CHURCH-SPEAK: STRANGE THINGS CHURCH PEOPLE SAY

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

There is a tendency that any group has to use words that make sense to some of its members, but are often unintelligible to outsiders. I have sometimes had to coach recent converts in "Church speak".

For example I may proudly announce that "RCIA classes will begin next week….so if you know anyone who is interested in attending, please fill out an information card on the table just outside the sacristy door." Thinking I have been perfectly clear, a new member approachs me after Mass to ask what "RCIA classes are….and also what is a sacristy?"

I have had the same reaction when announcing "CCD classes." One angry parent called me to protest that she was told by the DRE (more Church speak) that her daughter could not make First Holy Communion unless she started attending "CCD." The mother, a non-Catholic spouse of a less than faithful Catholic husband, had no idea that the parish even offered or required religious education for children, since she had never connected the term "CCD" with "Sunday School" or any form of religious instruction.

As a priest I have come to discover that I use terms, ordinary terms of traditional Catholicism, but given the poor catechesis (another Church word, meaning "religious training," by the way), the meaning of what I am saying is lost on many. For example, I have come to discover that many Catholics think "Mortal Sin" means "killing somebody." Even the expression "grave sin" escapes many, who know it isn’t good, but are not sure beyond that, what it means. And then mention "venial sin" and the conversation approaches stand-still.

Still other words, such as fornication, covenant, matrimony, incarnation, transubstantiation, liturgy, oration, epistle, gospel, sanctus, chalice, paten, alb, Holy Orders, theological, missal, monsignor, Eucharistic, etc., while being meaningful to many in the Church are often only vaguely understood by many others in the Church, not to mention the unchurched (is that another Church word?).

Once at daily Mass I was preaching out of the First Letter of John, and I was attempting to make the point that our faith is "incarnational." I began to notice the blank stares, and vacant looks. And so I asked the small group that day if any of them knew what "incarnational" meant, no one did. I went on to explain that it meant that the Word of God had to become flesh in us, it had to become real in the way we live our lives. To me "incarnational" captured it perfectly, but most of them did not even really know for sure what "incarnation" meant, let alone "incarnational."

Ah Church-speak.

The seminary years took the art of Church-speak to new levels. I remember how many of my professors, while railing against the use of Latin in the liturgy, seemed to have a strange fascination with Greek-based terminology. Mass was out, Eucharist was in. "Going to mass" was out, "confecting the synaxis" was in. Canon was out "anamnesis" was in. Communion was out koinonia was in. Mystagogia, catechumentate, mysterion, epikaia, protoevangelion, hapax legomenon, epiklesis, etc, etc. Necessary words, I suppose, but surely opaque to parishioners we were training to lead and teach. Church speak indeed, or should I say ekklesia-legomenon.

Ah, Church-speak…. or in this case seminary silliness.

At any rate, I have learned to be a little more careful when speaking today to avoid too much Church-speak, too many "insider" terms, too many older terms, without carefully explaining them.I think we can and should learn many of them, but we should not assume that most know them.

The great, and Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that he discovered, early on, that he often got credit for being learned, when in fact, he was merely being obscure. And, for any who knew him in his later years, especially on television, he was always very careful to explain and set forth Church teaching in a very accessible way. Good advice for all of us, a little less of the CCD and RCIA stuff, and little more of the clearer "Religious Instruction" can help decode our Church-speak.

 [blog.adw.org]