resignation or abdication
Replies: 24 - Last Post: Feb 16, 2013 9:35 AM Last Post By: nutraxfornerves
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resignation or abdication
The US media are saying that the Pope is going to resign.It seems to me that if you have a crown and a throne, you abdicate, not resign. And that's the word I've heard used of popes before. Of one pope, I should say. Until this morning's news, I hadn't heard of any pope leaving the office alive except for Celestine V, whom Dante places in hell for shirking his responsibilities. Although the news tells me it has happened more recently, as recently as 1415.
What word are you hearing? If it's not English, does your language make a distinction between resignation (presidents , prime ministers) and abdication (kings, emperors)?
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Wikipedia on "Papal resignation":Despite its common usage in discussion of Papal resignations, the term "abdication" is not used in the official documents of the Church for resignation by a Pope.
In my mothertongue German if I am not mistaken monarchs do something possibly linguistically related to "abdicating" - abdanken. I am not sure what should be used for the pope. I see both "to resign'' (zurücktreten) and "to abdicate" (abdanken, Abdikation) used online.
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whom Dante places in hell for shirking his responsibilities
God, that Dante was a hard-@ss.
I note that 1415 was also the date of the Battle of Agincourt. Does this mean Prince Harry is destined to be king and put those annoying snail-eaters in their place once and for all? Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
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The Aberdeen Evening Express has "resignation" and that must surely be the final word on the matter. His elder brother Georg seems to think he'll retire to Bavaria.9
In Spanish and Mexican media I've seen renunciar almost invariably, with a few instances of dimitir. In South American newspapers I've come across abdicar in a few instances.I am ok with renunciar and dimitir, but abdicar is applicable to kings, so when used in the papal context it sounds weird to me.
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The Pope also has a throne and is an absolute ruler, so "abdicated" works fine, as far as I'm concerned. I actually prefer it to "resigned," which sounds so humdrum. (Like most people, I've resigned a number of jobs myself.)But any verb used is bound to sound a little odd since we are, in fact, describing an event that last occurred in the Middle Ages.
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Fair points, Usher, Vinny and Zashibis, and I would certainly use "abdicar" without hesitation if I were talking about Celestine V; but the regal implications of the verb sound archaic today in the context of modern Catholicism (the two John Pauls and Benedict XVI decided not to wear the tiara for a reason).For what is worth, "abdicar" is not being used by L'Osservatore Romano or any Spanish-language Catholic media I've consulted ("renunciar" is their verb of choice).
