Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin
Para 56 of Liturgiam authenticam from the Congregation for Divine Worship insisted upon ‘a translation that is as literal as possible’ of ‘Et cum spiritu tuo’ in ALL languages.
Despite the efforts of people like Jimmy and many parish priests, most people will understand this greeting in a dualistic manner – because it is a literal translation. Perhaps the majority of those baptized Catholic (in the English-speaking world) attend Mass only infrequently: Christmas, Baptisms, Weddings, Funerals (and are unlikely to hear full explanations). They know ‘And also with you’ – which is immediately intelligible. When they say ‘and with your spirit’, I think most (if they pause to consider) will misunderstand it as dualistic rather than anti-materialistic. For them, this rendition is misleading, not enriching – yet they are the main ‘market’ for (re)evangelization. For them, this part of the translation seems doomed to fail in it goals.
True, most other vernacular translations say something like ‘and with your spirit’. For those speakers there is no apparent reduction in intelligibility or a shift to dualism. But for English speakers there will be.
It is not enough to say this is a superior or literal translation. People will ask: What does ‘and with your spirit’ mean?
The meaning of this greeting is not clear even in Latin – at least to me – if anyone can give a succinct explanation, please do. If I understand correctly, the spirit being referred to is the spirit received at ordination, the minister of the sacrament ‘in persona Christi’. With my limited Latin, “Et cum spiritu tuo” barely captures those suggested meanings.
Would it not be better to say something like “The Spirit of the Lord is upon you” if that is what is meant?
Why is the greeting and response asymmetric? The priest does not say “the Lord be with your spirit”. One possible explanation is that ‘and with your spirit’ should only be addressed to an ordained person.
If this is correct then what should the proper greeting be at lay-led Liturgies of the Word and Eucharistic Services? where it is convenient to use the Sunday misalettes and for the lay-leader to say the words of the priest (minus the Eucharistic Prayer and a modified form of asking for God’s blessing).
I have an idea. Let’s just make every mysterious Bible and ancient Catholic utterance as boring as possible, just in case somebody might possibly take it the wrong way. And then, let’s encode sleep-inducing frequencies into all the walls of all the churches, so that everybody will fall asleep during Mass and be totally safe from dangerous Sacraments and rituals. And then….
Or (just a thought) we could trust the Word of God to be powerful and active, and quit trying to rewrite both the Trinity and the Bride into toothless cringing nonentities, in favor of actually passing along the words and practices we were given, and commanded to keep on giving. (Scary and radical, I know.)
In other words, I’m looking forward to actually saying what Catholics say, for the first time in my life. Let us take the adventure the Lord sends us, instead of assuming that saying the normal Catholic thing is some weird scary horror never faced before by human tongue.
Excellent points, Maureen.