Problems with the Presidency?  Beware the Junta!

ROME: 13th October '04 --  A headline bound to gain attention.  If you think it concerns two US contenders for high office, then you are wrong.....but also right!  It is not the contenders, but the 'high office' which is the object of concern.

Presidency is a word to be a little careful with.  Of course it is an English word, and applies very nicely to the high office of president, but that's the point.  It is predominantly intended to apply either to the role held by an individual, or the period of time of that individual in office.  It is not, normally, applied to group leadership, not in English.  In Italian, yes.  The equivalent term presidenza may apply equally to the office of an individual, or to the leadership group surrounding that individual.

    The term presidency has begun to creep into Salesian English official usage only in the last thirty years or so: R. 120-4, to begin with, all in reference to General Chapters.  All these uses of the term translate the Italian presidenza, some correctly, others (R. 120, 124) not so.  It also appears in R. 163 but in its correct application to the presidency of the Rector, and in the Ratio, the translator could have used it, also correctly, but neatly side-stepped with the verb preside (Ratio10.5.4.1).

    What is occurring in the case of the term’s application to group leadership, one suspects, is a simple case of 'false friends'.  The -za ending of many Italian words finds a -cy equivalent in English.  But people overlook another reality - the semantic breadth of those apparently equivalent terms can differ, and often does. No surprise, then, to also find it used this way in the Acts of GC25 in the Rector Major's introductory comments. 

    Now, having said all that, the Mormons have contributed the wider sense to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  That Church has a Presidency comprising president and several councillors.  There are already indications that the EU is heading this way with a rotating presidency, which involves more than one person, obviously, the difference being that only one is actually 'president' at any given moment.  Switzerland, not a part of the EU, has a similar set-up, but they don't use English!  Hobson Jobson (India's famous Anglo-English dictionary) stays with British usage  - the restricted meaning.

If presidency is not to be employed for the group consisting of president/chairperson, moderator, and one or two others, what term is? Certainly at Provincial Chapter level in one instance I know of, they use the term Steering Committee. The Don Bosco Foundation (Hong Kong-based) has an Executive Committee. Other terms, depending on context, could be leadership council or even just leadership group. Of course, we can stay with presidency and be in the vanguard of linguistic progress along with the Mormons and the EU.

    If we do occupy that vanguard position, we need to know that we are pushing words into places where they need to tread gingerly, at least for now!  Should we be concerned?  I think so.  At a recent gathering of the Salesian Family, the Italian word giunta was in regular use to describe the next level down from the presidenza - a steering committee, for all practical purposes.  In Italian there is absolutely no problem with this word, same for Portuguese where it becomes, yes, junta.  Now if that term slips into Salesian English as easily as did presidency, we are really in trouble!