Originally published at The Catholic Thing
Words matter. They express but also shape our thoughts, which in turn frame the way we live. Here’s an example: The words of the Nicene Creed are crucial to Christian belief. They’ve summarized and guided the Christian faith for 1,700 years. We recite them routinely every Sunday at Mass, but there was nothing routine in their origin. Good people argued, fought, and died in formulating them, and their influence over the centuries has been massive. Simply put, words matter for two reasons. They convey or distort reality, and they enrich or mislead both the persons who hear them, and the persons who use them.
As a result, if words become corrupted, wrote the philosopher Josef Pieper (in Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power), “human existence itself will not remain unaffected and untainted.” He described the intentional abuse of language – so common in modern politics – as “an instrument of rape” because it violates the human right to truth. But sloppiness, inaccuracy, and well-intended compromise in the use of language can be just as damaging as deceit in their effects. We can gradually lose our convictions by draining away the strength of the words we use to express them.
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