If I may, I think St. John the Evangelist also has a useful word or two, in the "Last" Gospel.
In propria venit, et sui eum not receperunt
... To His own He came, and His own received Him not.
(I think that's enough, don't you?)
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Not for excessive iteration, but...
... the Canonist has some worth-while things to say about the (canonical, theological... ) uses of the word "Received".
If I may, I think St. John the Evangelist also has a useful word or two, in the "Last" Gospel.
(I think that's enough, don't you?)
If I may, I think St. John the Evangelist also has a useful word or two, in the "Last" Gospel.
(I think that's enough, don't you?)
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Far be it from me...
There is, in certain circles you may have intersected, a trope of asserting something along the lines of
Nonetheless, there is a substantive criticism to be made where the intersecting circles do criticize, and I should like to add my voice to it, BUT USING A BAD ARGUMENT WON'T HELP and repeating carelessly "the word 'actuosa' is better translated 'actual' than 'active'" is a BAD ARGUMENT for two reasons: 1) it misses the point and 2) it suggests an insupportable translation. I've remarked before that we need grammar to translate properly, and not merely words.
"Actuosa" is an adjective. Adjectives are like verbs in that they are attached (grammatically) to (grammatical) nouns. There is therefore a question: what is the noun to which "actuosa" is attached? In the disputed text, that is obviously "participatio". So, then, the distinction should not be between whether "participatio actuosa" is "actual" or "active", but where the activity of the "active participation" is. To put it differently again, within the very same entry we have an adjective and an adverb: It's as though Lewis+Short imagine that the Council Fathers had a choice between "participatio actuosa" and "participans actuose".
In "participans actuose" what becomes actuosus is the participant — and that's the caricature against which the "actually..." counter was tried. For indeed when all are actuosi, all is Babel and Negotio; but we seek Requiem: "Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur... requiescant a laboribus suis". In "participatio actuosa" it is the participatio ipsa that is actuosa. Yes, it's easy to imagine the conjunction of both, participans participatio actuosa actuose as it were, but it is hardly necessary. It's perfectly consonant with the idea of "participatio actuosa" that the part one takes (parte quem cipit) is active, lively, full of activity, within the participant. That attending to the Mass (whatever that looks like from the outside) might, as it were, bring life into the soul. HMMM!
that “active” there is supposed to reflect Sacrosanctum Concilium’s word “actuosa”, which is better rendered as the deeper “actual”.You may have read these words somewhere else recently, perhaps set in Red? ... Anyways. There is a small problem, however, if you own/have borrowed/stolen/know how to find a "Lewis and Short":
actŭōsus , a, um, adj. actus,So. You see the difficulty. There's nothing about distinguishing between "superficial/profound" in there. There's nothing about genuine or feigned. It's almost as if "active" is exactly the right translation from the Latin to our English.
I.full of activity, very active (with the access. idea of zeal, subjective impulse; diff. from industrius, which refers more to the means by which an object is attained, Doed. Syn. 1, 123): “virtus actuosa (est), et deus vester nihil agens expers virtutis (est),” Cic. N. D. 1, 40; so id. Or. 36, 125; Sen. Ep. 39.—Hence, acc. to Fest. s. v. actus, p. 15, subst., an actor or dancer.—Adv.: actŭōse , in a lively manner, with activity, Cic. de Or. 3, 26, 102.
A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by. Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and. Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.
Nonetheless, there is a substantive criticism to be made where the intersecting circles do criticize, and I should like to add my voice to it, BUT USING A BAD ARGUMENT WON'T HELP and repeating carelessly "the word 'actuosa' is better translated 'actual' than 'active'" is a BAD ARGUMENT for two reasons: 1) it misses the point and 2) it suggests an insupportable translation. I've remarked before that we need grammar to translate properly, and not merely words.
"Actuosa" is an adjective. Adjectives are like verbs in that they are attached (grammatically) to (grammatical) nouns. There is therefore a question: what is the noun to which "actuosa" is attached? In the disputed text, that is obviously "participatio". So, then, the distinction should not be between whether "participatio actuosa" is "actual" or "active", but where the activity of the "active participation" is. To put it differently again, within the very same entry we have an adjective and an adverb: It's as though Lewis+Short imagine that the Council Fathers had a choice between "participatio actuosa" and "participans actuose".
In "participans actuose" what becomes actuosus is the participant — and that's the caricature against which the "actually..." counter was tried. For indeed when all are actuosi, all is Babel and Negotio; but we seek Requiem: "Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur... requiescant a laboribus suis". In "participatio actuosa" it is the participatio ipsa that is actuosa. Yes, it's easy to imagine the conjunction of both, participans participatio actuosa actuose as it were, but it is hardly necessary. It's perfectly consonant with the idea of "participatio actuosa" that the part one takes (parte quem cipit) is active, lively, full of activity, within the participant. That attending to the Mass (whatever that looks like from the outside) might, as it were, bring life into the soul. HMMM!
Monday, September 4, 2017
scattered thoughts on how the best words go very wrong cut off from tradition
Peace is a good thing, obviously; and the best peace to have is that of Heaven; to attain it is a struggle, a constant battle, a striving against devils, against powers and principalities; and the only sure way to attain it is to surrender to the Divine Will...
Any good Catholic can agree with all of that, but will insist that it is badly incomplete.
Our Peace hath a name: it is Jesus Christ.
Our Struggle is within our very souls, so that we can then love our Neighbour in Truth and Right.
Our Surrender is to take up our Crosses and to die to ourselves (which, among other ways, we do whenever we make a good confession).
Any good Catholic can agree with all of that, but will insist that it is badly incomplete.
Our Peace hath a name: it is Jesus Christ.
Our Struggle is within our very souls, so that we can then love our Neighbour in Truth and Right.
Our Surrender is to take up our Crosses and to die to ourselves (which, among other ways, we do whenever we make a good confession).
Friday, September 1, 2017
Form and formation
A little while ago, in studying for us the "εφφαθα" Miracle, Father cited St. Thomas' proposition that even those of us disabled of some sense, of sight or hearing or reason... still possess an inclination towards those senses, being part of Human Nature; and this was Father's lead-in to another particular inclination integral to Human Nature against which, that very day, there were in our City a number of parades marching under the banner "Bar-y of disordered colours and metals" and the motto "Hubris!"... Oh, how dull. That's not why I'm writing today.
There is a marvellous illustration of St Thomas' contention in the discovery, within neuroscience, of plasticity: it's possible (though probably not a good idea) to inhibit the development of the parts of the brain closest to the sense of sound — in fact, an effective way is to produce a defective ear — ; and then a funny thing happens when wires are connected between ordinary (probably tiny) microphones and some other part of the brain: that part of the brain being tickled in a way that behaves like "sound" will then reconnect itself to behave more like an auditory centre. And that's the basic idea behind cochlear implants.
However, this doesn't mean that, in the ordinary course of things, a cochlear-implant patient develops perfect hearing: plasticity is limited by age, and it seems to get used-up. In a similar way, people can have perfectly well-formed retinas but congenital cataracts; now-a-days such cataracts can be corrected before a child learns to walk (this happened to a ... er... step-cousin... of mine... !) but before we grew so daring, adults given late correction of early cataracts learned to see in greater resolution, but ordinarily couldn't intuit perspective. Seeing and understanding the space we inhabit indeed belongs to our Human Form, but we usually need to be informed by that space early in life. Just as a rhyming point of amusement, I can tell you with certainty that I have trouble seeing the roundness of circles. If you show me a circle as perfect as can be, if it is large enough (which isn't too large), my brain will insist that the shape is being more tightly curved in four corners, top and bottom, left and right; maybe I've been looking at rectangles for too long? (Me! a geometer...)
Anyways, I bring it up — the limits of ordinary plasticity — to highlight just how complete is the Miracle of the εφφαθα: this man was born and lived a long time with sticking tongue and blocked ears, and in the very minute that his ears are opened and his tongue loosed, he is able to speak what he has never heard before, using muscles that have never been trained; and to understanding what he cannot have learned by hearing. Verily, vino torcularia redundabant!
There is a marvellous illustration of St Thomas' contention in the discovery, within neuroscience, of plasticity: it's possible (though probably not a good idea) to inhibit the development of the parts of the brain closest to the sense of sound — in fact, an effective way is to produce a defective ear — ; and then a funny thing happens when wires are connected between ordinary (probably tiny) microphones and some other part of the brain: that part of the brain being tickled in a way that behaves like "sound" will then reconnect itself to behave more like an auditory centre. And that's the basic idea behind cochlear implants.
However, this doesn't mean that, in the ordinary course of things, a cochlear-implant patient develops perfect hearing: plasticity is limited by age, and it seems to get used-up. In a similar way, people can have perfectly well-formed retinas but congenital cataracts; now-a-days such cataracts can be corrected before a child learns to walk (this happened to a ... er... step-cousin... of mine... !) but before we grew so daring, adults given late correction of early cataracts learned to see in greater resolution, but ordinarily couldn't intuit perspective. Seeing and understanding the space we inhabit indeed belongs to our Human Form, but we usually need to be informed by that space early in life. Just as a rhyming point of amusement, I can tell you with certainty that I have trouble seeing the roundness of circles. If you show me a circle as perfect as can be, if it is large enough (which isn't too large), my brain will insist that the shape is being more tightly curved in four corners, top and bottom, left and right; maybe I've been looking at rectangles for too long? (Me! a geometer...)
Anyways, I bring it up — the limits of ordinary plasticity — to highlight just how complete is the Miracle of the εφφαθα: this man was born and lived a long time with sticking tongue and blocked ears, and in the very minute that his ears are opened and his tongue loosed, he is able to speak what he has never heard before, using muscles that have never been trained; and to understanding what he cannot have learned by hearing. Verily, vino torcularia redundabant!
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