LOL! Lane Core, Jr. has attempted to translate Marc Balestrieri’s petition against John Kerry for heresy into the language of the laity. Here’s a sample:
“John Forbes Kerry is a damn heretic. By word and deed, he espouses the heresy that The Blog from the Core will call The Right to Murder Unborn Children. The Church has dogmatically defined that the deliberate taking of innocent human life is intrinsically evil, and that procured abortion is included in this definition. John Forbes Kerry is a damn heretic. Though he says that he personally believes what the Church teaches about abortion, he nonetheless espouses heresy by what he does: he pro-actively, even vigorously, does whatever he can to assure that an intrinsically evil act is legal and will remain legal, and to advance its status in society to the point that it will be understood as an everyday human right and acknowledged by mainline churches as such.”
You can read the entire translation at Lane’s blog.
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I was just going to write to you and ask you what you thought of it. :-) I must say, I made a few minor changes to day, and I broke it up into paragraphs too. God bless.
P.S. The minor changes I made, for the sake of precision, did not affect the bit you quoted here.
shouldn’t it be damned, not damn? I mean the original meaning of the word, as in “condemned to hell”.
From m-w.com:
Main Entry: ^3damn
Function: adjective or adverb
: DAMNED <a damn nuisance> <ran damn fast>
– damn well : beyond doubt or question : CERTAINLY <knew damn well what would happen>
He’s using it as a descriptive, it should be the ‘damned’ form.
from dictionary.com
damn
v. damned, damn·ing, damns
v. tr.
To pronounce an adverse judgment upon. See Synonyms at condemn.
To bring about the failure of; ruin.
To condemn as harmful, illegal, or immoral: a cleric who damned gambling and strong drink.
To condemn to everlasting punishment or a similar fate; doom.
To swear at.
v. intr.
To swear; curse.
interj.
Used to express anger, irritation, contempt, or disappointment.
n.
The saying of “damn” as a curse.
Informal. The least valuable bit; a jot: not worth a damn.
adv. & adj.
Damned.
Idiom:
damn well
Without any doubt; positively: I am damn well going to file charges against him.
**********
[Middle English dampnen, from Old French dampner, from Latin damnre, to condemn, inflict loss upon, from damnum, loss.]************
call me a grammar geek!
alicia,
Are you absolutely sure that he’s using it in the decriptive, and not just the intensive, sense? I think it could work either way, so I’ll assume he means it just as an intensive unless further evidence is given, since that would be grammatically correct while meaning it decriptively (i.e., that Kerry’s soul is damned) would not.
Kerry has not yet been tried for heresy…so how could he be a damned heretic at this juncture? He’s not just a mistaken heretic…he’s a malicious one….damn is functioning as an adjective….gee I think I’ll give this to my students on monday….or a revised version of it…of course they could care less about the descriptive or intensive usage……most of them will vote for kerry.
Intensifier. I deliberately used the shorter form because (1) it’s shorter, (2) I don’t know if he’s damned, and (3) it’s informal, and I threw in the sentence many times almost literally at random, to break up an otherwise tedious and technical dissertation. (Pete understood its purpose, indicated by his “LOL”.) Moreover, it’s an assertion, not a judgement.
Thanks Lane! That’s exactly how I had understood it. That being said, I hope you don’t mind but I changed it to “darn” when I quoted it for my Wanderer submission. It conveys the same meaning but is easier to get past the ever vigilant Peggy in the editorial department. Teasing aside, Peggy is one of the best editors with whom I have been blessed to work with.
Thank you, Pete.
It will be really interesting to see how this plays out. I can’t imagine the the complaint is without merit based on the education and experience of Marc.
Remember the Church is in the Truth business. I think some folks may have forgotten that and think “truth” depends on variations in climate, upbringing, geographic location and diet.
Seriously, hats off to the gentleman with the canonical cajones to bring this to the forefront. I hope God is glorified in the proceedings and the Church has an opportunity to witness to the Truth, however costly.