Editorials
COMMONWEAL World enough & time When Canadian-Ukranian artist William Kurelek (who died of cancer in 1977) painted his "Nuclear Madonna" in April 1971, he based the scene on Matthew 24:19: Woe to...
...But can that be said for someontt who lights a candle...
...13:1) will now read, "If I speak in human and angelic tongues...
...It was so when Luther, in his German New Testament, added the word "alone" to the phrase, "justified by faith," in the book of Romans...
...No longer will the Lenten epistle (Rom...
...Chernobyl struck not only one country...
...THE GOOD NEWS ON 'MAN' Bible translating is Bible interpreting...
...On a grander scale was the decision not to change, restraiO or balance the masculine language for God, particularly tW pronoun "he...
...Maybe we should bring home the marines...
...Its radioactivity spread to at least twenty others...
...They may indeed be irreparable...
...Such changes were made in a National Council of Churches-approved lectionary in 1983 which stirred debate and even some professional scorn...
...The first is a linguistic one English simply doesn't have a gender-inclusive third-person pronoun, singular, and too often — despite the translators' pure motives — the generic term gets attached to a masculine pronoun ruining the inclusive effect...
...01 course, there are problems...
...The renamed painting is dedicated tb those who have died, and to those who will...
...alaso most are not even aware of the issue...
...geCall that every Sunday we Catholics still recite, "all things weremade for us men and our salvation...
...Furthermore, because of two decades of concern over discrimination in language, especially discrimination against women, "the present translation attempts to display a sensitivity appropriate to the present state of the questions under discussion...
...Fifteen years later, following the destruction of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, the Niagara Falls Art Gallery renamed Kurelek's painting the "Chernobyl Madonna...
...Since translations are lengthy, costly undertakings that take years to make their way into hymns, songs, prayers, and ullirnately the hearts and minds of worshippers, it is too bad that this particular step forward — and it is a step forward — was not more sure-footed and bold...
...reader should keep in mind...
...Other problems with this new translation are matters of interpretation.' 'The primary concern in this revision is fidelity to what the text says," the Preface states, as though the t^i were self-evident and not dependent upon interpretation;* fact, there is a set of assumptions underlying this translation h» quite conservative as outlined in the Preface — which tfu...
...Earlier this year it had to shut down a reactor at Hanford, Washington, built for twenty years of service...
...It is framed in a colorful Ukrainian pattern, one used often by Kurelek, and depicts a bald-headed mother in a green pasture giving suck to her deformed infant, another child begging for food at her side...
...These aims appear to have been largely achieved...
...Mind the italics...
...Meanwhile, scores of incomplete commercial plants across the country, facing the public's lack of confidence as well as lowered electrical needs, are trying to sell their reactors to DOE for conversion to military reactors...
...How many other nuclear madonnas might there have been in the shutting of an eye...
...Would they have known what hit them...
...If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels" (1 Cor...
...The reactor, whose design bears similarities to the failed Chernobyl plant, is now twenty-three years old...
...Improvements focused on the latest biblical scholarship, the demands for formality in liturgical proclamation, the burgeoning interest in private Bible study among Catholics, and the need for increased accuracy in adhering to the Greek text...
...The inclusion of both might have been clearer...
...Who finds a buried treasure...
...Take the recent report of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Philadelphia Electric Corporation's Peach Bottom plant...
...And for those willing to see, there are the hundreds hospitalized, the 135,000 evacuated, the farmland abandoned, the forests razed, the bodies buried...
...Then remember how many homilies you have heard recently shot full of exclusive language...
...It seems i shame that the Catholic bishops' liturgical office cannot sinv ply approve this lectionary for use in Catholic dioceses since the text already includes Roman, Episcopal, and Lutheran readings, is handsomely bound and ready for use...
...This is the good news...
...The superior n»W lectionary now being distributed to parishes by the Luthefljtt Church in America, Lectionary for the Christian People by Gordon Lathrop and Gail Ramshaw-Schmidt (Pueblo, 198$ translates these salutations, "My dear people...
...20:23) will read, "Whose sins you forgive arc forgiven them...
...This translation — worked on for six years by a committee of sixteen revisers and consultants, including four women — is expected to form the basis for a revised lectionary for liturgical use in Catholic churches throughout the U.S...
...For general parish use, wf would have preferred what Lathrop and Ramshaw-Schmidt did: eliminating as many masculine pronouns for God as possible, without adding anything to the text...
...As nuclear plants grow older, the frequency of serious accidents is likely to increase...
...The cracks run deep...
...One year after the disaster in the Ukraine, their voices still echo for those willing to hear...
...The Department of Energy (DOE) has just documented growing safety problems with its own military reactors...
...With it came the seeds of self-questioning and reappraisal, the moment nuclear power at last became a national and international focus of moral concern...
...Think of parishes where women do not enjoy visible positions of responsibility and leadership (the question of ordination aside...
...At least they don't sleep on duty...
...The combination of aging technology and human fallibility are apocalyptic indeed...
...16:1) because, according to the trans* lators, the actual order of deacons had not yet been established and (2) to include (Rom...
...The "present state of the question," among both Protestants and Catholics (other than fundamentalists), is that more and more people of both sexes understand the words, "humans, persons, all, someone," etc., to include both sexes, while the term "man" is restricted to males...
...And at the government's C Reactor at Savannah River, S.C., a different reactor design has developed a crack that is apparently irreparable, putting it out of commission...
...Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) said at 24 April 1987: 227 the time that the situation "borders on an emergency...
...Therefore, in the new translation, the generic use of the English word "man" is generally avoided when the meaning of the Greek is inclusive of both sexes...
...It is so in the latest Roman Catholic translation of the New Testament \nThe New American Bible (currently available from Catholic Book Publishing Co...
...But just as the verdant plant life in Kurelck's "Madonna" is lush and green from the clouds of nuclear fallout, so our insights from Chernobyl must continue to produce and prod necessary change...
...Less obvious, but critical to everyone interested in exploring the ministries in the early churches and expanding the ordained ministries in the present church, are two other decisions: (1) to refrain from using the term "deacon" in reference to Phoebe (Rom...
...Since this translators' problem is inevitable, ^ will be up to homilists, catechists, and leaders of prayer-to reinforce the ambiguity that actually exists in Greek...
...Isn't it obvious that ihe explicit inclusion of women everywhere the Greek does not exclude them from the text is basic to both an accurate translation of the New Testament and to pastoral necessity...
...5:6) be read, "Christ died for us godless men," but as "Christ died for the ungodly...
...In the United States, according to the recent World watch report Reassessing Nuclear Power: The Fallout from Chernobyl, there were 746 emergency shutdowns in nuclear power plants in 1985, up 28 percent from the year before...
...COMMONWEAL World enough & time When Canadian-Ukranian artist William Kurelek (who died of cancer in 1977) painted his "Nuclear Madonna" in April 1971, he based the scene on Matthew 24:19: Woe to those who have children at the breast on the last day...
...Or do they...
...Whose hand is malformed...
...Last month the NRC disclosed that operators in the plant's control room periodically slept during the night shift...
...If it is sometimes true that through dying others might be saved, the victims of Chernobyl may be prophetic indeed...
...It was so when the Great Bible of Cromwell and Cranmcr was revised to say, among other tidbits, that "Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches...
...If you forgive men's sins they are forgiven them" (Jn...
...The decision not to expand the form of address used most often by Paul in letters to the churches, and traditionally translated "Brothers," is disappftinting and indefensible, especially in light of the translators' explanation: "There has never been any doubt that this designation includes all mem* bers of the Christian community, both male and female...
...Imagine a parish where all these concerns are discussed openly and regularly by Bible teachers, homilists, and in228: Commonweal formed laity...
...We think the signs of the times read differently...
...16:15) a note regarding Junia — "^ woman's name" — who is listed clearly as "prominent amonji, the apostles...
...24 April 1987: 229...
...Why was "deacon" excluded, but "apostle1 included...
...The same with the merchant of pearls, sheep-owners, landowners...
...In the parable of the sower, for instance, the sower soon becomes "he...
...What we have in this translation, brothers and sisters, is the most accurate English translation to date of the generic Greek word for human being, a word that for centuries was translated as "man," though English also has the term "human being" in its language...
...Furthermore, in March, DOE announced, under pressure from the National Academy of Sciences, that it would cut power sharply in its three operating plutonium-producing reactors because of concern that the reactors' emergency cooling system could not handle an accident...
...all of whom, it could be argued, probably were male-dominated occupations in biblical times...
Vol. 114 • April 1987 • No. 8
