“Carol, You Can’t Date Pope!” Language and Grammar Part I

“Carol, You Can’t Date Pope!”

“That’s NOT what I meant! Or even what I said! Not even close!” I thought but did not say to Siostra Maria*  

Siostra means  Sister in Polish.

I was raised right, so I don’t angrily and loudly admonish my elder, especially because she’s a religious sister. It’s disrespectful. I roll my eyes in frustration, and I look up at the ceiling.  

I hate to be mis-understood.

I hate to mis-understand.

Words matter.

I had just read Pope Benedict’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est  aloud to her.  https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html

It was from a Catholic University of America political philosophy course assignment. 

I had said, “You know what? IF Pope Benedict were NOT a priest, and IF he were NOT the Pope, I’d totally go on a date with this guy! I don’t care how old he is!” 

At least 2 UNREAL conditions in the present would have to be true to date this guy. Oy!

This is the moment when you wish that the present unreal conditional and past unreal conditional tenses were still taught in language and grammar courses. http://209.166.84.64/assets/advanced/UUEGTeacher-CreatedWorksheets/Worksheets20/CondSents2.pdf

I call it bar stool grammar because drunk people will often tell you how wonderful their life would be or would have been IF some condition in the present or the past had been met.

For example, If I were Judge Judy, I would get a movie contract OR If you were my friend, I would tell you not to wear that dress. That’s present unreal conditional.

If I had had more money from my parents, I would’ve started that business, not them OR If I had had better driving teachers, I would not have had so many DUI’s. That’s past unreal conditional.

But I had meant that his writing in the encyclical Deus Carita Est (God is Love) so lyrical, beautiful and true that had he been just an ordinary single man of 76 years, I, 40 years his junior would have dated him, despite his age.

That’s the power of the written word. No matter the writer’s age, person, or title.

Their words can inspire a reader to love.

Alas, my lack of clarity, gave me double punch of woeful misunderstanding and humor.

“A problem of language,” begins Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Part I.

Pope Benedict XVI, you have no idea.

I was sitting in what I nicknamed the shrine of “Our Lady of Femininity and Domesticity,” where the sisters laundered and ironed priests, cardinals, and pope’s vestments and washed the eucharistic chalices and mass. 

Here’s what I read.

You tell me whether it’s not lovely, lyrical, and romantic in its expression.

“We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life” (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth.“

“In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.“

“God’s love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises important questions about who God is and who we are. In considering this, we immediately find ourselves hampered by a problem of language. Today, the term “love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings.“

God is very romantic. So is His Pope Benedict, in his writings.

That’s what I was trying to say to Siostra Maria — but did poorly!

In fact, the Bible is filled with poetry and lyrical love language.

Catholics are romantic, too. 

We express that capital R romanticism of God and God’s love in our masses and prayers as the sensual people. 

That is, we use all of our senses and our whole body in prayer and worship.

To encounter God we see, smell, taste, touch, hear, and feel the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist at the Mass.

And in our movement – bowing, kneeling lying prostrate, making the sign of the cross, lifting our voices, we strive to encounter the tangible reality of God in our bodies.   

This tangible reality of God.

My brother-in-law Dan calls us stand up sit down Catholics. I call it Catholic calisthenics. 

Come to our mass and you’ll hear chants, songs, and recited prayers.

You’ll see beautifully carved Italian marble and wood statues of our All Stars – not jerseys or pennants hung from the ceiling – but you’ll see the figures who have lived the gospel in an array of the best of the best of team Catholic, those saints among us who exemplified heroic love, lionesque courage, and self-sacrifice.

Along the walls of our churches in paintings, in frescoes, on floor tiles, portraits, stained glass, statues, and shaped in the filigree of gold chalices and thread of embroidered robes. 

You’ll taste the wine turned into the blood of the Lord Christ, the bread host transformed into the Body of Christ. That’s transubstantiation. We literally take Christ into our being.

That’s romantic. That’s extra-ordinary.

That’s the spirited, lovely beauty that Pope Benedict was conveying in Deus Caritas Est.

God is Love.

When we take Christ as the host into ourselves at the Eucharist, we are taking in Love.

We are becoming Love.

In our Catholic masses we celebrate what we are to become and what we are becoming: Love.

What’s more romantic than that idea, than that act in the Eucharist?