I posted a link in a brief diary earlier this week to a blog by a Catholic Priest that in turn linked to an article about journalist Eugenio Scalferi's article in early October being a paraphrase of Pope Francis' words and that Scalferi made no recording and took no notes during the interview. Of course, the spin from this is that Pope Francis is being misquoted.
Now, with this most recent statement from the Pope, we have this (some text from link provided below the orange swirly):
Evangelii gaudium 54 (“trickle-down economics”). Significant translation error changed meaning.
Again, I'm no expert on Catholicism, nor of languages. I post this here for two reasons: 1. Hoping that the broader audience of DKos will allow some folks with deeper knowledge to comment on this intelligently, and 2. Make people aware of how Pope Francis is being perceived by others that may not be of a progressive mindset.
And I guess a third reason, related to the first two -- if perhaps Progressives are getting their hopes up due to sloppy translations and bad paraphrasing, we need to know about it. I hope that this is not the case and that the truth is that conservatives are the ones engaged in wishful thinking. But we are supposedly the reality based community here, so such things need to be looked and and considered with due diligence.
Let us assume that the original composition was Spanish:
54. En este contexto, algunos todavía defienden las teorías del «derrame», que suponen que todo crecimiento económico, favorecido por la libertad de mercado, logra provocar por sí mismo mayor equidad e inclusión social en el mundo.
Official English…
In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.
Over at the other post a commentator pointed out that the official English rendering of EG 54 makes Spanish “por si’ mismo” into “inevitably”, but that it really means “by itself”.
Let’s swap in the “by itself” and read it again.
In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories ["trickle down economics"] which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will by itself succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.
There is a big difference between “inevitably” and “by itself”!
[....]
Bottom line: Whoever did the English translation of EG 54 did Pope Francis and the watching world a grave disservice and caused confusion. The use of “inevitably” for ”por si’ mismo” changes the meaning of the key phrase in a significant way. The confusion will be difficult to rectify.
The Pope is not so much condemning a specific approach to helping the poor, though I think it is fair to assume that he isn’t a fan of “trickle-down” economics. What he is really going after is the notion that markets, plans, schemes, theories, what have you, can be relied on to help the poor by themselves, that is, without our personal engagement and choice to take responsibility actually to help the poor in concrete ways.