What Julia said, and more.

You complain that the document is not directed to “Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese” — fair enough. But you also seem to assume that all English speakers share the same vocabulary. As Julia is pointing out, they do not. This document was directed to a group of people who would know what an “eremite” is. As we both pointed out, this is an English word — after all, both Julia and I recognized it and knew what it meant. We are both speakers of English. And neither of us is a Catholic cleric.

Just to make it clear, I’m not trying to show off. It was only a year ago that I found out what a “lede” is. Journalists have their own exotic lingo too.

The fact that people can live in the same country, at the same time, supposedly using the same language and still not understand each other is one of the reasons journalism exists.

I’m an academic, not a journalist, but I think that one thing both our professions share is the job of translating the thoughts of one group to another. When my students complain that they cannot understand what a writer says, I tell them to grapple with the words that she uses. If those words seem strange to them, it is not the fault of the writer, who might not have had American undergraduates in mind when he or she was writing.

And I also warn them against simply trying to substitute thoughts and categories that seem familiar and obvious to them for the thoughts and categories presented by the author. It is not their job to make writers think and sound like American undergraduates — it is the job of American undergraduates to understand what the author was thinking when he or she wrote.

I appreciate the pressures of working under a deadline. We all live with pressure. But I rejoice when I have to learn something new. I invite you to rejoice as well. You now know what an eremite is!

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I sent you a long reply with sources, but it disappeared.

Short version:

The technical language in the USCCB study is no more esoteric than something you would see at a conference of brain surgeons or engineers, or lawyers. Specialized terms have precise meanings that often cannot be accomodated with everyday English.

I do accounting, a field where departing from common practice is suppossed to bring heavy penalties down on you very quickly

I am struggling with the new 990 and I do the grant applications for a non-profit organization. Talk about idiosyncratic vocabulary. But there are places to find definitions and instructions. As far as accounting goes, I often get debits and credits backwards; many people do because the system doesn’t seem to follow everyday logic.

If you are trying to read an article in JAMA, you are going to have to use a dictionary because the article was written for other physicians not the public. Try reading a Supreme Court brief - it took a law degree for me to understand what the heck one of them is all about.

Most technical terminology in law, medicine and theology is derived from Latin terms. People are not born knowing those words and terms. You have to learn them, ask an expert or search out the meanings if you are reading professional documents.

Press releases, talks to the public and writing directed to the guy in the pew is different. Still, I’m sure some of the lingo used by Mormons or Lutherans among themselves would probably not be very clear to me without checking out some definitions.

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Aren’t there nuns who are part of a diocese like priests?

I think there are cases where a bishop might approve a small, new group as an experiment and then it has to get approval in Rome as an official order. Nuns and sisters are not the same, by the way. Orders are like the Jesuits or the Benedictines or the Sisters of St Joseph. They have world-wide or national or regional geographical territories and may be divided further into smaller provinces. Their relationship to bishops is different from diocesan priests. There is a head of each order with authority separate from the authority of the bishop. There’s lots more to know about all the different groups that would take an entire book to explain.

The study was done for the bishops. It was not presented as a press release. The people who paid for the study and read it at the semi-annual conference understood what it was all about.

Go to a lawyers’ meeting. You will run into a lot of esoteric lingo. Same with engineers, accountants, baseball players, global warming climatologists, bacteriologists, etc. Specialized language saves time and the professional people in the discussions all know the terms. Additionally, these terms frequently have very precise meanings that regular language cannot accomodate.

A reporter coming from the outside can either interview an expert about the study (or an article in JAMA) or search it out in books or other references.

A brother of mine who is a newspaper reporter covers the courthouse beat in a large city. It took him years to get to the level of understanding he has now. Judges don’t stop the trial and explain things to the people in the audience. Juries are only given the instructions that have been argued and adopted at the end of the trial. Many things are not explained to them or anybody else outside the judge and lawyers. In fact, see My Cousin Vinnie to see how dumb lawyers feel (and are) when they start out.

The terminology in that USCCB study is no more esoteric than you would run into at grand rounds at a teaching hospital or a conference of brain surgeons. Ever try to decipher insurance company codes? They are intended for internal use.

I do accounting, a field where departing from common practice is suppossed to bring heavy penalties down on you very quickly.

Accounting “common practice” would be Greek to me. My stock analyst son sends me papers on economics that I am finally starting to understand. I still have problems with credits and debits, and frequently get them backwards. I’m learning the new 990, re-structuring our chart of accounts and it’s torture, but the IRS has provided a 75 page instruction booklet. Same with the granting entities who each have their own terminology. There are places to find info on what Catholic terminology means, too. Google.

Here’s some sources to start:

http://www.newadvent.org/library/

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ - encyclopedia

http://www.usccb.org/ - US Conference of Catholic Bishops

http://www.ewtn.com/new_library/index.asp - libraries

http://www.deacons.net/Canon_Law/cci.htm - canon law

http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/dictionary_terminology.htm - Orthodox terminology

http://www.usccb.org/comm/glossary.shtml - Catholic terminology

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Aren’t their nuns who are part of a diocese like priests?

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What Michael Pettinger said.

My philharmonic chorale sang a Robert Frost poem set to music that included “eremite” - Choose Something Like a Star. the word was quoted from a poem by Keats.

http://www.chem.yale.edu/~chem125/125/Star.html

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.

Keats wrote “Bright Star” in 1819 and revised it in 1820

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite

explanation:

Hermit,usually with a religious connotation. Emphasizing the star’s sleeplessness is part of the characterization of the star’s non-humanness, which makes it an impossible goal for a human being to aspire to.

Source: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/star.html

You also can’t understand classic poetry or mythology or Shakespeare or many other things without a knowledge of the history of words. [I say this as a lawyer who had to learn many obscure words and phrases and their meanings in Latin and English]

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Thanks for helping to break down the numbers. About the language: “Hermit” and “eremite” (an English word, check Merriam Webster) are both ultimately derived from the Greek “erémités,” one who practices solitude.

Frustration is understandable, but remember that the Catholic Church has a 2,000 year history and spans every continent. The choice of words is often dictated by a long practice and a certain desire to use words recognizable to Catholics from all over the world.

Between them, speakers of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese might come close to constituting a majority of the world’s Catholics, and they all call a hermit “eremita.”

Sorry to get all nerdy….

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If you are having trouble following this, imagine how I must find the subject. This is very confusing. When we have a perfectly usable English word like hermit, why use Eremites which does not even look like an English word?

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Apostolic
Contemplative
Monastic
Evangelical
Conventual
Eremetic

Here’s what I think I know, in order of knowledge:

- Eremites are hermits.

- Contemplatives spend most of their time in prayer and are generally separated from the public.

- Monastics live in community and perform various kinds of work to be self-sufficient.

- Apostolics have a mission that deals with the outside world - teaching, hospital work, etc.

- Conventuals are the less-strict Franciscans??

- Evangelicals - don’t know. Maybe their focus is conversions?

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Haven’t looked through the survey yet, but it might help to know that all nuns, sisters, brothers and monks are members of religious orders, and are colloquially known as religious. Priests who are not diocesan priests are also religious, and take additional vows not required of diocesan priests.

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There were a couple of comments about the tension between gay and straight members.

The comments are fascinating and I highly reccomend at least skimming them.

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Per the chart on page 26, for every member under 40 there are 10 over 90. Page 27 breaks this down by gender, the number of women over 90 skews the figures. Page 30 sets out the decade of birth for those now entering, only 2% are teenagers. Page 33 shows an ethnic breakdown; huge increase in Hispanics. Page 45 gives an age breakdown on new entrants: 57% are over 40, which is surprising. Page 46 defines generations in terms of US RCC history, which gives a very different breakdown than secular ones. There are 135 pages of analysis and 271 pages are devoted to comments from those taking the survey. Very competant and thorough survey.

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… those gray ghettos back in the Saturday metro sections where, in most daily newspapers, slightly old wire-service copy went to die.

Good show, I needed a laugh today.

Perhaps the prelates see potential brothers and sisters as a strain on already distressed resources.

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Check out the .pdf

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