The diocese of the Canary Isles (Spain) has recently published, in electronic form, a “Vocabulary of Religious Words”, compiled by Father Felipe Santos, SDB. The vocabulary is available on the website of the diocese of the Canaries. The idea for the venture arose from the daily contacts of the Salesian priest with so many people, especially youngsters, which brought home to him the tremendous ignorance of the public about concepts and keywords relating to religious questions. Just in a world like that of our time, so progressive from a technical point of view and with so many means of communication within everyone’s reach, the priest noted a growing ignorance about the meaning of religious words. This ignorance, says Father Felipe in his presentation of the Vocabulary, implies that we need to start out from zero. Today so many people are no longer able to clearly distinguish a series of religious concepts that were perfectly familiar just a few years ago: there is a complete ignorance about them today. The Vocabulary is exhaustive and adopts a popular religious language: it also includes proper names, such as those of the prophets and the most important protagonists in the Bible, the names of liturgical ornaments and objects, the books of the Bible, frequently used religious words, the members of the Church, and so on.
