That’s what was bothering me last Sunday. Something about the Gospel reading for this past Sunday (Mark 9:35) always bothers me and it is the way that the Lectionary, taken from the USCCB-approved New American Bible, of course, refers to the child Jesus places before the apostles as “it.” I always thought that was a strange pronoun to use, but seeing it next to other translations I realized the problem: Referring to a child as “he” would “damage” the psyche of little girls and “disenfranchise” women.
Jeff Miller and Custos Fidei noticed it too:
RSV (Catholic Edition)
And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them,Douay-Rheims
And taking a child, he set him in the midst of them. Whom when he had embraced, he saith to them:NAB
Taking a child he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it he said to them,Does anyone, especially Catholics, ever refer to a baby as an “it”?
Nothing like de-humanizing children in order to make a gender-neutral, politically correct point.
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