{"id":5636,"date":"2006-09-21T17:58:07","date_gmt":"2006-09-21T17:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/stop-the-lie-before-it-starts.html"},"modified":"2006-09-21T17:58:07","modified_gmt":"2006-09-21T17:58:07","slug":"stop-the-lie-before-it-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/stop-the-lie-before-it-starts.html","title":{"rendered":"Stop the lie before it starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuart Buck corrects Slate’s Timothy Noah. Noah is claiming that the Vatican has gone back and changed Benedict’s Regensburg speech after the fact:<\/a> He does this in this Slate article.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Taking a cue from the Congressional Record, the pope appears to have revised and extended his published remarks since the controversy arose. The speech, as given<\/em> (click here for a copy the BBC obtained from the Vatican and posted online Sept. 15) characterized Manuel II’s comments about the prophet Mohammed\u2014the comments that have now given worldwide offense, because the pope initially put little distance between Manuel II’s views and his own\u2014as being of "startling brusqueness" (or, if you prefer a translation from the original German made available by The Catholic World News, "somewhat brusque"). On the Vatican’s Web site, however, someone has now added the boldfaced insert, "a brusqueness which leaves us astounded." If you scroll to the bottom of this Hot Doc, you’ll see it described as merely a "provisional" text, to be improved upon and footnoted later\u2014later, in this case, meaning after the pope gave the speech. As damage control, the inserted language strikes me as insufficient. It is possible, after all, to be "astounded" by something that one nonetheless wouldn’t dispute. Better to substitute "offended" for "astounded." Hey fellas, want to take one more whack at this? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sorry Tim, even though you’re an expert in how the Pope and the Vatican work this stuff and all. <\/p>\n

For papal statements, homilies, and etc., there is a prepared text. It is the text that is released to the media during a short window before the talk and that is provisionally posted on the Vatican website.<\/p>\n

However, it’s well known that Benedict often speaks off-the-cuff during speeches and homilies. There is always going to be post-speech adjustment to the prepared, provisional text. <\/p>\n

And sometimes, he ditches the text completely – he did this at the last Mass he offered in Bavaria, at the Cathedral in Freising, where he was ordained a priest.<\/p>\n

Here’s the prepared text<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s what he delivered after beginning with something like, those who want to read what was prepared can read it later.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Back to Regensburg – Stuart Buck<\/a> says, er…listen to the tape. It’s not that hard.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Timothy Noah is precisely wrong. He claims to be describing the speech "as given," but his link to the BBC’s site merely goes to an English translation — the inaccurate one. <\/p>\n

Thanks to the Internet, however, you can view Pope Benedict delivering the speech in German<\/span><\/a>. Fast forward to 2:48, and you’ll hear Benedict pronouncing the words, ""in erstaunlich schroffer, uns \u00fcberraschend schroffer Form ganz einfach." These are the very words that, according to the professor I cite above, are correctly translated as, "with an astonishing brusqueness, for us an astounding brusqueness, bluntly."<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Thus, Timothy Noah’s entire claim falls apart. Contrary to Noah’s claim, the original German was not altered "after the pope gave the speech," nor did the Pope "revise[] and extend[] his published remarks since the controversy arose." Instead, the "astounding brusqueness" language was in the original speech — as given<\/em> — and it was the original English translation that seems to have been incomplete. The translation<\/em> may have been altered, but only in the interest of greater conformity to the German original.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Thanks, Stuart. Waiting for Vaticanisti <\/em>Timoty Noah to incorporate your correction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuart Buck corrects Slate’s Timothy Noah. Noah is claiming that the Vatican has gone back and changed Benedict’s Regensburg speech after the fact: He does this in this Slate article. Taking a cue from the Congressional Record, the pope appears to have revised and extended his published remarks since the controversy arose. 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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\/5636","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=5636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}