Churchish

article from Issue No. 30/2007 for Sunday 29th July

If you are going abroad for your holiday you learn a few foreign words and phrases to help you to understand and get along more easily. Perhaps you learn a language at school? All this helps to make it easier to understand things during your visit to a strange place.

So what about all those strange sound words used by people who go to church? Words like chancel, liturgical, episcopal, hocktide, cantoris, litany and so on Are they speaking Churchish? Probably - and that's not a good idea because no one bothers to translate for visitors.

If someone talks to you in Churchish, ask for a translation. St Paul said in his letter to the Galations: 'I would rather say 5 words that means something than 10,000 words that people cannot understand'.

We need to make the Church easier to understand, less strange, more friendly and open.