instruere...inlustrare...delectare Disputations

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Nominal language

Here's the opening of an AP article published today:
Americans are wary of granting refugee status to children crossing the U.S. border to flee strife-torn countries in Central America....
What struck me is that this could be written as:
Americans are wary of granting refugee status to children who are refugees....
Granted, admitting that someone is a refugee and granting that person refugee status are two different things.

But in a land where we can transubstantiate things into other things by calling them the other things -- like marriage, or healthcare -- maybe we can also transubstantiate them into other things by not calling them what they are.

| 2 comments |


Monday, July 28, 2014

Why indeed?

Archbishop Chaput puts it well:
Why should anyone believe that the Gospel is good news when we live as if it weren’t?

| 0 comments |


What did you find?

A passing line from the homily I heard yesterday (on the Parable of the Buried Treasure):
Some of you will leave here today without your treasure.
That, I think, could make for a profitable sermon in itself.

| 0 comments |


Home