{"id":2033,"date":"2006-05-17T11:37:46","date_gmt":"2006-05-17T11:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/reclaiming-the-language.html"},"modified":"2006-05-17T11:37:46","modified_gmt":"2006-05-17T11:37:46","slug":"reclaiming-the-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/reclaiming-the-language.html","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming the language"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is kind of interesting – we’ve blogged about the background before – the Quebecois habit of using the names of religious articles as swear words. Now, the Archdiocese of Montreal is using that habit to make a point: <\/p>\n

From Macleans:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Montreal’s Catholic churches are trying to take back the tabernacle and the chalice, reminding Quebecers that the common French-language cuss words are still sacred objects to the church.<\/p>\n

The churches launched a cheeky publicity campaign on the weekend to teach the true meaning of words that roll so easily off the tongues of many francophones when they stub a toe or strike a thumb with a hammer.<\/p>\n

Several Montreal churches were festooned with gigantic black posters with the names of religious objects in blood-red letters and the true definition in smaller white type.<\/p>\n

"Tabernacle!" shouted one example. "Small cupboard locked by key in the middle of the altar containing the ciborium."<\/p>\n

Another explained that "ciboire" (ciborium, in English) is a container that holds the "hostie" (hosts) for communion.<\/p>\n

Both words, along with "calisse" (chalice), "sacristie" (sacristy) and "sacrement" (sacrament) have also become curses in Quebec’s version of the French language. Among others.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Montreal Gazette:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Why Canadian francophones do is something of a mystery. There might be other ethnic groups who swear by abusing the names of cultic objects – tabernacles, ciboriums and chalices – but we can’t think of any. One old saw suggests that people express anger and disappointment by profaning what they most fear – which is why francophones chose religion and anglophones picked sex. Or perhaps they turn to what they revere most. Then again, maybe linguist Monique Carmel is right when she says the words were used simply to express rebellion in the days when the church had more temporal power than it does now<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s apparently part of their Archdiocesan fundraising appeal. I can’t find any images on the Archdiocesan website…although the name of the fellow in charge of the annual collection certainly caught my eye!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is kind of interesting – we’ve blogged about the background before – the Quebecois habit of using the names of religious articles as swear words. Now, the Archdiocese of Montreal is using that habit to make a point: From Macleans: Montreal’s Catholic churches are trying to take back the tabernacle and the chalice, reminding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nReclaiming the language - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/reclaiming-the-language.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reclaiming the language - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is kind of interesting – we’ve blogged about the background before – the Quebecois habit of using the names of religious articles as swear words. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}