[Published in: Gomola A. 2009.

Inclusive language in Polish Religious Discourse in:

Adamiak E., Methuen C. et al. (eds.) Gender and Religion in Central and Eastern
Europe. Pozna: Redakcja Wydawnictw 113-126].

Aleksander Gomola
Jagellonian University, Krakw, Poland

Inclusive language in Polish religious discourse

Introduction
Polish Catholicism, focused as it is more on folk piety than theological debates,
with dominant Marian devotion, a strong position for clergy and a generally passive
attitude of the laity, including women, seems to be the last place to look for new trends
in gender matters, including feminist theology. The specific character of Polish
Catholicism is, among other things, the result of its long struggle with the communist
regime, when the best chance of survival was to resort to traditional forms of devotion
and to maintain traditional divisions of roles between laity and clergy. Theological
debates resulting from the Second Vatican Council were not welcomed by most
members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland since they weakened
it in the face of the communist threat. Those Catholics, lay persons and priests and
bishops alike, who wished to transfer more Council ideas to Poland were in the
minority. However, the end of the cold war and the new social economic and political
situation of Poland also initiated a process of change in Polish Catholicism. The first
books in Polish on feminist theology appeared; numerous articles on the role of women
in the Church were published; and gender studies and feminist theology have become
part of curriculum at some Polish universities. (For more on feminist theology in
Poland, see Adamiak 2003: 117-125). In this article I wish to show how one of the key
proposals of feminist theology, closely connected with issues of gender, namely that of
inclusive language, has made its way into the most recent Polish translation of the Bible
and to explore the question of whether it is possible to promote this form of language in
religious discourse in Poland.
Inclusive language is language that does not discriminate women in public
discourse, as is the case, for example, when masculine pronouns are used with reference
to both sexes, or when speakers use linguistic forms that denigrate women. The term
inclusive language is most often used in the context of religious discourse and
feminist theology. In non-religious context the term non-sexist language is more often
used. This form of language is seen by many today as one of key instruments for
preventing discrimination of women, although it can often seem to be nothing but lip
service (Cameron 1998: 155-164). Inclusive language plays a crucial role in religious
discourse because, on the one hand, it helps to counteract the androcentric bias present
in the Bible and Christian tradition, both products of androcentric society and culture,
and on the other hand, it makes it possible for women to express themselves as believers
and to express the Christian message in new, non-sexist forms. The latter is to some
extent determined by the former and that is why using inclusive language in Bible
translation is so important.

Inclusive language in the context of Biblical exegesis and translation

Every act of language communication is embedded in a specific socio-cultural
milieu. The Bible is a collection of texts written by authors living in a patriarchal culture
of the Middle East, and books of the Bible reflect their androcentric way of thinking.
Throughout the whole Bible Gods relationship with humanity is actually expressed in
terms of Gods relationship with men (God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob cf. Ex 3: 15,
Acts 3: 13). Women are reduced to the status of possessions (You shall not covet your
neighbours house; you shall not covet your neighbours wife, or male or female slave,
or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs (italics mine A. G.) to your neighbour; Ex
20: 17). Practically all biblical metaphors for God are male-centered as God is presented
as Lord, Warrior, Husband or Father, and the feminine face of God in the Bible,
although possible to be discovered, is not so conspicuous (Mollenkott 1994: 4-5).
Biblical authors not only ignore women but approve their discrimination even when that
often involves their physical suffering and death, as demonstrated by Trible (1984: 65-
92). As Sawyer claims, Biblical authors employ gender as a literary strategy in a
theological enterprise (2002: 17).
For many centuries, the worldviews of the authors of the Bible and its readers
were the same, so that discrimination of women in the Scripture was seen as part of its
message and not as a socio-cultural given that has nothing to do with Gods will for
humankind. However, geographical and scientific discoveries, together with the social
changes that have taken place in the Western world in the last five centuries made it
obvious to Christians that biblical texts reflect the mentality of their authors, so that it is
necessary to separate the religious message of the Bible from the presupposed world
view of its authors. Thus Christians today reject not only the geocentric vision of the
world which was so evident to biblical writers as in opposition to fact, but also slavery,
which is held to be opposition to the Christian message itself. Paradoxically the first
followers of Christ, including Paul, did not see any inconsistency here, so deeply rooted
was the idea of slavery in their mentality as part of the social order they took for
granted.
In the same way, feminist theology seeks to separate the Christian message of
equal status of women and men in the community of faith from the socio-cultural norms
of the patriarchal world, regarded for centuries as integral to Gods plan for humanity.
How to do this, however, when the Bible as a normative text for Christians is at the
same time an androcentric text? It is here that inclusive language comes in.

The aim of inclusive language in religious discourse is to go beyond the male-

oriented images of God by re-discovering feminine face of God in the Bible and
Christian tradition, and to eliminate everything that discriminates women from Christian
discourse. When applied in Bible translation, these principles free the text from the
androcentric bias which results from its socio-cultural background. As such, they are
integral to well-established methods of feminist biblical exegesis (Schssler Fiorenza
1998, Schroer, Bietenhard 2003) that have gained approval of Vatican (Fitzmyer 1995:
99). Inclusive language in biblical translation may be either horizontal, when it is used
with reference to people, or vertical, when it is used with reference to God (Witherup
1996: 21, Majewski 2005: 206). As we will see below, these two variants of inclusive
language, although grouped under one term, are quite different.
The use of inclusive language in Bible translation and Church liturgy has been
given the most attention, not only by the feminist theology. Its promotion is not as
radical a postulate as it might seem at first sight. On the one hand, its use is a result of
transferring the principles of gender-neutral language, well established in English
speaking world, into the religious sphere; on the other hand, it is another example of
functional/dynamic equivalence, a strategy of translation promoted by Nida, one of the
greatest authorities in twentieth-century Bible translation, and widely accepted today,
according to which the aim of translation is that the receptors of the message in the
receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the
source language (Porter, Hess 2004: 52). Inclusive language in Bible translation may
be also seen as a part of a broader phenomenon of feminist translation theory/theories
which developed in Europe and Northern America in the second half of the twentieth
century (Simon 1996: 88-91).
Translators of the Bible are aware of the great temporal and cultural distance that
separates modern readers from its authors and most of them make every effort to present
Gods message in such a way that it may be understood as it was meant to be
understood by its first readers or hearers. The idea of adapting the Gospel to the
mentality and the world view of its readers/hearers may be traced back to the stage of
apostolic preaching about Jesus, even before the Gospels were written and is confirmed
by interesting textual differences between the Gospels. Sometimes the differences
concern some insignificant details such as the names given to parts of a house (
a typical, Greek tile roof in Lukes Gospel addressed to Greeks (5:19) versus
a roof of pressed clay and branches in Marks Gospel, addressed to Christians
of Jewish origin (2:4)); in other cases these shifts may concern such important aspects
of the Christian message and creed as the Eucharist (a very physical in John 6:51
as opposed to the more idiomatic Mat 26; 26, Mark 14: 22; Luke 22: 19; 1 Cor
11: 24; Brown 1996: 14).
Given the need to translate the Gospel to be heard in modern cultural contexts,
we should not be surprised that inclusive language in Biblical translation has been
accepted by many translators, especially in the English speaking world where recent
shifts in language make this strategy absolutely necessary. The most significant change
concerns the use of the noun man, which used to denote both the specific a male
and the generic human being; today its generic meaning is regarded as virtually
obsolete. Therefore, older English translations of the Bible, in which man was a
natural equivalent of Greek a human being sound today as if they did
indeed exclude women from the biblical discourse. Consequently, in most modern
English Bible translations, the Greek or the Hebrew ish is translated as a
human being or its synonyms, whilst man is used only when the text speaks of a
male. Even scholars from conservative Evangelical circles regard horizontal inclusive
language in English translations of the Bible as a necessity, in the light of these recent
shifts in English usage. This is evident, for instance, in Todays New International
Version, the most recent translation of the Bible addressed to Evangelical Christians.
There are also inclusive translations where both horizontal and vertical variants
of inclusive language appear. In these, the translators not only translate male terms
referring to people in an inclusive way when they concern both women and men, but
use also inclusive terms with reference to God: for instance, translating God the
Father from the Greek original as God the Father and Mother, on the basis that the
term should express intimacy with God rather than Gods oppressive power, or Lord
as Sovereign. Such radically inclusive translations include English versions of the
Bible such as An Inclusive Language Lectionary: Years A, B and C (1985), The
Inclusive New Testament (1994) or New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version
(1995) as well as a recent the German translation Die Bibel in gerechter Sprache (2006).
Inclusive language, necessary as it is, does not entirely solve the problem of
androcentrism of the Bible, since replacing masculine terms with their inclusive
counterparts does not eliminate the numerous statements discriminating against women
which are scattered throughout the Bible. More radical inclusive translations of the
Bible therefore change the original significantly in order to remove passages that
denigrate women. Hence the Pauline commandment to women: Wives, be subject to
your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord (Col 3: 18-19) reads in The Inclusive New
Testament: You who are in committed relationships, be submissive to each other.
Such a strategy is an ideological act rather than a proper translation. Since it is
impossible to eliminate such passages from the Bible without distorting the text, the
only solution would seem to be a commentary explaining the socio-cultural context of
the text.

The Polish language and problem of inclusivity

The Polish language, which belongs to the West Slavic branch of the Indo-
European language family, is an inflectional language, and Polish nouns, adjectives and
sometimes verbs are gender marked. This feature of Polish makes it very different from
English which often serves as the basis for the formulation of principles of inclusive
language. That means in turn that these principles may look different when adapted to
Polish.
For example, Polish unlike English, but similar to German, possesses an
inclusive noun czowiek that denotes both a man and a woman. The noun is an
equivalent of German Mensch or Greek . Apart from czowiek there are
separate nouns in Polish mczyzna and kobieta denoting a man and a woman
respectively. Since Polish has an inclusive noun czowiek that refers both to a man and a
woman and two separate nouns referring separately to a man and a woman, Polish Bible
translation unlike English has no problem with the proper rendering of the Greek
or the Hebrew ish, since in each case the Polish equivalent is the inclusive
noun czowiek.
On the other hand, the grammatical gender of Polish nouns and the fact that a
Polish noun Bg (God) is masculine, makes it more difficult to promote feminine
images of God, because whenever a third person singular pronoun is used with
reference to God, it must be always a masculine pronoun to agree with the masculine
noun Bg. While in English it is possible to speak of God as She since the noun
God is not gender marked, in Polish such solution is a clear violation of the rules of
Polish syntax.
Consequently, it is easier to conform Polish language to the demands of
horizontal inclusive language, i. e. language that does not eliminate women from the
discourse, but it is much more difficult to create Polish vertical inclusive language, i. e.
the language that would widen our understanding of God through the use of feminine
metaphors of God. The next two sections illustrate both situations: some examples of
presence of the horizontal inclusive language in a recent translation of the Bible into
Polish, and problems with creating a Polish version of the inclusive vertical language.

Horizontal inclusive language in the newest Polish translation of the Bible

The tradition of Polish translations of the Bible goes back to the sixteenth
century when the first Polish versions of the whole Bible were published. The best
known translations from that period are a Catholic translation by a Polish Jesuit, Jakub
Wujek (1599), and the Protestant translations Biblia Brzeska (1563) and Biblia Gdaska
(1632), named after the places where they were published. In the last fifty years there
have been several new translations of the Bible into Polish, both Catholic and non-
Catholic. The best-known modern Catholic translation is so called Millenium Bible
(MB) published in the 1960s to commemorate the millennium of the baptism of the first
Polish monarch in 966 when Poland became a part of Christian Europe. This translation
has also been recognized as the basis for the Polish version of the Lectionary in the
post-Vatican II liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. Although most popular, MB has
been criticized for its mistakes (many of which have been removed in subsequent
editions) and for a general tendency to translate the text giving preference to formal
rather than to dynamic/functional equivalence (Piela 2003). Because of this, the
translation retains the androcentric image of the world of the original and transfers it to
the world of readers. The most recent Polish Catholic translation of the Bible is Biblia
Pauliska (BP), published by the Polish community of the Society of St. Paul (which is
not to be confused with the Paulist Press!). Although its translators do not mention
feminist theology or the principles of inclusive language in the preface to their work, the
way the Greek original is rendered into modern Polish suggests that they must have
taken into account the fact that the solutions proposed in earlier modern translations of
the Bible into Polish, especially in MB, discriminated against women. They offer a
translation that, although not officially, in practical terms may be seen as meeting
demands of inclusive language.
As noted above, Polish has a noun, czowiek, which corresponds precisely with
the Greek . Therefore the heated debates concerning the generic and specific
understanding of the noun man in Biblical translation that can be observed in the
English speaking world (Carson 1998; Strauss 1998; Osborne 2006: 153-155) are
irrelevant to Polish. Two English translations and a Polish one of in John 3:4
show that clearly:
Nicodemus saith unto him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he
enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? (King James Version
-KJV)
How can anyone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. Surely they
cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born!" (Todays New
International Version TNIV)
Jake moe si czowiek () narodzi bdc starcem? Czy moe
powtrnie wej do ona swej matki i narodzi si? (MB).
In all Polish translations there is no problem with inclusivity concerning the
Greek or the Hebrew ish. However, the problem of inclusive language in
Bible translation does not concern these two nouns only. Although there are many
variants of feminist Biblical hermeneutics (Aichele 1995, 225-267), their proponents
agree that inclusive language should be first of all a counterbalance for the patriarchal
language of the Bible manifesting itself either in presenting mainly males as models of
Christian life or ignoring women altogether in the Biblical text.
A good example of the first situation is Rom 4:8 where (a man, a
male) should be interpreted as referring both to men and women (cf Romans 4:6,
which has ). Most Polish translations, including MB, render the Greek noun
literally as mczyzna (a man, a male); however, PB translates inclusively as
czowiek (a human being) i. e. in the same way as it translates .
As far as elimination of women from the Biblical discourse is concerned, a
telling example may be John 6:10 where the text ignores them altogether, as can be seen
from the New International Version (NIV):
Jesus said, Have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place,
and the men sat down, about five thousand of them.
Those translators who follow principles of inclusive translation try to soften the
androcentric character of this verse in various ways. TNIV, for instance, renders the
verse as follows:
Jesus said, Have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place,
and they sat down (about five thousand men were there).
Most modern Polish translations, including MB, ignore the problem of
androcentrism in John 6:10 and render it similarly to the NIV, i. e. telling the reader that
only the men sat down. BP, like TNIV, includes women into the narration, at least in the
indirect way, adopting slightly different strategy. While TNIV mentions the number of
men as additional information, putting it into the brackets, BP expands the original
adding the word samych (men only) that modifies the noun mczyzn (men). The
modifier samych is not an equivalent of any term in the original and suggests that there
were also women among those who listened to Jesus on that day; it is, therefore, an
example of inclusive interpretation of the original:
Jezus poleci im: Kacie ludziom usi. () Usiedli wic, a liczba samych
mczyzn wynosia okoo piciu tysicy (PB).
[Jesus told them: Make the people sit (...) And the people did so and the
number of men only was about five thousand" AG]
A much more important and doctrinally significant example of the elimination of
women from the Biblical discourse is Gal 3:26, where Paul writes:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (NIV).
In the Greek original we find (sons), rendered literally by NIV. TNIV
translates the text inclusively, not literally, giving children:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
The discrepancy between sons and children is also visible in Polish
translations of the Bible. MB, like NIV, translates the text literally, rendering as
sons, while PB interprets the text inclusively and renders as children.
 Another form of elimination of women from the Biblical narration can be found
in forms of address such as , (brothers), very common in Pauline letters.
Moderate inclusive translations like TNIV follow the principle of dynamic functional
equivalence here and render these forms of address consistently as brothers and
sisters, arguing that the sociolinguistic norms of the patriarchal world concerning the
forms of address during public meetings did not oblige a writer or speaker to mention
women, even if they were present among the hearers. Since modern sociolinguistic
norms are different, due to the different status of women in modern societies, and taking
into account the fact that Pauline letters are very often read as part of the Churchs
liturgy, it seems justified and even necessary to add sisters to the translated text, since
it is obvious that Paul addressed his words also to women (cf. Phil 4:1-2 where Paul
uses the term brothers and means also women: Euodia and Syntyche). In
contrast, none of modern Polish translations of the Bible, including PB, adds sisters to
the translated text.
In some cases, the greater awareness of the translators working on PB with
regard to the status of women in modern world, compared especially with those
involved in MB, manifests itself in softening the semantic value of the original. Thus
while MB translates (to submit oneself, to obey) in Col 3:18 as wives,
submit yourselves unto your husbands, PB chooses a somewhat softer version and
encourages women with words wives be obedient to your husbands. It is worth noting
that PB uses this strategy only once; in Eph 5:24 is rendered as to submit
yourself in both MB and PB.
As was mentioned above, in many cases inclusive language as a simple strategy
of replacement of male-oriented terms with terms including women does not solve the
problem of the Bibles androcentrism, so that a commentary is necessary to remind the
readers that many biblical statements revealing negative or discriminatory attitude
towards women do not constitute the Christian message but result from the patriarchal
vision of the world of their authors. Interestingly, PB and MB also differ regarding such
commentaries, as can be seen if one compares how both translations elucidate Pauls
words commanding women to keep silent in the assemblies (1 Cor 14:34). MBs
commentary is very brief, even laconic: these verses should be interpreted in the spirit
of those times (1303). PB, in contrast, offers much more exhaustive explanation. The
translators remind the reader that there is no doubt that Paul with all sincerity
proclaimed the truth of equal dignity of women and men and accepted womens rights
to speak and pray in public in Church adding that the ban [in 1 Cor 14:34 A. G.]
should be interpreted in the context of the turmoil and divisions in the Corinthian
community (396).
When inclusive language is used in Bible translation it is easier to show that
women took an active role in the early Church (Schssler Fiorenza 1993). The role of
women may be either highlighted in the text or ignored. The best illustration of this is
Rom 16:7, where translators may include a woman amongst those who may be called
apostles, or exclude her from that category by writing either of Junias (a man) or Junia
(a woman).
Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me.
They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was (NIV).
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me.
They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was (TNIV).
A similar discrepancy is visible in the two Polish translations presented here.
MB has Junias, but the translators add in a footnote that the Vulgate gives a female
name (1290). The MB translation reads: Andronicus and Junias are outstanding among
apostles. PB has Junia instead of Junias, but the translated text curbs more radical
interpretations; we learn from it that Andronicus and Junia are not outstanding among
apostles but are respected among apostles, which in Polish is more ambiguous as it
may mean either that they themselves are apostles or that the apostles respect them.
In her discussions of the role of women in the early Church, Schssler Fiorenza
speaks of the discipleship of equals. According to her, women and men were both
designatedministers in the beginnings of Christianity (1993: 13-23). Promoting this
theological proposal is much easier in English than it is in Polish, simply because of the
morphological differences between the two languages. English proponents of the
discipleship of equals may interpret any mention of disciples in the English
translation of the Bible as referring to both men and women but Polish speakers are
constrained by the morphology of their native tongue, which, like German, tends to
distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns referring to various social roles (cf.
German Lehrer [male teacher] Lehrerin [female teacher]). Therefore in Polish
translations of the Bible the Polish term uczniowie refers exclusively to male disciples
and cannot be understood as referring to men and women, because for women there is
another feminine term uczennice.
 Is a vertical inclusive language possible in Polish religious discourse?
None of the modern Polish translations of the Bible makes use of vertical
inclusive language, retaining traditional male terms referring to God from the original.
Thus in Polish translations God is always Father, Lord or King. The male imagery of
God is strengthened in Polish translations by the fact that the noun referring to the third
Person of Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is in Polish a masculine noun.
There are, however, a few metaphors and parallels in the New Testament where
God and Gods actions are presented in feminine categories. This imagery is very
precious to feminist theology and it is interesting to see how these metaphors and
parallels are translated into Polish. One of the most interesting feminine metaphors of
God appears in Mat 23:37, where God is compared to a hen that protects her chickens.
We may find parallels for this metaphor in the Hebrew Scriptures and it was later taken
over by some Christian thinkers (Mollenkott 1994: 94). The metaphor is also given a
visual representations in Christian iconography, the best known example of which is the
mosaic depicting a hen with an aureola in Dominus Flevit Church on the Mount of
Olives facing Jerusalem. All English translations, and probably translations in many
other languages, render the Greek (hen) literally, retaining the feminine imagery
of the verse. Translation of this passage in Polish versions of the Bible is more
problematic since Polish equivalents of the term , such as kura or kwoka do not
immediately arouse connotations of protectiveness or the care of a bird for its offspring,
but sound rather negative when used with reference to people. For example the Polish
phrase kura domowa (a house hen) means a housewife, with all negative
connotations of this term. Therefore, not only the non-inclusive MB, but also the more
inclusive PB do not offer a precise translation of Mat 23:37 but render as ptak (a
bird), in this way removing the feminine vertical imagery from the passage and making
it more difficult to associate the text with its parallels in earlier Biblical texts or with
Christian iconography.
However, the problem with Polish version of inclusive vertical language cannot
be reduced to the specific example discussed above. It is much more complex because
it concerns first of all syntactical and morphological differences between Polish and
English. In English nouns are generally not gender marked and replaced most often with
the pronoun it. However, the pronoun it denotes non-animate objects in English and
cannot be used with regard to the Christian God, who is conceptualized as a person. The
patriarchal tradition of Christianity, taken over from Judaism, exerted its influence on
Christian imagery resulting in male conceptualizations of God in the Bible and in the
Christian discourse. Yet, because in English language the pronoun He attributed to
God is not a result of a syntactical rule, it is possible to replace it with a different
pronoun with no damage to language rules. A good example of how it may be achieved
is a classic work She Who Is (Johnson 1992) in which the author proposes a new
conceptualization of The Triune God in feminine categories naming God She as well
as He. This strategy facilitates recreating and rediscovering feminine images of God
present in Christian tradition and makes vertical inclusive language not only
theologically significant but also linguistically plausible.
Polish is an inflectional language and its nouns, adjectives and sometimes verbs
are gender marked. It is therefore very difficult to transfer the proposals of vertical
inclusive language onto its ground. A popular feminist joke: When God created man,
She was only joking that in Polish translation reads: Kiedy Bg stworzya czowieka,
Ona tylko artowaa, is not amusing in Polish at all. Firstly, the English noun man
must be translated as czowiek (a human being), which removes the ambiguity of the
original. Secondly and more importantly, Bg is in Polish a masculine noun and
therefore it corresponds with a Polish pronoun on (he), not ona (she). Additionally,
the Polish equivalent of the English verb to create has two forms: a masculine
stworzy and a feminine stworzya, depending on the grammatical gender of the subject.
Therefore the anaphoric pronoun Ona and a feminine verb stworzya used after the
masculine noun Bg make the whole sentence syntactically faulty.
Taking these factors into account, it must be said that creating a Polish version of
a vertical inclusive language in Christian discourse in which God is presented in
feminine categories must involve breaking the rules of Polish syntax, since the Polish
masculine noun Bg must then be accompanied by feminine verbs and adjectives to
achieve the desired effect, unless you give up the noun Bg altogether. Whether this is
linguistically tenable I discuss elsewhere (Gomola 2008). Here it will suffive to note
that such a radical violation of rules of Polish grammar may have a revelatory power
with regard to Gods image in Polish Catholicism characterized by strong Marian
devotion. Both folk piety and a great part of Polish Catholic discourse produced by
clergy, including Episcopal letters or homilies promote an image of Mary as a good and
caring mother who is much closer to believers than God. While God the Father is in this
discourse first of all a distant judge, Mary is the one to whom people pray and are
directed to by many priests. A linguistic conceptualization of the good and loving Mary
being the counterbalance of stern God the Father is a result of various linguistic
strategies, including diminutives and superlative forms of adjectives referring to her,
thanks to which she is conceptualized as both close to people and at the same time
almost equal to God (Tabakowska 2000). Introducing vertical inclusive language into
Polish Catholic discourse and presenting God not as an angry father or lord who has to
be appeased by Mary (as is most often her role in this discourse) would help to restore a
more balanced and true image of God as revealed to us by Jesus.
Another possibility of developing inclusive Polish language might be to use
more systematically and consistently some feminine abstract nouns with reference to
God. Such crucial nouns in Polish like Mio (Love), Wierno (Faithfulness),
Moc (Power), Obecno (Presence), Mdro (Wisdom) or Tajemnica
(Mystery) are all feminine and may help to reveal the feminine face of God1.

Conclusions
The Roman Catholic Church in Poland, the largest Catholic community of
Central Europe, did not experience the heated theological debates and controversies that
were the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council in Western Europe and North
America. Paradoxically, the existence of the communist regime as the constant threat for
the Polish Church made that Church oblivious to all challenges of the world beyond the
iron curtain and to the various social trends which the Church in the free world had to
face. From this perspective, the end of communism may be seen not only as a liberation
but also as a dismantling of the protective barrier that separated the Polish Church from
the modern, secular world. The last twenty years have therefore brought with them for
the Polish Church a range of questions with which the Church in the Western countries
has been familiar for almost half a century, among them the problem of the status of
women in the community of faith. It is difficult to estimate to what extent the Polish
Church, and especially its clergy, has managed to tackle with them thus far, and this was
not an aim of my paper. It seems however that although it is not acknowledged openly,
some principles of inclusive language have been accepted and adopted, at least in the
most recent Polish translation of the Bible. As it was mentioned above, nowhere in the
preface to PB do its translators, who are all ordained, mention inclusive language. Yet

1
I am grateful to Prof. Charlotte Methuen who drew my attention to such solution in German feminist
theology.
the passages cited above reveal a consistent strategy that may be rightly labeled as
horizontal inclusive language.
It is very difficult to say whether it is possible to create a Polish version of
vertical inclusive language to be used in Bible translation and religious discourse that
would be accepted by language users. The syntactic and morphological properties of
Polish language make this task more difficult than in the case of English. Given the
Marian devotion omnipresent in religious practices in Roman Catholic Church in
Poland we may assume that there is a great longing on the part of believers for motherly
God and that such a language would satisfy the need for God who is closer to people
than God conceptualized as Father. Although we do not yet have a Polish version of
vertical inclusive language in religious discourse, it will be very interesting to see
whether it will appear in the future.

Summary
Since 1989, Central Europe has witnessed dramatic changes that have affected
not only the regions economy or its social and political life but also religion, including
Roman Catholic Church in Poland, its biggest religious community. Although feminist
theology constitutes the margin of religious discourse in Poland, one of its proposals,
namely inclusive language in its moderate horizontal variant, has made its way into the
most recent Polish translation of the Bible. The paper presents an analysis of the
inclusive solutions adopted by scholars working on this translation compared with other
translations of the Bible into Polish and English, in the broader context of a debate on
language inclusivity in Bible translation and with regard to grammar and lexical
properties of Polish. The second part of the article addresses the question of whether it
is possible to create in Polish more radical version of inclusive language, namely
vertical inclusive language in which female terms are used with reference to God. Given
the rules of Polish morphology and syntax, creating such a language and promoting it
seems to be much more difficult than it is in English.

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