Whining about Wine and Words

Italy is a wine country; every region has at least one special wine made locally, often to accompany some home-grown dish. This does not necessarily mean that the wine is good: for instance, our local region is not particularly known for its wines, but given that we have one of the highest per capita consumptions of beer in the country, I doubt anyone minds much.

I must admit that I am not much of a wine connoisseur myself; nonetheless, I take great delight in reading the descriptions that grace the labels of the bottles. The most mundane simply recommend pairings: “This wine goes well with roasted wild pig, topped with fresh rosemary sprigs,” or “Should be paired with fresh fish and savory vegetables.”

However, sometimes the descriptions become more fanciful: I recall one bottle that proclaimed its contents were “a symphony of reds and blues on the palate.” Despite the lovely poetry, and due no doubt to my caveman sensibilities, I found describing a taste in terms of sounds and colors somewhat confusing.

Words for Wine

Yet, a little research shows that wine tasting and subsequent labeling is quite the business, and sommeliers have a vast range of adjectives and descriptors at their disposal, like a Swiss army knife that has its corkscrew but also so many other little tools that no one quite knows what they do.

Indeed, the author of a fascinating guide to wines (Bernard Klem’s WineSpeak) has compiled a vast list of descriptions of the fruit of the vine, all of which, he assures us, have been found in actual assessments of wine. Some are simply amusing. For instance, wines have been described as:

• A flourless chocolate cake and a cup of espresso rolled into one;
• Having magna cum laude complexity;
• A monkey riding a horse bareback; and
• Puls[ing] like cicadas in a summer twilight.

Others are beverages I would not consume, such as the wines described as:

• About as friendly as a sumo wrestler with diaper rash;
• Having an acidity reminds you of inhaling a small electric eel;
• A cross between a forest fire and a war zone; and
• An evil mix of castor oil and motor oil and curse words.

Such descriptions reveal the power of words: they can convey an essence and reveal truths that, even if I have not experienced them firsthand, I can vividly imagine.

Power of Words

The Church is well aware of the power of words. Of course, there is the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Catechism (n. 102), recalls that “through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely”: that is, Jesus Himself.

That phrase is very profound and precise: all the other words of Sacred Scripture, as many and manifold as they are, are meant to reveal one Word, the Word Himself. In like manner, we can say that all the words of the saints, all the writings of Church documents, all the encyclicals, all have one purpose: by means of their words, they reveal the Word and lead back to Him.

However, the Catechism continues, in numbers 103 and 104, by making a comparison between the Word of Scripture and the Eucharist, noting that both give nourishment and strength. Perhaps we can take our analogy a step further: if the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324), then not only does absolutely everything else in the Christian life point towards it as summit, but everything also flows from it as source. In a similar way, our words should not simply reveal and point to Christ, but should also flow from Him and from His divine truth.

Precision with Words

It is for this reason that the Church can sometimes appear rather nitpicky about words. For instance, in 2008 and 2020, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued clarifications on what constitutes a valid formula for Baptism, meaning, what words need to be said for someone really to be baptized. The Congregation clarified that the following are not valid formulas:

• I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier;
• I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer;
• We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The last formula has attracted some attention lately, as a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit discovered, by watching the video of his own Baptism (or, rather, of his non-baptism) that the deacon had used an invalid formula. Hence, not only was the poor man not baptized, he was also not confirmed or even ordained!

Now, to some this might seem like a minor detail: “Come on!” it might be argued. “It’s one word! After all, I is included in we! Same difference!” Yet, what the Church says in declaring such words invalid for the sacrament is precisely the opposite: that one word matters a great deal, because by changing it, the formula no longer reveals Jesus Christ as it should.

Sacramental Validity in Words

Likewise, it has been argued that using the words “the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier” expresses the same reality as the valid formula. After all, God isn’t male or female, the reasoning goes, and these words help free us from our restrictive mental paradigms. Yet, in rejecting such words, the Church says exactly the opposite: these words do not properly reveal the reality of God in the sacrament, the God who Himself has told us how to baptize and what words to use.

Of course, sometimes the words and expressions we use do change: we would find it odd, even disconcerting, if the Missal or the sacraments, were in Shakespeare’s English. Perhaps “Out, damned spot!” would work well for Baptism, but a collect prayer that read, “We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy,” doesn’t exactly roll off the modern tongue easily.

However, the rule we mentioned above gives us guidance for how these changes should be made: do the words come from Christ? Do they point back to Him? Or do the words come from us, and our desire to blend in with the times and the culture? Do they point to ourselves, and our need to fit in?

Wars and Games of Words

This is not just a problem of the Church: the war for the world takes place, at least in part, in the war for words. How is it that words such as “rights,” “justice,” and “equality” have come to refer to things that are not rights at all (the right to “choose” to abort a child), or to things that are extremely unjust (actions taken against freedom of speech), or to things that are inherently unequal (all the various redefinitions of marriage)? How is it that a justice of the highest court in the country refuses to define an important word – woman – and then says her definition would depend on the cases brought before her?

Juliet might ask: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title.”

Yes, Juliet, a rose could be called rosa or rose, and it would still be the same thing. Romeo could be called Stephen or Max, and he would still be the same man (Shakespeare’s masterpiece would admittedly lose aesthetic appeal if it were “Stephen and Juliet”).

But it would not be the same if you said he was a “woman” because not all words are the same.