A Note on Terminology

Church documents are often broken up into numbered paragraphs to aid in finding particular passages.  This document follows that norm in having numbered paragraphs.  However, in many places in Spes Non Confundit, one numbered “paragraph” extends over several paragraphs as we normally understand the meaning of that term.

When this study guide says, “paragraph X,” it is referring to the paragraph that has the number X in front of it – for example, “paragraph 3” refers to the paragraph that has the number 3 in front of it.

When a “paragraph” (as church documents count them) has more than one standard paragraph (as we normally understand a paragraph to be), this guide refers to those additional paragraphs as additional “parts” of that numbered “paragraph.”  For example, the “second part of paragraph 3” refers to the second paragraph in the portion of the document that follows the number 3 and comes before the paragraph numbered paragraph 4.  Similarly, the “fourth part of paragraph 6” is the fourth regular paragraph that comes after the number 6 (and before the number 7).