San Francisco, Calif., Apr 12, 2011 / 10:28 am
The English-language publisher of a new Vatican-sponsored youth catechism says that a passage suggesting the use of contraception by Christian couples is not in the book's original German text, which was incorrectly translated into Italian.
“The Italian translation was really a mistaken understanding of the German,” Ignatius Press Founding Editor Fr. Joseph Fessio told CNA on April 12. “We did notice in the German original there was some ambiguity, but we wanted to translate it in the way we knew was most consistent with the Church's teachings.”
According to Fr. Fessio and Ignatius Press President Mark Brumley, the Italian version incorrectly translates the German word “Empfängnisregelung.” Although the term literally means “birth regulation,” in a general sense that can signify natural family planning, it is also sometimes used to refer to “birth control” through contraceptive means.
However, the Italian version of the YouCat does not translate the term according to what Fr. Fessio says is its literal meaning. Instead, it renders the German word as “metodi anticoncezionali,” meaning “contraceptive methods.”