I have a habit of collecting examples of language, particularly biblical and liturgical texts, mangled by a misguided effort to make them gender-neutral. It’s not particularly healthy, a bit like the compulsion to pick at a scab, but for the similarly afflicted, here are a few recent instances:
My wife, for whom it would be very out of character to create a slanderous lie, claims that a written history of a parish in this area contained a reference to "Our Person of Lourdes."
But at least that wasn’t an official translation of an important text. Last week’s Gospel (I think it was last week’s) was the passage traditionally translated as "Call no man father." I’ve forgotten the exact phrasing now, but what we heard at Mass substituted "no one" or "no person" or something like that. Fairly harmless, really, but funny: a scrupulousness as to whether it might be offensive to assume that fathers are male. Although I suppose the impetus was not so much that as to try to reduce the overall number of references to maleness.
And this one, from the Sept. 11 Gospel: "No one lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself." I’ve been puzzling over whether this is actually ungrammatical or just very weird. Perhaps someone with more technical command of grammar can tell me. I think it’s grammatically wrong. "One lives for oneself" is
perfectly fine. But the negation of the first "one" seems to wreck the
reference of the second "one." At any rate I’m a bit hyper-sensitive to this sort of thing, and my reception of that reading couldn’t have been more disrupted if the reader had pulled out a chalkboard and dragged his fingernails over it.
Oops, sorry, "his or her fingernails." "One’s fingernails"? Whatever.
–Maclin Horton
I like Peter Kreeft’s explanation in his catechism as to why he doesn’t use inclusive language. Here is some of what he writes on page 55, “…Traditional language is maintained in this book, not out of any desire to exclude women or to deny the full equality between men and women, but because of the conviction that past injustices against women are not atoned for by future injustices against language.”
That’s good. I’m actually somewhat sympathetic to women who are bothered by gendered pronouns, the collective “man,” and so forth. But a better solution than torturing the language is to make clear that both sexes are included. Over time the natural drift in language would tend to make it less and less an issue.
Peter Kreeft makes an excellent point. As a former English teacher, I’ve inwardly cringed from sometimes at the infelicitous translations which pop up in the Scripture readings at Mass. For instance, last Sunday’s Gospel was the Parable of the Unjust Servant — which our translation rendered as “slave”. What then becomes of the words “Well done, good and faithful servant”? In hymns as well, attempts at “updating” the language do a lot of linguistic harm. I just wish that the translators had left the words alone. It’s unfortunate that those who object to the so-called “male-centered” language seem to be so ignorant of the nuances of English idioms and etymology. “History”, for instance, is from the Latin “historia” — a story — nothing at all to do with the male pronoun. I’m sure you know a lot of other cases where etymological unawareness has led to linguistic “murder”!
My favorite is a reference I once heard–can’t remember where–to the story of Christ’s healing of the “person born blind.”
“Call no man father.” I’ve forgotten the exact phrasing now, but what we heard at Mass substituted “no one” or “no person” or something like that. ”
On the positive side, it rather eviscerates one Protestant argument against Catholics.
AMDG,
Janet