We are obviously not Latin speakers so using the term in other than its English usage amongst English speakers would require some preparatory explanation or note that you are attaching a personal useage to the term.
Think of how you use the words ‘vulgar, villa, pagan, let’ for example and how they once had a quite different sense. Yet you would make an exception for “co”? For what reason and by what logic?
” But to show that it means “equal with” in our use of the word “coredemptrix” is the job of the prosecution, because we'd fervently deny that she would be equal to Jesus in the redeeming work.”
Not at all! If you say I'm a pagan it is hardly up to me to show the term means anything other than its common modern English usage whatever you believe or intend for the word to mean or how you might apply it. And if you do not misunderstanding of your usage is hardly the fault of the hearer.
Having a jargon in usage within a group is common enough but it cannot be expected that others accept the usages peculiar to that group without explanation.
Those are all words I use in the archaic sense. "Prevent" too!
(Yeah, sometimes people look at me funny....)
You just nailed one of my habits, I'm afraid. I don't even know the modern sense of "villa". "Farmhouse"?
You may have noticed that I slip into the Coverdale Psalter and the KJV -- though I'm beginning to shake that.
My wife says it's because I when I was learning to speak I was learning two languages at once, AND my mother spoke English Enlgish while my father spoke Amurrican.
Anyway, when I hear or use an obviously Latinate word, my mind usually goes to the Latin meaning. So when I hear "co-" even in an English word, I think of "with", not "equal with". Of course, I guess my first encounter with the prefix was "co-pilot" whom i always thought to be subordinate to the pilot. They're not BOTH co-pilots, after all.
I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying I'm me.
BUT ....
I just got done saying that my Church does that too. Too darn much IMHO.
Having a jargon in usage within a group is common enough but it cannot be expected that others accept the usages peculiar to that group without explanation.
I think that's right. We do owe an explanation. I do find myself in RCIA (inquirer's classes) reminding the other teachers that a lot of poeple don't talk Catholic, and, when I am talking, referring often to 'Catholic lingo.'
But after I have "testified" to its meaning in the jargon, THEN I think it's the burden of the other side to show I mean something else. How about that?
It IS our fault that we're misunderstood before the explanation, but when people insist, AFTER the explanation that we mean Mary is equal to Jesus when we obviously don't mean anything of the kind, that's not reasonable.
Come to think of it, what would your side say about "co-pilot"?