Wednesday, February 15, 2012

That Tiny Little Pencil Mark or the Stroke of One Small Key

When they came for the apostrophe in Presidents’ Day, I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t a president.

When they came for the distinction between “its” and “it’s,” I didn’t speak up, because not many people know the difference anyway.*

When they took the commas from the magazine cover story about “Rachel Ray—on Cooking Her Family and Her Dog,” I laughed half a cup of coffee through my nose, but failed otherwise to protest.

But when I objected to the misprint that confused the meanings of ‘homoousion’ and ‘homoiousion,’ they said it was all Greek to them;**

And when I insisted there was an eternity of difference between “He’ll be my comfort and my joy” and “Hell be my comfort and my joy,” there wasn’t a soul left that gave a damn.

by D. Powlett-Jones

**Homoousion; Homoiousion
(Greek: of the same substance; like in substance)
Two words used attributively of Christ; the former by the Council of Nicaea (325) which declared that Christ was consubstantial and, consequently, coeternal and coequal with the Father, in order to offset the use of the latter by a sect of the Arians which maintained that Christ, although He was not a creature, was not of one and the same substance as the Father, that He had a beginning and was only like unto the Father. (New Catholic Dictionary)


Notes:
*slightly abridged by Soutenus
H/T Lisa Salinas (thank you!)
TimesUnion.com Daniel Nester  See the UPDATE: @ Timesunion.com about the magazine cover


1 comment:

Lisa said...

Heehee! Loved this!

Blog Widget by LinkWithin