英文自修102：球场内外的不同教派

本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought for the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。

注释、大意：武太白

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Thought for the Day - 090614 - Clifford Longley

In Britain people have called football the national religion; in Brazil it seems to be the other way round. Many of their best players are devout 虔诚信教的, and like to demonstrate 展示 that fact in front of their fans. At one point, FIFA（国际足联） had to ask them to tone it down 小声点，低调点.

大意：英国人把足球当作国教，巴西人则把宗教引入足球。国际足联都不得不提醒巴西人低调点，不要老是在场上显摆自己信教。

Those who are Pentecostalists 圣灵降临派教友 belong to a branch of Protestant 新教 Christianity which is growing fast in Brazil. Some of them advocate 拥护 what has been called the Gospel of Success, or Gospel of Prosperity. Work hard, live a clean life, praise Jesus and give him thanks on all occasions 不论何时, and God will reward you with success. It's a simple creed 信条 and it appears to work, on and off the football field - at least some of the time. But other Pentecostalists think it is not true to the Bible - off-side 越位, you might say.

新教分支圣灵降临派在巴西发展迅速。圣灵降临派的一些人在巴西传布一种叫做“成功福音/繁荣福音“的教义，就是说，勤奋努力，洁净生活，赞颂上帝，不论何时都要感谢上帝，那他就会赐予你成功。很简单，似乎也有效，球场内外都这样。但另一些人觉得这与圣经不相符。

There's an interesting history behind all this. Pentecostalism, originally imported from the United States, seemed to offer what Catholicism didn't, namely a way out of the favelas - the slums or shanty towns where very poor people live, often next door to the very rich. The Catholic Church's answer, in so far as it had one, was to call for structural change, starting with the departure of the right-wing military dictatorships which had plagued 祸害 Latin America for a generation.

这背后的历史很有趣。圣灵降临派最初是从美国”进口“而来，其教义更多地是追求如何脱离贫民窟。天主教会对此的答案是呼吁从摒弃拉丁美洲的军事独裁制度开始进行结构性变革。

The left-wing Archbishop of Sao Paulo for nearly thirty years, Cardinal Paulo Arns, was a leading advocate of the so-called theology of liberation 解放神学. He was a brave opponent 反对者 of the regime's use of torture to subdue 征服 its enemies, and he even sold his palace to build a welfare centre for the poor.

圣保罗的左翼大主教保罗·阿恩斯在位三十年，是所谓”解放神学“的主要拥护者。他勇敢地反对巴西当局以暴力折磨为手段征服其对手，甚至把自己的神殿出售以建立贫困福利中心。

All this set him at odds not just with conservative Brazilian Catholics who were hand-in-glove with the powers-that-be 当权者, but with the Vatican itself, which was alarmed by the way liberation theologians seemed to be turning Marxist. So efforts were made to stamp it out 消除之, which seemed for a while to have succeeded.

巴西的天主教徒将其视为眼中钉肉中刺，甚至梵蒂冈教廷也是如此。后者对解放神学家像马克思主义思潮靠拢感到警惕。

In the view of Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict, it was the Church's concentration on the political rather than the personal which drove many Catholics into the arms of the new Pentecostal movements.

教宗本笃认为，正是教会对政治议题而非个人议题的关注使得许多天主教徒转而投入了新的圣灵降临派运动的怀抱。

Relations between these two varieties of Christianity in Brazil are still uneasy, but they get along well enough on the football field. Look for players making the sign of the cross, for instance before a penalty or after a goal. They are the Catholics. Look for those who kneel to pray, and maybe try to display some undergarment with the word "Jesus" written prominently on it. They are the Pentecostalists.

在足球场上，这两个教派之间的关系相比在生活中要好些。场上运动员有画十字的天主教徒，也有下跪祈祷、试图展示内衣上写着”耶稣“的圣灵降临派教徒。

Whose side God is on I can't tell you, except to say he probably has more sympathy for the losers than the winners. As for liberation theology - thanks to the arrival of the first Latin American Pope, it's now back in fashion. Just to show, which may be some comfort to England fans, that where God's concerned, there's no such thing as a lost cause 失败的事业.

说不上来上帝是支持哪一方的，我只能说上帝更可能同情失败者而非成功者。至于解放神学，由于第一任拉丁美洲教宗的到任，如今这种神学又兴起了。这也向最近可能比较失望的英国球迷们指出，只要上帝关注，是不会有”失败的事业“这一说法的。