Picked up Living Your Faith by Robert Nash, SJ at my local thrift store the other week. A lenten-quality kick-in-the-pants, published by Prentice Hall in 1951, originally published in Ireland under the title Is Life Worthwhile?.
So the other day Fr. Nash is onto me — point after point about sin and salvation, our helplessness, God’s love for us, etc. etc. And I think: How on earth could someone (protestant) think Catholics are not Christians? Next thing I know, I run into a line about when a Christian feels the “immense strength he has in Jesus and Mary”.
Ah. Yes. I can see where that would not sit quite right with the protestant soul. Indeed, it initially struck me, rosary-pray-er that I am, as a bit off. Then, corrected, I realized our problem is not theological, but grammatical.
The accusation of some protestants is that Catholics make a goddess of Mary. A sentence like Fr. Nash’s seems to point that way: Mary appears to be positioned as equal to Jesus.
Now Mary certainly holds a privileged place among God’s creatures, and Catholics do believe that the saints in Heaven are given an active role as co-heirs with Christ. We are the Body of Christ here on earth, and we aren’t suddenly demoted to uselessness when we arrive in Heaven. God doesn’t need us, but He lets us help him anyway. But any role that Mary plays is of human type — appropriate to the kinds of work that God has allowed men to do. We do not worship Mary as a goddess. We just don’t.
So what about that sentence? Do we have to do some kind of literary gymnastics to exonerate Fr. Nash? Not at all.
When we see two people paired in a statement, it does not automatically mean the author considers them equal. Everything depends on the actual relationship between the two.
So, if we read, “Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones are in surgery”, we get one idea. We imagine two physicians, doing about the same work. In contrast, if we read, “Dr. Smith and Nurse Jones are in surgery”, we imagine the scene differently. We know that nurses and physicians have different roles, so we envision Smith doing what doctors do, and Jones doing what nurses do.
There is nothing contrived about this reading. In English, we can pair two equals, we can pair two opposites, and we can also pair two related but unlike people or objects. Doctor and doctor, doctor and patient, doctor and nurse.
Knowing nothing at all about Catholic theology would be something like knowing nothing at all about the practice of medicine. When you read about “Dr. Smith and Nurse Jones” working together, or “Jesus and Mary” working together, if you truly don’t know what role each plays, as the reader you may have some confusion about what is being stated.
Can the reader of ill-will choose to intentionally “misunderstand” in order to make false accusations? Certainly. But as Catholics we have to consider that ambiguous grammar on our part may be confusing and misleading for readers, listeners, and friends of good will.