In fact I think I do have a bit of the spirit of St. Catherine in me — I may not be brilliant, but at least I have some of that fighting instinct, and from a tender age enjoyed tweaking the noses of such authority figures as seemed unworthy of their office. I succeeded in irritating a goodly number of people, but sadly, none of them ever offered to summon and detain legions of adversaries for me to confront. So I had to learn to be a bit cagier.

But I did enjoy appearing as the doily and four-inch-cross-wearing woman in your little story.

Yes, Clara, I have no doubt you are an academic to the Academics. It is said that Saint Catherine of Alexandria faced fifty pagan philosophers and confounded them by her eloquent arguments. They were amazed that someone so young could be so brilliant. But she wasn’t PC, broke the rules, set the terms, spoke her own mind and offended them so much that she was martyred. I think they took her seriously. I know you don’t take me too seriously and hope you got a little chuckle from my story.

Ver. 22.—I am made all things to all men. Not by acting deceitfully or sinfully, but through sympathy and compassion, which made me suit myself to the dispositions of all men, so, as far as honesty and God’s law allow, that I might be able to heal the indispositions of all. Cf. S. Augustine (Epp. 9 and 19): “Not by lying, but by sympathy; not by cunning craftiness, but by large-hearted compassion was Paul made all things to all men.”

The Apostle does not sanction what men of the world wish for and do, viz., the accommodating ourselves through right and wrong to all men, feigning to be heretics with heretics, Turks with Turks, pure with the pure, and unclean with those that are unclean. This he condemns (Gal. ii. 11 et seq.). The advice of S. Ephrem (Attende tibi, c. 10) is sound: “Have charity with all and abstain from all;” and again the apophthegm of S. Bernard, which embraces every virtue: “Live so as to be prudent for yourself, useful to others, pleasing to God.” S. Jordan, S. Dominic’s successor in the Generalship of the Order, used to say, as his life related: “If I had devoted myself as closely to any branch of learning as I have to that sentence of S. Paul’s, ‘I am made all things to all men,’ I should be mist learned and eminent in it. Throughout the whole of my life I have studied to accommodate myself to every one: to the soldier I was a soldier, to the nobleman as a nobleman, to the plebeian as a plebeian; and thus I always endeavoured to do them good in this way, while on the watch that I did not lose or hurt my soul while benefitting them.”

I always took St. Paul’s statement on being all things to all people related to how a parish priest has to deal with all the different nutcases in the parish, or how a father has to deal with all the temperaments of his children and wife.

(Was my previous comment deleted?)

I think many people have misread my tone in this post. I’m not complaining about religious persecution here. Of course I do agree that religious people often find the secular university to be a hostile environment, but nobody’s ever called me out for using inappropriately devotional language in my writing, and that’s not my primary concern in this post. Obviously it would be terrible to fail undergraduate students for following pious Catholic conventions in the sorts of matters we’ve discussed here. But I’ve never heard of anything like that happening.

The advice “be as clearly, obviously and visibly Catholic as you can in every possible environment” would not be good. There are appropriate times for being bold and deliberately “flying the colors.” At other times we need to remember the advice about being “wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” A big part of virtue is determining which sort of situation you are in, and what sort of response is appropriate. In which settings should we loudly proclaim our differences with the world, and in which should we be more subtle?

Again, I don’t think the “academic” conventions to which I refer can be fairly construed as anti-Catholic if the pontiffs follow them in their ex cathedra writings. Observing the conventions of one’s professional community is, all else being equal, a good thing, and this seems to be a case in which it is perfectly acceptable to do so.

I always took St. Paul’s statement on being all things to all people related to how a parish priest has to deal with all the different nutcases in the parish, or how a father has to deal with all the temperaments of his children and wife.

“Well,” says the prof from the U.S., “You have to be a little more subtle. There are no more crosses in any of the universities here. Right now we are ridding from higher learning the last vestiges of God, even in speech. We are expanding the slogan of ‘Separation of Church and State’ to include separation of religion from reason, science, grammar and syntax. While you find Catholics the biggest obstacle in your country we are finding them the most helpful—especially the women.

“On the opening day, I told my students, ‘You have come into my home, so to speak, and I ask you to observe good manners. I ask you not to be fanatical by bringing God into every topic but if you do feel you have to mention God, please do so only once at the beginning. And in your papers, you must never capitalize His Name. I have nothing against the notion of God, but it has caused more wars than anything I can think of. We have to be neutral on this subject, because in this department we are devoted to reason above all. We have to start from scratch without any preconceived assumptions and loaded language.’ After that, I leave the room for a while and let the students come to their own conclusions.

“One student said, ‘No problem, rules are rules.’ Another says, ‘Sounds reasonable. We all have our strong beliefs but we have no right to disrespect others’ disbeliefs.’ One scholar pointed out that in the Pentateuch Moses never capitalized God and yet God approved all that he had written. Another says, ‘Two hundred years is not enough to constitute tradition.’ Then one of the disciples objected that since all proper names are capitalized, why not God. Another chimes in, ‘Even the Moslems and Jewish students go by the rules.’

“Finally, one Traditionalist woman puts it to rest, ‘Everyone knows where I stand and what my personal views are.’ She points to a four inch cross hanging around her neck on a chain with about two dozen various religious medals also attached. As she speaks everyone knows that she has been to church that morning because of the white doily still pinned to her head. ‘Paul’, she says, ‘Would have been the first one to compromise.’

“One person in the back of the room remained silent. I sensed opposition. On his next paper, he found excuse to bring God in at least a thousand times and capitalized every time. Of course I told him that I had to fail him for making such a big thing over jots and tittles.”

And actually, Clarke Foundation, I don’t know that I agree with your claim that terminology like this is irrelevant. Of course, these kinds of worries could certainly be exaggerated to an unhealthy degree. (I never heard of this anti-comma movement, for example.) But they do mean something; our word choices do sometimes carry certain significance and conventions can be important. I’d even venture that separating “insiders” from laymen is not always inappropriate, though of course it shouldn’t be our main focus in scholarly practice.

I don’t know what Structuralists or Post-Structuralists are, I’m afraid. The other terms I know, but I don’t deal with those sorts of people terribly often; I was more analytically educated. And actually, I’d consider it possible that analytic philosophers (though they certainly have their own faults) might in general be more tolerant of those kinds of differences.

However, if your intended readers are at all broad-minded, as a scholar you could preface or footnote your pieces with a note about scholarly naming conventions, that you understand them, and are deliberately using other conventions. I often see this kind of note in scholarly pieces. That is probably what I would attempt, after perhaps conferring with a sympathetic colleague to see if such a gesture would take the sting out of your non-adherence to your discipline’s conventions.

On the other hand, if you are disputing with any of the tribe of Existentialists, Structuralists, Post-Structuralists, Deconstructionists, Post-Deconstructionists, the respect you are attempting to show may very well be a waste of time as the “listening” process from those quarters is rather one-way. So that, even showing a due deference for conventions, your philosophical points would be lost anyway.

Even so, you may have to write. My heart tells me to use the forms of religious respect and “damn the torpedoes,” but my head tells me that a certain worldly wisdom ought to inform your activities in this sphere.

However, I think I should not like to be in your shoes, as I very strongly object to conventions of this sort as being binding on scholars. Irrelevant minutiae of a procedural sort like this do not (to my mind) actually advance the cause of scholarship, but serve simply as markers of “our crowd” versus “the great unwashed.” For instance, of late, the use of commas has been very much frowned upon, and all sorts of tedious linguistic acrobatics have been necessitated by this ridiculous prejudice. I could go on, but this response if quite long enough!

and, maybe they’re also smart enough to keep our top scientific secrets out of the hands of the Muslims..

The double standard makes sense, however, since we have the Truth, the others don’t, and the University generally is opposed to the Truth.

Jon-as-Discipulus makes what I think is the strongest argument for using what I’m calling “devotional language” even in academic writing. These conventions are intended to shape the sensibilities in order to convey a certain kind of respect. If you don’t use them all the time, this strategy won’t be nearly so effective.

But Susan gives what I think is a pretty strong rejoinder. It’s disrespectful to the discipline if you refuse to adopt their normal conventions. People would be right to take you less seriously for refusing to learn the rules.

If it were actually disrespectful, or much worse, sacrilegious, to follow academic convention (not capitalizing pronouns referring to the divine, leaving off the “St.” in most contexts) then of course I would have to do it whatever the cost. Some people, trust me, are willing to go much, much further in an effort to succeed professionally — for example, some think they can justify actually pretending to adopt beliefs that they recognize to be in conflict with their faith for the sake of getting academic credentials. The usual excuse is that they’ll take it all back someday when they get tenure. Umm, right.

That’s not me. But I don’t really think what I’m talking about here can be disrespectful to God or the saints. Thanks to Andreas for her comment on capitalization of pronouns to refer to the divine. I would add that even among contemporary writers that practice is observed inconsistently at best. Gilson does it but our present and former pontiff, in their academic writings, don’t. MacIntyre doesn’t. A number of Catholic theologians I’ve encountered don’t. Similarly with the “Saint” title, some writers like Gilson and Chesterton are very consistent about putting it before every usage of the person’s name, but I’ve also found plenty of admirable ones who don’t. If the academic convention suggested using disrespectful or blasphemous names, then of course I would refuse. The actual custom just seems more neutral. People who know anything about me will easily figure out what my attitudes are towards God and the saints, and I’m quite certain they will not see themselves as having “won” any kind of a battle if I refer to them in the more neutral way.

Theologian Mom asks why I consider this to be “devotional” language when it is merely conventional in so many environments. I realize of course that these customs are not only observed in specifically devotional texts (I use them here on the blog, for example, regardless of what I’m discussing) but regardless of context, the object is to imply some sort of devotion to God, to the saints, to the Blessed Mother and so forth. Is that not true? In contexts in which all participants share these same loyalties, such conventions can become merely customary regardless of what is being discussed. In conversations where those beliefs are more exceptional, I think it will just feel jarring if the Catholic insists on continuing to use them.

I thought Adam’s example was actually quite instructive in this regard. If a Muslim scholar gave a talk in my department, would it be jarring to me if he used grandiose titles for Muhammud, or referred to holidays like Ramadan with fancier and more exalted terms? Yes, I think it would be. “Prophet Muhammud” for a first reference would get a pass, but repeated and insistent use of honorific titles wouldn’t seem right. By presenting fragments of Islamic thought in that environment, he is indicating that he thinks they should be of interest even to those of us who don’t share his religious commitments. Inserting what I call “devotional” titles into his speech seems to violate that ethos precisely because it is “insider” language. I’m not saying anyone would be fired for doing something like that, but I would think it bad form, and I can only suppose that others would feel the same way about me.

So personally, I think it a nice compromise to insert a few “devotional” terms, enough so it’s clear I’m not hiding anything, but to use a lighter brush. The first-time-only rule for referring to saints makes note of their status without being too heavy-handed. “Blessed Virgin Mary” seems to pass just fine for referring to Our Lady; “Our Lady” would be strange (and anyway, atheists don’t deserve to refer to her with such an intimate title.) You get the idea.

“Compromise” may seem like a dirty word to you, Jon, but it has some impressive credentials too. Didn’t St. Paul speak in rather upbeat terms about being all things to all men?

At the risk of stirring the pot, this seems to be a quite recent innovation. It developed in English in the 18th and (above all) 19th centuries, largely under the influence of Protestant devotional writing. It was unknown before the Reformation and during the Counter-Reformation. It’s not done in the Douai-Rheims Bible, and it’s certainly not done in the authentic Latin liturgical texts of the Church, which one could argue ought to be our ultimate guide in these matters.

(Just checked one of my own old articles – musicology, in a secular journal – and saw I’d done exactly the same as Clara: “St. Augustine of Hippo” the first time, “Augustine” thereafter.)

Just turn the tables a bit. If a Muslim scholar said some thing about Muhammad, they would use the word prophet with a -capital p-. I doubt that they would restrict themselves otherwise. If they afford this level of respect to a man whom even they deny divinity, why shouldn’t we?

I know this is a hard matter to swallow, but I am sure you have had your fill on threats to our faith thus far in your academic career. Just add this issue to the totem pole and ask St. Thomas the Aquinas for his patronal intercession.

I agree with Discipulus. I also have to admit that I’m genuinely shocked over your angst. Be Catholic, always, completely, utterly, in everything you do.

What’s next, B.C.E.? Be the king’s good servant, but God’s first.