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Friday 12 October 2007

Point of grammar...

Is it true that their are dissident dioceses and heretical religious communities where all masculine pronouns have been banned, and that saying "he," "him" "himself" or "his" is the only sin left?

Bishop Trautman, gallantly swimming upstream, has apparently spawned THE definitive How-Can-I-Seem-To-Be-Obedient-But-Still-Get-My-Own-Way reactions to Summorum Pontificum, a document that will be well and thoroughly fisked throughout St Blogs, and defended by the delusional all's-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-post-conciliar-Churches, who-cares-what-the-documents-really-said "Spirit of VCII" types, also to be found in dispiriting numbers.

What concerns me, in a Decree of Promulgation (yeah, I have to agree, that's pretty pretentious for a middle management memo,) which deals with, of all things, fluency in language is this sentence:
4.3 Any layperson assisting as an altar server at Masses and celebrations of the sacraments using the extraordinary form must be properly trained to recite the proper responses and to carry out their function according to the rubrics of the 1962 Missal (canon 230 §2). [emphases mine]
First, I don't care what sloppy current usage deems acceptable, the use of the plural pronoun to agree with a singular noun, in order to never, ever, ever, give offense to a person of the feminine gender who might have her feelings hurt by seeing masculine pronouns, and feeling herself excluded by same.
I don't care what linguistic contortions some might feel themselves constrained to in order to keep transgendered or ambigendered persons from feeling excluded.
Such ugly, infelicitous locutions are nonsense up with which I shall not put. (And I admit myself guilty of them from time to time, I hope I never am in any of my more formal utterances, on which I have spent some time, say.... my decrees of promulgation.)
All that is beside the point!
Because surely, in this one instance, of all such instances of legalese or Catholish, we can all agree that anyone, absolutely anyone to whom the pronoun in question might apply will, to be indelicate about it, have a penis? And that the "any layperson" in question can be said to have "HIS" function?
Not "their, but "HIS."
Any layperson assisting at the altar will be either a man or boy.
Right?
I stand open to correction on this, feel free ....

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