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‘We have on the one side auoided the scrupulositie of the Puritanes . . .; as also on the other side we haue shunned the obscuritie of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tutiike, Rational, Holocausts, Praepuce, Pasche, and a number of such like.’
. . . [Catholic] correspondence of a singular freshness, authentic eighteenth-century, and authentic English, mere English, indeed, and utterly free from the stereotyped halfforeign jargon that later generations were to experience.’
‘The fruits of the bloody sacrifice are superabundantly applied by the unbloody sacrifice.’
‘I saw Pfuff’s “Interrelated Harmony” described in the catalogue as a neo-amorphist experiment in intra-abstractionism. It is also an embodiment of universal mode-concepts, and the absence of stress emphasizes the integral tranquillity. Whirlpools of space would be a more accurate description of these non-emotional facets of dynamic passivity.’
The first of these quotations is from the address to the reader of the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible; the second is from a review in The Times Literary Supplement; the third is a contemporary theologian quoting from cap. 2 of session xxii of the Council of Trent; the fourth is from a satirical jape of ‘Beachcomber’. They are part of the harvest of a little desultory reading, and serve well enough as an indication of what I want to talk— or rather, muse—about: words.
Everything, however small, that can be a hindrance to faith is of importance; and as an experienced missioner has said, ‘language can in fact be a pretty effective hindrance’.
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- Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 I may remind readers that the public was recently informed on the authority of a moral theologian that there are times when a Christian is allowed to be brutal. That means to emulate the brute beasts, and it is not an esoteric meaning. The harm done by such carelessness with words can hardly be exaggerated.
2 Moment of light relief: The celebrated Anglican evangelist Father Ignatius in the pulpit described Plato as ‘a dirty old pagan’, and abused Jowett for translating him.
3 Not so long ago papal encyclicals were translated in such a way as to provoke the exasperated comment that the translator seemed to be trying to conceal the Pope's meaning. The remedying of this was a really valuable work. But what about the current translation of the Marian year prayer? No easy job, I know, but …
4 Recently, at a Blackfriars conference, Mrs Renée Tickell and Father Gerald Vann had something Co say about ‘Roman Catholic English’. They did not forget what is to be found in the Manual of Prayers. Cf. Blackfriars, September 1954, pp. 357 ff.
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