John Allen on Chiara Lubich
John Allen has an excerpt up from an interview he did with Chiara Lubich, the founder of Foccolare, who died on Friday.
I enjoyed this telling exchange:
In comments to the press afterwards, Lubich revealed that she had once asked John Paul II over lunch if he was comfortable with a woman being president of a major international Catholic movement (the Focolare constitution actually requires that the president be a woman). Magari! was the pope’s Italian response, roughly the equivalent of “Are you kidding?” He was content with the arrangement, Lubich said, because he believes in what Catholic theologian Hans von Balthasar described as a balance between the “Petrine” and “Marian” principles in the church, between the hierarchical and the charismatic.
posted by Sherry W @ 8:33 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Hmm ... my Italian is definitely not as good as John's, but I always thought that "magari" had a connotation of "I wish this would happen but I know that given the way things are it probably won't or can't." It's kinda like the Spanish "ojala" but, at least in my understanding, not quite as optimistic. So, "I wish!" might be a better translation than "Are you kidding?"
Gashwin,
My Italian is no doubt worse than yours and John's, but it's my understanding that "magari" is used in a wide variety of ways. So the versions you mention are true. But it is also sometimes used as the equivalent of "Of course!" or "naturally". So I am told.
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