SDG – Page 22 – Jimmy Akin

Lost In Translation

Michelle here.

Last week my brother-in-law found some time to install the DVD player he and my sister gave me last Christmas — which goes to show you that I’m no techno-geek, since it had to sit on my couch for nearly a year. Delighted to finally have DVD capability, I went out and bought three seasons worth of I Love Lucy (Seasons One, Four, and Five), my all-time favorite TV show.

When I put in Season One for my own personal I Love Lucy marathon, I was frustrated to find that most of the episodes were subtitled in Spanish. I was even more frustrated that Ricky Ricardo’s famous Spanish rages were not translated into English, but that’s another story. Since I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the subtitles, I assumed that they were standard to the set and decided to tolerate them.

Once I did, I started to notice something interesting.

I am not especially well-versed in Spanish, having only taken three years in high school and nothing since, but I can read a bit of it unassisted and recognize some more if put side-by-side with English. What I found fascinating during my viewing of I Love Lucy was seeing how English was translated into Spanish. Being fluent in English (I hope) and knowing enough Spanish to recognize translations, I found that a lot was lost in translation.

Some examples:

English colloquialisms apparently did not have exact translations. When the English-speaker would say "Easy!" while moving something, the translation into Spanish would be "Careful!" or "With caution." The meaning of the colloquialism was captured, but not a translation.
A whole range of English versions of "okay" would have one Spanish translation: "Bien."
The subtleties of language, which were sometimes used to humorous effect, were lost. Comical alliterations like "tubby trio" and "flabby foursome" could not be recaptured once they were translated.

All of this made up for the annoyance of subtitles that were not needed. Eventually, after fiddling around with the DVD remote, I finally figured out how to turn off the subtitles. But the translational game was so much fun I may turn them on again in the future to see if I can catch more translational glitches.

NCR: “Sympathetically Yours”

The National Catholic ~~Reporter~~ Distorter has sent a note of condolence to homosexual clergy on the occasion of the Vatican instruction about the ordination of homosexuals.

"To all those in positions of leadership in the Roman Catholic church [sic] who also happen to be homosexual, we offer our commiseration and sorrow that once again you have been forced to hear your sexuality, an element intrinsic to your humanity, described as an objective disorder.

"This time the phrase appears in the document with the ridiculously unwieldy title: ‘Instruction concerning the criteria of vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies, considering their admission to seminary and to Holy Orders.’ In other words, the document on gays and seminaries.

"The description is repugnant, of course, to all those in the church [sic], gay and straight, who understand that homosexuality is, in the overwhelming number of cases, not a chosen orientation but as essential a part of one’s nature as heterosexuality is for others."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Envoy Encore for the link.)

A New Underground Railroad

Pro-life advocates were doing too well by comparing abortion to chattel slavery of the antebellum United States. It must have worried Screwtape to see such a powerful analogy on the pro-life side, so he put out a memo to Lower Management and the R & D department Down Below has finally come through with their spin. Their Father Below must be proud.

"I volunteer with a local group called the Haven Coalition that offers free overnight home stays to women who come to New York for late-term abortions. Adeena, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, is 24 years old and 24 weeks pregnant. She’d caught a Greyhound from Pennsylvania earlier that day, and spent the afternoon at a clinic in midtown getting part one of an abortion that will be completed tomorrow.

[…]

"’Can I ask you something?’ she inquires. ‘Why you doing this?’

"’You mean sharing my place with you?’

"I tell her I’m upset that people like her have such a hard time getting abortions, and besides, I remember being young and being (more than once) in a similar fix. I don’t tell her about the differences: how I always had Blue Cross Blue Shield and never went past seven weeks."

GET THE STORY.

Surprisingly enough, since most groups like this take pride in their activities, I wasn’t able to find a web site for the Haven Coalition. (Screwtape and his minions must be getting better at instructing the hairless bipeds under their thrall to disguise some of their activities, although the guardian demon of the writer of the article for New York Magazine is probably in for a roasting later.) I did, however, find this tidbit about the group on a site that bills itself as protecting "choice":

"Haven Coalition: Haven Coalition is a network of volunteers who open their homes to low-income women forced to travel to New York City for abortion procedures. To find out more information or learn how you can volunteer, send an email here."

Oh, and be sure to check out the logo of ProtectChoice.org: an angry woman with an upraised fist. Says it all.

Closed For Christmas

When you hear of places closing for Christmas, you naturally expect those places to be businesses that are closed to allow employees to gather with family for the holiday. You don’t expect that place to be a church, which you would naturally think would be considered the gathering place for the spiritual family of God.

"This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

"Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

"It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the reader who sent the link and admitted to being "surprised/saddened to read it.")

I was saddened but not surprised.

It reminded me of a story a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor told my father many years ago. Every Easter the local pastors would ask the SDA pastor to lead the "non-denominational" sunrise service for the community. Eventually, he was tired of being pressed into service each year and curious as to why he was always being tapped. When he asked, the pastors told him, "Well, you’re the only one of us who doesn’t have to work that day."

They were referring, of course, to the fact that SDAs do not worship on Sunday. It was only many years later, once I was a Catholic, that I noted the irony of a Christian pastor not having to "work" on the day that commemorates the Lord’s Resurrection.

The difference now, I guess, is that there are some Christian pastors who don’t bother to look around for a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor to shepherd their flocks in their absence. (And, of course, the Christian pastors who asked the SDA to step in for them were busy tending other flocks at their own churches.) These Christian pastors who have chosen to shut down their churches for Christmas simply close the inn for the holiday and confirm for the flocks the message that Christmas is all about gluttony for food and stuff after all.

A Sunday-Night Line-Up

You ever get the feeling when watching a television show that the writers might as well have a Greek chorus descend at the end to announce the theme of the episode, just in case they haven’t yet gotten their message across? I had that feeling when watching Cold Case this past Sunday.

The story revolved around a teenage couple who found themselves pregnant. It’s 1988 and by the end of the school year the teenage dad will have been mowed down in a hit-and-run and the teenage mom will have tossed the baby in the trash. In 2005, the child — a healthy white newborn girl born under conditions that would have brought national media coverage and a legion of prospective adoptive parents who somehow was unadoptable and spent the past seventeen years in foster care — will be approached by someone claiming to have been her "real" dad. So the hunt is on for this guy and for whoever ran over the other young man seventeen years earlier.

In the process of solving the story we find that the couple first turned to a school nurse about the possibility of an abortion. Nurse Virtue turned out to be a pro-life wacko who believes in “punishing” anyone involved with abortion. On the side, she’s a promiscuous hypocrite who has been making time with a married math teacher whose marriage is in trouble because he and his wife cannot conceive children. No matter that a school nurse is statistically more likely to be willing to ferry the girl to Planned Parenthood than to run over those who provide or consider abortion. She’s a source for a few well-placed jabs at “nut job” anti-abortionists. The show will end by showing Nurse Virtue avidly reading a sexy romance novel.

We also find out that the teen mom was molested by the track coach. He pushes the teen dad to seek the abortion — and is even willing to provide the funds for the abortion — so that the kid will be free to pursue a track scholarship, but seventeen years later it is the track coach molester who has been stalking the teen girl he believes is his. Uhm, yeah.

To top it all, the killer turns out to be the math teacher whose hopes to adopt the baby were dashed when the teen dad told him that he could not bear to give up “his girls.” Enraged, the prospective adoptive parent ran down the “heroic” dad who “valiantly” decided to forego adoption for marriage and an instant family with a young woman whom he believed had been sleeping around and whose child might not be his.

So, where was the Greek chorus chanting “Abortion is our friend”? Maybe it wasn’t in the budget.

Immediately after this Very Special Episode of Cold Case was the opening night of CBS’s miniseries Pope John Paul II, which was advertised as papally blessed by Benedict XVI. That night’s episode was so incredibly good that I can’t wait for tonight’s conclusion and I would buy a DVD of the movie in a heartbeat. It certainly deserved a papal blessing.

One of my favorite parts of the movie, so far, was a vignette in that evening’s episode of a young Father Wojtyla counseling his students on the importance of sexual responsibility. The message he gave was completely and totally Catholic and amazing to hear on primetime network TV….

Especially considering the Coincidence of the Cold Case episode that preceded it.

Promenading Out

Some New York Catholic schools have cancelled plans for junior and senior proms, citing "flamboyance, extremism and affluence," among other undesirable behaviors.

"Staff at Chaminade High School — an all-boys’ school in Mineola run by the Marianist religious order — announced the cancellation Wednesday in school, and letters also were mailed to parents early Tuesday.

"’The prom culture has turned from a formal celebration to a showcase featuring flamboyance, extremism and affluence,’ the letter reads. ‘In fact, many students seek to leave the celebration early to engage in excessive behaviors, some of which are illegal.’

[…]

"Chaminade’s president, the Rev. James Williams, said yesterday that the modern prom is more about spreading peacock feathers than togetherness and farewells. ‘The prom is no longer the focus of the evening,’ Williams said, adding that most students make brief appearances in stretch limos and fancy outfits, then rush off elsewhere.

"’It’s very different than it was 15, 20 years ago,’ he added. ‘The evening is now about who will have the biggest limo, who has the biggest weekend planned. It’s beyond reform.’"

GET THE STORY.

My guess is that Fr. Williams did not frequent the proms of fifteen or twenty years ago. I graduated in 1990 and did not attend my prom, in large part because the expense was hideous and roughly comparable to the expense for a budget wedding. Between the tickets, the clothes, the transportation, etc. — all to a plush five-star downtown hotel rather than the school’s gym — there was no way the event was affordable to any but the most affluent families. In short, conspicuous consumption on prom night is not a new phenomenon.

But my feeling is that chucking the tradition of a formal dance to close out the high school experience is the wrong way to go. Junior proms can certainly be tossed — one prom per year is quite enough — but the senior prom can be a charming tradition. What’s needed is common sense: Move it back to the school gym; set a spending limit for dance hall accoutrements, formal clothes, and transportation; insist that unless there is an emergency that couples remain at the dance for a specified time period; that kind of thing. Tossing the baby with the bathwater is too easy and does not teach students anything.

The Return Of Christmas

Christmas is stealthily making its way back into the hurly-burly of the "Winter Holiday" shopping frenzy as canny merchants are catering to the desire of Christian customers to see the word Christmas alongside Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

"The word ‘Christmas,’ nearly absent in marketing by major retailers in recent years, has been quietly revived by some stores. Retail expert Jim Lucas says they are responding to consumers’ desire to make the holidays more personal – whether they observe Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.

"’They are saying this has become very commercial and they want to reclaim the holiday season and make it relevant,’ says Lucas, head of strategic planning at ad agency Draft Worldwide.

[…]

"’If you are going to make your earnings on the year because of Christmas, why should you be ashamed to call it Christmas?’ asks AFA [American Family Association] President Tim Wildmon."

GET THE STORY.

Steve Kellmeyer recently made the point that Christians themselves are largely responsible for the death throes of Christmas in Western culture.

"For nearly half of the last millennium, Christians have slowly been chipping away at Christmas. Now, in imitation of Alexander the Great who wept because he had no more worlds to conquer, they caterwaul because they have nearly completed their task. Are they upset because it took so long or because it’s almost gone?

"America’s Christians have fought long and hard for this day. Why aren’t they celebrating?"

GET THE POST.

Perhaps Christmas will finally be reborn as a religious holiday, rather than a secular tug-of-war, when both Christ and the Mass are put back into Christmas.

Born Again Abortionist

Sometimes when you read articles about abortion, you forget exactly what is at stake. When I read the following article about an Arkansas abortionist with a messiah complex — he believes that with abortion he destroys life but that by doing so his patients are "born again" — I noted that this abortionist "draws his own moral line" at 26 weeks, or the end of the second trimester.

I went to Google Images and searched out an image of a 26-week-old fetus to accompany this post. I was jolted when what I found was an image of a premature baby who had been born between 25 and 27 weeks gestation. That is the image I chose to include.

"The 17-year-old in for a consultation this morning assures the nurse that she does not consider the embryo inside her a baby.

"’Not until it’s developed,’ she says. ‘That would be about three months?’

"’It’s completely formed about nine weeks,’ the nurse tells her. ‘Yours is more like a chicken yolk.’

"The girl, who is five weeks pregnant, looks relieved. ‘Then no,’ she says, ‘it’s not a baby.’ Her mother sits in the corner wiping her tears.

"[Dr. William F.] Harrison draws his own moral line at the end of the second trimester, or 26 weeks since the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period. Until that point, he will abort for any reason.

"’It’s not a baby to me until the mother tells me it’s a baby,’ he says."

GET THE (FRIGHTENING) STORY.

Dialing For Jesus

Did you know that you could ring up Jesus? Well, it’s not a direct pipeline to heaven but it is possible to hear a few words from on high each day.

"If you knew Jesus’ phone number, would you call him? And by the way, that number is (631) 667-5569.

"A lot of people would, according to Msgr. Frank Gaeta, pastor of Ss. Cyril and Methodius Parish in Deer Park and creator of a 24-hour-a-day recorded phone message system called ‘Dial a Moment With Jesus.’

"Callers, of course, do not actually have a telephone conversation with the Son of God, but they do hear a three-minute spiritual message recorded by Msgr. Gaeta each day.

"This service has been offered for approximately eight years, first at St. Brigid’s Church in Westbury when Msgr. Gaeta was pastor there and now at Ss. Cyril and Methodius; so far there have been 75,000 calls. ‘I think people enjoy hearing another voice,’ he said."

GET THE STORY.

Now if I could just find the Blessed Mother’s phone number….

She Flourishes

Don’t tell the ACLU but the motto of Princeton University is Dei sub numine viget (Latin, "Under God’s light she flourishes"). The she likely refers to Princeton, of course, but lately it can also mean the Catholic Church. In a recent column, George Weigel spotlighted the beginnings of a Catholic renaissance on the campus of Princeton University:

"Having taught James Madison at the College of New Jersey (as Princeton was then known), the Rev. John Witherspoon has a claim to the honorable title, ‘Grandfather of the U.S. Constitution.’ What, I wonder, would a good Presbyterian Scotsman like Witherspoon make of the fact that Princeton University Chapel now has a Blessed Sacrament chapel, complete with tabernacle and icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe?

"Some might imagine the good reverend spinning in his grave at an impressive rate of r.p.m.’s. I think he’d be pleased, once he got over the initial shock. For Princeton’s vibrant Catholic community is, today, at the center of the enterprise to which John Witherspoon dedicated his life: the dialogue of faith and reason in the service of democracy and human freedom. If you’re a student looking for an intellectually challenging education and a Catholic community whole-heartedly committed to the new evangelization, or if you’re a parent looking for such a school for your son or daughter, you could do far worse than look at Princeton. Indeed, you’d be far better off with Princeton than with several high-priced institutions whose Catholicism is vestigial at best.

"The Princeton Catholic renaissance is nothing short of amazing — and heartening. It’s currently led by a marvelous chaplain, Father Tom Mullelly, who believes in leading by forming leaders. Three Sunday Masses, a well-attended daily Mass, and adoration of the Blessed sacrament keep Princeton’s Catholics eucharistically centered. The RCIA program brings new Princetonian Catholics into the Church every Holy Week — during which outdoor stations of the cross give a powerful witness to the central story of western civilization. Numerous Bible studies, ‘Catholic principles’ studies, and similar discussion groups maintain a lively conversation about Catholic truth and its application in the world. The campus ministry organizes an annual spring pilgrimage (Rome and Spain were recent destinations). Distinguished Catholic speakers are regularly invited to campus; a Gregorian chant choir offers an introduction to classic Catholic music; and Princeton’s Catholics pray Vespers every Tuesday evening with Princeton’s Episcopalians and Lutherans."

GET THE STORY.

All too often I’m asked by Catholic parents to give a list of 100-percent Catholic colleges and universities. I do my best to help them find that information, but I also caution them to be open to the possibility that there may be vibrant Catholic communities at otherwise secular universities that can act as counterbalance to a secular education. While that’s not as ideal as a 100-percent Catholic college, it’s a much better option than a nominally-Catholic university, an orthodox Catholic college that doesn’t fit a particular student’s education needs, or a secular university devoid of a Catholic presence.

It’s great to know that if your kid is Ivy-League material, Princeton offers a great Catholic environment in which he or she can flourish.