Lately, the sudden preoccupation with pronouns has received much media coverage. Unfortunately, this attention has not been aroused by concern over that annoyingly ubiquitous grammatical violation ‘between you and I’, but rather it is due to the conflation of the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.
Perhaps it is a consequence of a stunted education, but I always understood that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are, respectively, biological and linguistic terms. There are two sexes (masculine and feminine) and three genders (the third being neuter). Has the synonymization of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ contributed to today’s notion of ‘gender fluidity’? Has it unleashed the cavalier and widespread misuse of pronouns where the masculine is used for the feminine and vice versa, and the plural for the singular, etc.? Let’s leave these questions to sociologists and grammarians.
The discussion of pronouns does, however, give rise to another question, which might stir some fruitful reflection about philanthropy, namely: what is the most important personal pronoun?
Readers might understandably suggest that the first-person singular pronoun ‘I’ dominates the others. After all, God – whose importance is supreme – has self-identified as ‘I’ as in “I Am”. But, at least in Christian theology, God is one in three Persons, each possessing in its entirety the eternal Godhead. God, therefore, is a community of Persons, a ‘WE’. So, perhaps the pronoun ‘WE’ should have supremacy of place rather than the pronoun ‘I’.
But, can this be? Is it possible for there to be a ‘WE’ if there is not at first a ‘YOU’? ‘WE’ is a community, a collection of relationships. Each relationship requires the existence of a ‘YOU”. The pronoun ‘I’ does not require a ‘YOU’ and therefore, by itself (unless used by the Trinitarian Deity) is not relational. ‘YOU’ on the other hand, is necessarily relational. Existence itself – even the divine Trinitarian existence – is fundamentally relational. Therefore, the pronoun ‘YOU’ is the foundation of the relationship. Shouldn’t it have pride of place over ‘I’ and ‘WE’?
How do these musings about pronouns relate to Catholic philanthropy? Actually, in a significant way.
Philanthropy is an expression of the Catholic social principle of solidarity. To be authentic, solidarity must be the product of a personal relationship. Relationships cannot exist unless there is a ‘YOU’.
This should not be controversial. Truth, like the Trinity, is relational. Just as the three Persons in the Trinity possess the eternal Godhead, we possess and share the ‘imago dei’, the highest manifestation of which is realized when we recognize and respect it each other – in the ‘YOU’ of our relationships.
In Saint Paul’s imagery, we are all members of the Body of Christ, an embodiment of relationships. Just as one part of a body relates to another (see 1 Corinthians 12) each of us relates to the rest of us. Each of us recognizes and respects the ‘YOU’ in others.
The ‘YOU’ personalizes our philanthropy. The advance of the Kingdom is founded on ‘YOU’.