrase?  Thanks!

It’s true that "the angel of the Lord" often seems to speak with the voice of the Lord, and this has led some (particularly in Protestant circles) to speculate that the angel of the Lord is some kind of divine manifestation, such as a pre-Incarnate appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity.

Catholics generally have not gone for this piece of speculation, though it would be permitted by the Church.

A significant problem is the fact that the term "angel" is used to describe this being, and the pre-Incarnate Christ is not an angel.

It seems more likely (to me, anyway) that we are to understand the angel of the Lord speaking in the Lord’s voice the same way we would understand the messenger of a king speaking in the king’s voice. Messengers of that kind regularly would read proclamations written in the voice of the one who sent them or orally deliver messages prefixed with some tag such as "Thus says my master. . . ."

It also is not clear to me that the use of the definite article ("the" or ha- in Hebrew) is meant to indicate that there is one angel in particular who is known as the angel of the Lord (implying that he’s the Lord’s angel in a way that other angels are not). The rules in different languages about when the definite article gets used and how much weight should be put on it are not always clear. When the Old Testament says that the angel of the Lord did something, it may only mean that the angel of the Lord who happened to be there at the moment, did the thing–not that there is a unique "angel of the Lord."

That being said, there are passages in which there seems to be ambiguity about whether we’re looking at an angel or a manifestation of God himself.

St. Paul’s solution to such passages seems to be to interpret them as involving encounters with angels rather than divine manifestations. Thus he says that the Law was put in effect by angels through a mediator [Moses]  (Gal. 3:19), when if you look back in the Torah it makes it sound like God himself was there with Moses (Ex. 24:9-12).

May 19: Go To The Movies!

Davincicode

Got plans for May 19, the day that the movie The DaVinci Code is slated to open? If not, go to the movies. If so, then go to the movies sometime that weekend before May 21. Just don’t go to The DaVinci Code.

That’s the advice being given to Christians by Christians who know how Hollywood works and know the best way to get the bean-counters in Hollywood to listen:

"May 19th is the date the Da Vinci Code movie opens. A movie based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor.

"What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie? I’m going to offer you the usual choices — and a new one.

"Here are the usual suspects:

"A) We can ignore the movie.

"The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot box closes on the Sunday of opening weekend. If you stay home, you have lost your chance to make your vote heard. You have thrown your vote away, and from Hollywood’s point of view, you don’t count. By staying home, you do nothing to shape the decision-making process regarding what movies will make it to the big screen.

"B) We can protest.

"The problem with this option: It doesn’t work. Any publicity is good publicity. Protests not only fuel the box office, they make all Christians look like idiots. And again, protests and boycotts do nothing to help shape the decisions being made right now about what movies Hollywood will make in the next few years. (Or they convince Hollywood to make *more* movies that will provoke Christians to protest, which will drive the box office up.)

"C) We can discuss the movie. We can be rational and be ready with study guides and workshops and point-by-point refutations of the lies promulgated by the movie.

"The problem with this option: No one’s listening. They think they know what we’re going to say already. We’ll lose most of these discussions anyway, no matter how prepared we are, because the power of story always trumps the power of facts (why do you think Jesus taught in parables?!). And once again: rational discussion of history does nothing to affect Hollywood’s choices regarding what movies to make.

"But there’s a fourth choice.

"On May 19th, you should go to the movies.

"Just go to another movie.

"Save the date now. May 19th, or May 20th. No later than Sunday, May 21st — that’s the day the ballot box closes. You’ll get a vote, the only vote Hollywood recognizes: The power of cold hard cash laid down on a box office window on opening weekend.

"Use your vote. Don’t throw it away. Vote for a movie other than DVC. If enough people do it, the powers that be will notice. They won’t have a choice.

"The major studio movie scheduled for release against DVC is the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. The trailers look fun, and you can take your kids. And your friends. And their friends. In fact, let’s all go see it.

"Let’s rock the box office in a way no one expects — without protests, without boycotts, without arguments, without rancor. Let’s show up at the box office ballot box and cast our votes. And buy some popcorn, too.

"May 19th. Mark your calendars now: Over the Hedge‘s opening weekend. Buy a ticket.

"And spread the word. Forward this e-mail to all the Christians in your address book. Post it on your blogs. Talk about it to your churches. And let’s all go to the movies."

Spread the word. And go to the movies on May 19.

(Credit note: I received notice from an email forward originally sent by Barbara Nicolosi of Act One. The campaign was originally started by Quoth the Maven.)

Who?

Okay, now that Battlestar Galactica is on break until next season, Sci-Fi is now airing the new series of Dr. Who on Fridays.

I caught the first two episodes of it last Friday, and so far I’m pleased.

The series seems to be a tad darker and more serious than the original series, which went off the air in the 1980s, but that’s because it’s being written more for adults than kids (now that the original Dr. Who fans have grown up).

It still has a lot of goofy fun in it, though.

I also like how the Doctor’s new assistant (Rose) is much more confrontational with him than many previous assistants have been, demanding to know things (like just who he is) and challenging him when he says things, bringing a more real-life perspective.

My favorite exchange was this:

ROSE (upon meeting a bunch of aliens socially for the first time): They’re so alien. . . . The aliens are . . . so alien. You look at ’em . . . and they’re alien.

THE DOCTOR: Good thing I didn’t take you to the Deep South!

ROSE: Where are you from?

THE DOCTOR: All over the place!

ROSE (still thinking about the aliens): They all speak English?

THE DOCTOR: No, you’re just hearing it. It’s a gift of the TARDIS. A telepathic field gets inside your brain–translates.

ROSE: It’s inside my brain?

THE DOCTOR: Well, in a good way.

ROSE: Your machine gets inside my head. It gets inside and it changes my mind and you didn’t even ask!

THE DOCTOR: I didn’t think about it like that.

ROSE (outraged): No! You were too busy thinking up cheap shots about the Deep South!

BA-BOOM!

As a native of the Deep South, I approve!

I gave ’em a couple of points for the first Deep South/alien joke, but the rejoinder scored ’em an extra TEN!

MORE ON DR. WHO.

Tin-Eared Translators

I meant to blog about this last week but didn’t, so here goes.

Did y’all notice how tin-eared the translation of the Old Testament reading was at last week’s Sunday Mass?

Wow, it was awful!

The passage was the sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis 22. The very first part of the reading revealed the tin ear of the translators of the New American Bible. Here’s the first verse:

Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, "Abraham!" "Ready!" he replied.

There are so many problems here. First, the text needlessly puts a quotation from God ("Abraham!") right up against a quotation from Abraham ("Ready!"), making the text "unproclaimable." A lector is going to have to be really on his toes to distinguish these two quotations in a way that the congregation will be able to distinguish between who is talking. (This juxtaposition of the two quotations is NOT present in the Hebrew word order of the passage. It’s something that’s been foisted on the text by the translators.)

Worse, what’s with this "Ready!" business? That’s certainly not what it says in the Hebrew. The word in Hebrew is hinneni, which is just hen (pronounced "hain") with a first person singular ("I") pronoun suffix stuck on it. Hen can mean either "lo!/behold!" or it can mean "here" or "there." So you’d either want to translate hinneni literally along the lines of "Behold! It is I!" or "Behold me!" or (more likely) "Here I am!"

In no case does hinneni mean "Ready!"

If "Ready!" isn’t defensible as a literal translation, is it defensible as a dynamic translation? Heck no! If an English-speaker hears God call his name, the English-speaker is certainly not going to respond by saying "Ready!" That’s not part of English style in such situations.

The translation is thus defensible neither as a literal nor as a dynamic translation based on ordinary English style.

It’s simply TIN EARED–the kind of thing that a FIRST YEAR Hebrew student ought to have MARKED WRONG on his homework.

But that wasn’t what first leapt out at me when I listened to this passage at Mass. What leapt out was this part:

But the LORD’S messenger called to him from heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!" "Yes, Lord," he answered.

"Do not lay your hand on the boy," said the messenger. "Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son."

What’s with all this "messenger" business?

Yes, it’s true that in the biblical languages the word for "angel" and the word for "messenger" are the same word, but in English we have two different words, and if we’re clearly talking about a heavenly messenger rather than one sent by an earthly king (as in this case) then "angel" is the appropriate translation–at least for a translation that is to be used in the liturgy.

I’d have no objection if a non-liturgical translation wanted to consistently render malak or angelos as "messenger" in order to help the reader see a little more how the text would have sounded to its original readers, but that kind of translation would let you put in a note that explains that this is the same word as "angel" in the original.

But liturgical translations don’t come with footnotes when you hear them proclaimed, and it’s just going to confuse the listeners, who probably won’t know that malak means both "messenger" and "angel." The listener may wonder why "messenger" is used in this passage where other translations have "angel."

He may even think that there’s a difference between this kind of divine messenger and an angel. After all, if he’s been paying attention then he knows that other Mass readings do use the word "angel," and so to find "messenger" in this passage could suggest a difference between the two.

What an amateurish, tin-eared translation we’re stuck with.

I agree with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus:

Conservative priest Richard John Neuhaus complained in First Things magazine that the NAB remains "a wretched translation. It succeeds in being, at the same time, loose, stilted, breezy, vulgar, opaque and relentlessly averse to literary grace."

Fortunately, there’s a new 8-translation edition of the New Testament for Catholics that will at least let Catholics compare the disasters that we’re hearing at Mass with how the same passage reads in other translations.

GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

Unfortunately, this New Testament still won’t help folks baffled by readings from Genesis.