Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 242.  Sat  2-01-92 22:57  (NO KILL)  (MAILED)
    From: Father Mateo
      To: Lonnie Hortick
 Subject: Use of words

+-
| What is wrong with the use of the word presider?  As you know it is
| comes from the word president which is one of the oldest words in the
| Church used to describe the the celebrant of the Mass.  And what is
| wrong with worshipping community?  It is also one of the oldest terms
| used in the Church.  We ARE a community and we DO gather for COMMUNAL
| worship.
|  
| Just wondering what the hangup is...
|  
| Lonnie   <><
+-[LH=>FM]
 
Dear Lonnie,
 
First, let me suppose we are talking about English words in an American
context.  When I criticize certain tasteless expressions in modern
English, I have no interest in parallel usages in other languages,
living or dead.
 
The verb "preside" is a late arrival in English from French.  It
entered our language in 1611.  It has meant "occupy the chair or seat
of authority" -- "sit at the head of a table" -- "take the foremost
place" -- "direct, control" -- "exercise control, reign supreme" --
"conduct a musical group, play a musical instrument".  None of these
usages seems to me to justify using the word to mean "offer the Mass".
Moreover, it is worldly, an official - sounding word.  It is joyless
and utterly inadequate to express what a priest does at the altar.
"Celebrate" is joyful; "offer" is both accurate and directly expressive
of what the priest is doing.  "Preside" is neither.
 
"President", likewise, is not "one of the oldest words in the Church,
etc." It first enters our language as a Eucharistic noun in 1867 in a
particularly wooden translation of Justin Martyr by Dods.  For liturgy,
it is nothing but a stilted Latinism.
 
"President" has, however, an earlier and very interesting history
in English, going back to the 14th century.  Here are some of its
meanings:
 
1374 - Chaucer uses "president" for the presiding officer of a
       parliament.
 
1382 - Wyclif's translation of the Bible calls Felix, the successor of
       Pontius Pilate, "president" of Judea.
 
1387 - Head of a religious house or hospital (the only religious or
       semi-religious use of the word so far)
 
1413 - A religious tract calls Pontius Pilate "the president" (while
       Jesus was "presiding" at the Last Supper just across town,
       I suppose).
 
1615 - a presiding deity -- the nymphs are the "presidents" of the
       fountains.
 
"President" is used of university or college heads, from 1464; of one
elected to preside over meetings of a society, from 1660; of the chief
executive official of the Mormon Church; and from 1961, of the referee
at certain sports events.
 
None of these meanings makes me real eager to be called the "president"
of the 6:30 A.M. Mass.  But I would like to be a "presider" even less.
Its first appearance in English is 1692 in a Protestant book which
calls a bishop the "Honorable Presider" over the Church.  The word is
used in a context of church government, however, not of worship.
 
Because of our parliamentary and democratic traditions in England and
the United States and Canada, these words have an unmistakably
political flavor.  They are redolent, too, of all those interminable
meetings that people have to suffer through nowadays.  They are
graceless and joyless words that are far from appropriate for what the
priest is and does at Mass.  Such language was foisted upon us by
"experts" who sought no advice from working pastors and their people.
We've been had.
 
The phrase "worshiping community" is also objectionable, for somewhat
different reasons.  The word "community" today is badly over used and
misused.  However meaningful and appropriate it OUGHT to be, it is in
fact now a debased coinage.  The janitors that care for our buildings
on campus are not janitors anymore.  They are "the sanitation
engineering community".  Yuk.
 
There is a maxim in law that justice must not only BE done; it must be
SEEN to be done.  Similarly, a word used to mean what we are in church
and what we do in church must not only BE beautiful, reverent, and
appropriate; it must SOUND so.  "Worshipping community" sounds pompous
and smarmy.  It is clumsy and graceless, and fails in the simplicity,
directness, and humility which always mark good prose.  It is a phrase
concocted by "experts" who set out to invent a special churchy
language, which they hope to impose upon the rest of us, poor slobs
that we are.
 
This is my "hangup".  Can you recommend a good psychiatrist?  For
Pete's sake, don't send me to a liturgist.
 
                        Sincerely in Christ,
 
                        Father Mateo