A reader writes:
Thank you for your entertaining and informative blog.
I would just like to ask you why you so confidently stated that the Church hasn’t addressed extra-marital intercourse. Pitting Humanae Vitae against the CCC and Merriam-Webster doesn’t seem the best way of ascertaining what Church _Latin_ means by the word "coniugale" (even though I can tell you right now that coniugale meant "marital" in classical Latin).
Moreover, as I point out in your comments box, John Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, and everyone else who spoke about contraception, condemn it in any act of intercourse, not just marital. Whether you’re married or not isn’t a matter of important when speaking of contraception.
I am curious whether you have any Church sources to back up your assertion that taking the Merriam-Webster definition over the translation of Humanae Vitae is something grounded in the mind of the Church.
Let’s do this a piece at a time:
Thank you for your entertaining and informative blog.
Thanks very much. I’m glad you find it entertaining and informative, and I wanted to make sure I quoted this part so folks could see that you weren’t just being negative toward me/the blog.
I would just like to ask you why you so confidently stated that the
Church hasn’t addressed extra-marital intercourse.
The Church has addressed extra-marital intercourse. It has said that it is gravely sinful. What I said was that "as Humanae Vitae 14 is worded, it is condemning the use of
contraception within marriage and not really going into its use outside
of marriage." I also said "The same tends to be true of other Church documents."
Pitting Humanae
Vitae against the CCC and Merriam-Webster doesn’t seem the best way of
ascertaining what Church _Latin_ means by the word "coniugale" (even
though I can tell you right now that coniugale meant "marital" in
classical Latin).
I was not "pitting" Humanae Vitae against the CCC and the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. I was pointing out a mistranslation in one English translation of HV and pointing to a correct translation of the same passage in the CCC.
The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary has no bearing on any of this except to document the meaning of the word "conjugal" in English for those English speakers who may not be familiar with its meaning (since it’s a rather uncommon word that is only used technically and people may have read it without attending to its meaning).
Perhaps I could have been clearer about this, but the citation of the MWD is not to prove anything about Latin. If I wanted to prove something about Latin, I’d cite a Latin dictionary. It’s merely to document the meaning of the English word for those who may not know it and may have always assumed that the word meant "sexual" instead of "marital."
I didn’t see the need, here, to cite a Latin dictionary because (a) the meaning of the word is the same as its Latin cognate, (b) it looks the same as its cognate, so folks should be able to see the connection, and (c) I don’t feel the need to quote a foreign language dictionary every time I explain the meaning of a foreign language term.
If I explain that una casa blanca means "a white house" in Spanish, then I don’t feel the need to start cutting and pasting or re-keying from a dictionary. If the meaning of a term is clear, there is no need for this, and if the meaning of a term is unclear then I’m not going to be building my argument based on it.
In fact, the only time that I would be inclined to cite a dictionary is when the meaning of a term is in dispute.
Since you’ve disputed the meaning of this term (though admitting that in classical Latin it means what I say it means), let’s look at Leo F. Stelten’s Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, where we read:
conjugalis -is -e: conjugal, marital
conjugatus -a -um: married
conjugicidium -ii: n.; murder of one’s spouse
conjugium -ii: n.; union, connection, marriage, wedlock
conjugo -are: (1); unite in marriage
As you can see, the adjective in question, conjugalis (in blue) means just what it does in English: conjugal or marital. Even the ecclesiastical Latin cognates of this word (in black) are overwhelmingly oriented toward marriage.
Moreover, as I point out in your comments box, John Chrysostom, Clement
of Alexandria, and everyone else who spoke about contraception, condemn
it in any act of intercourse, not just marital. Whether you’re married
or not isn’t a matter of important when speaking of contraception.
This is as may be, and I would be perfectly happy if B16 or a future pope were to endorse this view. All I said was that Paul VI didn’t go so far as to do so and only addressed himself to the question of contraception in marriage as is obvious both from the term he used and the context in which he used it. (And I also indicated that recent magisterial documents follow his lead in this matter.)
I am curious whether you have any Church sources to back up your
assertion that taking the Merriam-Webster definition over the
translation of Humanae Vitae is something grounded in the mind of the
Church.
I don’t need any because I’m not reading tea leaves here. I’m explaining the plain meaning of the text in Latin, as backed up by (a) my knowledge of Latin, (b) what dictionaries of ecclesiastical Latin say, (c) the structure of the passage, (d) the concurrence of the translation of the same passage in the English version of the CCC, and (e) the concurrence of other Latinists who I know and have discussed this passage with (at least one of whom is a conservative moral theologian with an expertise in sexual ethics).
This just isn’t rocket science. It’s what the text says.
Now, I’d love to be able to point you to an Official Vatican Dictionary that contains technical definitions of every word ever appearing in every Vatican document, but there isn’t one. While the Holy See does maintain a list of Latin neologisms (e.g., the Latin word for "Internet" or "helicopter"), it doesn’t have an official dictionary of words whose meanings everybody already knows and has known for hundreds of years. It uses these words and expects people to know what they mean based on their ordinary meanings in ordinary dictionaries (Latin dictionaries in the case of documents whose editio typica is in Latin; dictionaries in other languages for documents whose editio typica is in another language).
Hopefully this clarifies matters.
