LOST IN TRANSLATION

by David G. Duggan ©

Special to VIRTUEONLINE

www.virtueonline.org

April 30, 2025

For 36 years I’ve lived halfway between two pillars of Chicago’s German community: St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic church and St. Luke Lutheran. Both have bell towers which call out the hour; perhaps because the parishes pre-dated time zones, and one is a tenth of a mile west of the other, there is a slight offset when they begin their chimes.

Both parishes were started in the latter part of the 19th century when Chicago had more German-born residents than any city west of the Rhine. For most of those 130-plus years St. Alphonsus was owned by a German order of monks: the Redemptorists, and for most of the last 60 years, it offered a mass said in German. St. Luke had been a Missouri Synod parish with strict instruction in German.

I offer these observations in light of the recent death of Jorge Bergoglio, the first pope from an immigrant community, and the first who was ordained to the priesthood after Vatican II which introduced the mass in the vernacular language of the worshipers. Though Spanish was his mother tongue, and Latin the language of the Vatican, in normal discourse he conversed in Italian. When in Rome ... And for whatever reason, he quietly put the kibosh on the Latin Mass, which had been making inroads under his two predecessors.

Language is the way God communicates with us. Commandments and Torah, prophets and proverbs, chronicles and case studies all point not only to God’s glory, but to His purpose.

But that wasn’t enough. Language, particularly in translation has slippage. As a lawyer who made his living from the imprecision of language, I can attest to how people want words to mean what they think they mean.

So God sent His Son, the Word made Flesh, to dwell among us. Knowing that wouldn’t be enough, after Christ’s death and resurrection, God the Father sent His Holy Spirit, breathed into the disciples as the guardians of the Word until His coming again. Word is just breath, wrapped around tongue, blown through teeth and pursed through lips, but it is our connection to God.

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