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As I commented on the article itself, Dr. Barber reminds me of Venerable Dr. Jérôme Lejeune. Two powerful witnesses to authentic love for those with special needs. I love the photo of Dr. Barber with the child with Downs; it reminds me of my favorite photo of Venerable Jerome with a young boy. Wikipedia has it in his article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J…
As I commented on the article itself, Dr. Barber reminds me of Venerable Dr. Jérôme Lejeune. Two powerful witnesses to authentic love for those with special needs. I love the photo of Dr. Barber with the child with Downs; it reminds me of my favorite photo of Venerable Jerome with a young boy. Wikipedia has it in his article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_Lejeune
As to the translations, I am looking forward to the newly revised breviary. I hope they put the 3 cursing Psalms back in as well as the few cursing verses. As a monk we pray our own Divine Office and we include the 3 Psalms and the extra verses. I can appreciate that this might be shocking to someone joining us for prayer, but I think it is dangerous to cut out passages of Sacred Scripture just because they are hard to digest. As if to say it is the Word of God only when it is convenient and easy to hear.
I would love to see the new breviary have these difficult passages with a one sentence footnote explaining why we pray them.
Agree, agree, agree on the hard passages. It's kind of a lie by omission, and it sets up the pewsitters for a rude awakening when they pick up a Bible for themselves. I know of more than one young person who got to Judges 19 and promptly decided they were not going to have anything to do with any religion that "promoted" such behavior in its holy book. Keeping at least some of the horrible stuff in the Lectionary gives priests and deacons a fruitful opportunity to disabuse the faithful of the idea that the Bible is primarily a moral instruction manual.
I've benefited from the cursing psalms a great deal. Taken metaphorically (which could be the literal meaning) they give us a very good idea of what our approach to sin (and the demonic) should be. Cutting them out tends to make us think life is a pleasant boat ride, rather than spiritual warfare - and then we act accordingly. So I agree, it's dangerous to cut those out.
I really hope the imprecatory psalms are added back into the psalter. The Holy Spirit put them in scripture for a reason, it seems like hubris to say we need to censor them. If we see them as problematic, the problem is with us, not the Word of God!