After a discussion last night (which started with an analysis of Psalm 111 of all things) I got to thinking about a strange and undesirable habit among many Dutch Catholics: the adoption of Protestant terms for Catholic concepts and the urge to hide their Catholic identity, which is a result of that.
In Dutch we have a specific term for a priest who is responsible for one or more parishes: he is a ‘pastoor’. The word clearly derives from pastor, meaning a spiritual shepherd of a congregation. A priest who is not in charge of a parish, but does work in one, used to be called a ‘kapelaan’, or chaplain. In the south of the Netherlands that word is still used without problem. In the north, the area where I live, however, the word ‘kapelaan’ has fallen out of use. Perhaps this is due to the shortage of priests: there is no need to distinguish between two priests in one parish, because there usually only ever is one (if the parish is lucky). In parishes where there is no priest, or he is also responsible for a handful of other parishes, lay people are often appointed to lead prayer services and perform some pastoral duties. These are pastoral workers, not ordained, often married with a family and a job on the side. They assist the priest in his work and make life just a bit more manageable for him.
But here is the problem. It has become habit for these pastoral workers to refer to themselves as ‘pastor’. A word awfully close to ‘pastoor’, and often the ‘o’ and ‘oo’ sounds are hard to distinguish in speech. Chaplains, too, have taken to this title. The distinction between ‘pastoors’, chaplains and pastoral workers becomes muddled, and not just in their titles, but also in their identity. I would not want to feed the people who claim their pastoral worker is actually a priest who should be allowed to offer the Eucharist, or the people who couldn’t tell you why that is not so.
Making matters worse, certain Protestant ministers have also taken to this title of ‘pastor’.
I often wonder about this apparent need to invent a new term when there is a perfectly clear one available? Is it lack of knowledge or sheer thick-headedness (something which we Dutch excel at)?
In the first paragraph I referred to the adoption of Protestant terms. An example is the use of the name for someone who leads a service, be it a prayer service or Mass: ‘voorganger’, literally someone who leads the congregation. Even in Catholic media this very Protestant word has been used to refer to priests. “Father so-and-so will be the ‘voorganger’ in this service” instead of “Father so-and-so will offer (or celebrate) this Mass.”
It may sound trivial, and seen from a purely practical view it may be. But this is the tip of an iceberg of ignorance. If even the media do not use the terms that directly refer to a person or object’s Catholic identity, how are people going to know this identity, how are they going to be urged to be aware of this identity?
Priest are not lay people, lay people are not ordained, Protestant ministers are not Catholic: these people are not the same, not in their faith, their duties, their vocation, their ordination (or lack thereof)… In the end it comes down to this: the Catholic identity is slowly becoming invisible.
I don’t have any solutions to reverse that trend, but perhaps a good start would be to rediscover our Catholic identity in the words we use. Talk about ‘pastoors’ and ‘kapelaans’, pastoral workers and ‘dominees’, but don’t pretend the one is the other. I’d even be all for introducing the Orthodox and international Catholic tradition of calling our priests ‘Father’.
This little piece of writing is also available in Dutch at Catholica.