Dear St. Rita Parishioners,
The temptation is great, today, to wax philosophical (and theological) about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For good reason, of course. 250 years is nothing to shake a stick at! Our national identity is rooted in this approach to life and the world, and we see ourselves as Americans as seeking such things eminently and even with something of a divine right. No one and nothing can stop our pursuit, and we absolutely will find it.
So, what better thing to do (for a Catholic, anyway) on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, for a phrase that runs so deep in our veins, than to put it in Latin?! While some of you may groan (I respect that), we can still have some fun with it, and maybe learn something too! To begin, any budding Latin scholars at the parish or the school will probably note very quickly that translating such simple words into Latin is not so…simple. It’s the trouble with simple words – they often describe a general category of things which can and must be differentiated if we want to dive more deeply into their meaning. An easy example: car. ‘Car’ describes the vast majority of automobiles that pack the roads around here, but if I want to have any meaningful conversation about particulars, I am going to need to answer the question, “What kind of car?”, and now we have opened up something of a Pandora’s Box.
So, then, what about ‘life’? Without boring you with a full dictionary entry, we can simply note that ‘life’ can refer to one’s physical life (‘vita’), or one’s health under any number of categories (‘salus’), or even one’s life principle, e.g. the soul (‘anima’). Fortunately, the Church’s tradition can give us some indication of what might be the best translation for our purposes. Scripture generally uses ‘salus’ to indicate not so much physical life, but rather salvation; ‘anima’ can refer to the soul or to oneself or to people in general; ‘vita’, however, is used to refer to life in general, as well as to my own life and the lives of others. So, in this case, ‘vita’ seems to be the best translation.
What about liberty? In English, ‘liberty’ is used almost interchangeably with ‘freedom’, but ‘liberty’ is preferred if you want to sound more sophisticated. In Latin, ‘libertas’ is the obvious cognate, but we could also choose ‘vacatio’ or ‘immunitas’ – vacation or immunity, both exemptions of sorts. These latter two options could form an interesting thought exercise in their relation to freedom given their common usage nowadays, but you can do that in your free (!!) time, according to your own desires! We’ll stick with ‘libertas’ for our purposes.
‘Pursuit of happiness’ presents two more decisions for us to make. There are usually two reasons to pursue things – either to obtain them or to destroy them. We’d like to avoid a translation that indicates we want to destroy happiness once we catch up to it, so ‘persequor’ (persecute), ‘prosequor’ (prosecute), and ‘exsequor’ (execute) are all out. We could use a version of ‘sequor’ (to seek) or ‘consector’ (to strive after), but I prefer ‘studeo’ – to be eager or zealous, to take pains about, to be diligent. The noun form is ‘studium’ – of course, this is where we get the words ‘study’ and ‘student’.
‘Happiness’ has 3 options – ‘felicitas’, ‘beatitudo’, and ‘commodum’. ‘Felicitas’ is the most general, and often refers to good fortune, since in the pagan world, good things that happen to us are subject to the whims of the gods or to happenstance, as opposed to the Goodness of God. ‘Commodum’ indicates an interest or advantage, in English ‘commodity’ or ‘accommodate’. ‘Beatitudo’ indicates a deeper and broader sense of happiness and seems to suggest more than ‘felicitas’. And so notwithstanding the bias that I have because of its Scriptural connotations (blessedness, etc.), ‘beatitudo’ is the winner here!
This gives us the Latin phrase, “Vita, Libertas, et Studium Beatitudinis” as an adequate translation of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Pondering the words themselves likewise gives us a chance to consider our own understanding of the underlying concepts, and of course, what God wants for us in them. Because, insofar as these things are good, they come from God Himself, and they reflect God Himself. Thus, to seek Vita, Libertas, and Beatitudo is to be seeking for God, and to seek God is the only way to find them. This is the witness that we Catholics must provide to our fellow countrymen on this 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Happy Fourth of July, and may God Bless America!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen