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Letters from 17 to 23 October 2005

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

We can't bring ourselves to use the 'b' word, either

Hi, I just thought you might be interested to know that The Times has given me a weblog, and the first one is up there now.

Best wishes, always enjoy reading this site and Thinking Anglicans.

Ruth Gledhill
St Anne's, Kew
London
ruth.gledhill@thetimes.co.uk
18 October 2005

(Ed: Ruth, we're delighted to hear that you are an AO reader. We've enjoyed your writing for many years.)

So let it be with Sydney

No matter what you make of Sydney Diocese, the grace we are all compelled to have as we follow the Lord Jesus, demands that we see the good work being done there, even if we disagree with some aspects. And there is so much that is good. I write to commend for your reading (or listening to) our Archbishop's address at the Annual Synod just finished.

It was inspirational. It can be read or listened to here. The MP3 version includes interviews with various priests, deacons and lay workers from the Diocese. At that address you will also find reports of various decisions taken at the Synod — many of them great gospel initiatives. Sadly our Diocese and its leadership are sometimes maligned in certain circles — often through a lack of understanding of our heritage, history and outlook. We are not perfect; nor are we mono-chrome. But almost without fail, we are united in our passion to make the Lord Jesus known. I would be happy to correspond with any readers who have questions about Sydney Diocese (or this year's synod) in an effort to help clear up any misconceptions.

Despite our differences, it is my prayer that we can provide encouragement and help to other parts of the Communion as we all endeavour to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Rev Mark Calder
St Andrew's Roseville
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
mncalder@optushome.com.au
21 October 2005

In response to your letter of 16 October 2005

Other parts of speech besides nouns and adjectives enter into the name of our Church, not to speak of the myriad of languages, besides English, that are in use within the Anglican Communion.

Citing the case of Japan, "Nippon Sei Ko Kai" literally translated into English could be rendered "Japan Holy Catholic Church". The insertion of English prepositions such as "of" and/or "in" can be problematic because they are absent in the original Japanese. Also the differences between the definite and indefinite article are avoided because such words do not appear to exist. Actually this may be very convenient because of the controversies that emerge about the difference between "of" or "in" (that appear occasionally or often, depending on the nature of the understandings that burst forth in extended explanations about our Church title - is our Church "of" or "in"!).

The translation of our Church in Japan as "The Anglican Church of Japan" has the imposition of an article and a preposition that do not exist, and the grammmatical adjectival use of "Anglican" exists to substitute for "Holy Catholic", besides which the words "Anglican" or "Episcopal" (if the latter were subsituted), actually do not appear at all! In addition to all of that, the hubbub that occurred in Japan when the Anglicans got governmental acceptance of "Sei Ko Kai", the Roman Catholics were said to have felt usurped and been more than a little upset! To avoid transliteration, the Roman Catholic Church uses "Katorikku", a phonetic rendering of "catholic".

While mentioning the above, it occurs to me to mention that the words "Catholic" and "Protestant" are often used in phonetic form: "katorikku" and "purotestanto", avoiding the connotations that are automatically present in English (and European languages). The translations (that are interpretations) of the words "Catholic" and "Protestant" into Japanese are "shin kyou" and "kyuu kyou". Translated back into English they become, "old teaching" and "new teaching" (avoiding the catholic-protestant controversies). And if that were not enough, the word in Japanese used to translate "Church", has a very heavy implication about an assembly for teaching, and may account for a very "cerebral" type of "synagogue" our Church in Japan tends to be. We hope we are a Christocentric God-centered liturgical and worshipping community, as a family of Anglicans where ever we may be! The translators of former times in naming our Church may have avoided imposing the heavy hand of history (that would be discovered soon enough).

The Reverend Timothy Makoto Nakayama
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle - Diocese of Olympia
Seattle, Washington, USA
frtim@yahoo.com
22 October 2005

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All of our letters are in our archives.