Saturday, November 22, 2014

What does the Pope mean by 'mean'

 There is a curious little video of the Pope's audience in which he starts his Christmas catechesis, I am not sure if something is lost in translation but he gets people to shout out in response to his question 'What does the name of Jesus mean?" they respond "God with us!"

"Jesus" means, Saviour or Liberator, Emmanuel means "God with us".
Obviously this is a problem with our interpretation of what the Holy Father means by 'means'. Possibly if I didn't need to rely on translators I might not see this as a problem.


Br Alexis Bugnolo said...

I can see your point Father; I think it is an error in the text:

If you say, "What does the name of Jesus mean?"


"What does Jesus' 'name' mean?"

It makes a difference, in context; because in context of the passage from scripture cited, the "name" can refer to Emmanuel, and the possessive in Italian or Spanish can refer to the person not to the name, "Jesus".

Lepanto said...

The Pope doesn't appear in this extract to be saying that 'Jesus' MEANS 'God with us' that seems to be an error by the commentator. He is saying that 'Jesus IS God with us' which I suppose is something we can all agree with (except Cardinal Kasper, of course, according to his writings - 'Jesus never claimed to be God'.)

Nicolas Bellord said...

Father; It is the commentator who talks about the "meaning of the name of Jesus" not the Pope who is merely saying that "Jesus is with us".

Christopher said...

'Jesus' means 'Yahweh saves'.

Fr Seán Coyle said...

This from the Italian text on the Vatican website of the words the Pope spoke in the Wednesday audience on 18 December last year: 'Egli è il Dio-con-noi; Gesù è Dio-con-noi. Credete questo voi? Facciamo insieme questa professione: Gesù è Dio-con-noi! Gesù è Dio-con-noi'. He's not explaining the meaning of the name Jesus but of the Person of Jesus. The name Jesus means 'God who saves' and the name Immanuel means 'God is with us'. The Pope wasn't asking the people to say 'Jesus means "God is with us"' but simply asking them to acknowledge that Jesus - the Second Divine Person - is God with us.

Thank you for your many stimulating posts.

Fr Ray Blake said...

Yes, The problem for us is that Pope is often interpreted, and often very poorly.

Sean Mac Giollarnath said...

There is no problem with this catechesis. It was not a technical exegesis. The Pope is engaging in a ferverino, as he does sometimes.
Fr Seán

Physiocrat said...

Yehoshua is Hebrew future tense ie he will save.

Ma Tucker said...

One can make a mistake on details but the mistake can remain in the Faith nevertheless - as in the example you show here. None would reasonably blast the Holy Father for the ambiguity set forth here, nor indeed have they. Presenting the possibility that the Immaculate Conception might have considered herself duped by the Trinity is quite another matter and one does well not to confuse the two problems. One is simple confusion within the Faith, the other is a disorientation outside the Faith and a scandal.

"The problem for us is that the Pope is often interpreted and often very poorly. "

No Father, you deceive yourself. The problem is the Pope's Catholic formation is very degraded. Frequently he does not speak coherently because he does not think rationally where the Faith is concerned. As a result of this lack, one is forced to interpret to cover his statements with a cloak of coherent Catholicicity. In effect what we say is that because the Pope's words are not, (or can be easily interpreted as not) Catholic we must assume he did not mean to say what he actually said and we charitably interpret as follows.....

Furthermore, the Pope is directly responsible for (repeatedly) feeding interviews to people who happily "misinterpret" him. The Pope is therefore responsible for the tools(e.g. Scalfari) he uses.

Lynda said...

Ma Tucker speaks the truth.