Rumour has it that the Italian churches are soon to have PF's silly revision of the Oratio Dominica imposed upon them.
I doubt whether PF would try to impose this universally. That's not his style. His way of working is to 'make a mess' and, great glorious termite that he is, to attack Catholicism by nibbling away at its foundations. He takes the long view.
England is perhaps not as vulnerable to this sort of nonsense as Italy. That is because such a change in Anglophone liturgy would be unecumenical. In other words, the historically dominant Anglican tradition of the English version of this Prayer may serve to protect Anglophone Catholics from interference, at least until the pontificate of Frances III.
Intermittently, the Church of England has permitted optionally alternative versions of the Our Father, although, interestingly, the particular phrase that the Bergoglianist Ascendancy has such problems with has never featured in these versions. (This may be because Anglicans have tended to be shy of knowing better than the Author of the Prayer.) But, I think overwhelmingly, Anglican clergy have felt that 'changing the Lord's Prayer' would alienate occasional worshippers for whom the older version is just about the only liturgical formula that they do know off by heart.
PF's initiative raises a diverting question: if, without being ultra vires, PF can fiddle around like this, why cannot other Christians (or Pope Frances III) eliminate the 'offensive' Patriarchality of Pater hemon?
Footnotes: (1) the C of E did change the Our Father in 1662, when the doxology ('For thine is ...) was added to some, but (curiously) not all, of the liturgical occasions of the Prayer. I do not know of any record of how this went down in the pews.
(2) Single words have, in the last century, been changed, but this has made little impact because it does not significantly disturb the communal use of the prayer if some people are saying 'which' while others are saying 'who'. It is a disturbing of the order of words and a changing of the structures of phrases that raise problems in the communal use of a formula.
Back in 2009, on holiday in New Zealand, I was outraged and discomfited to find that I could not join in the Lord's Prayer at the Ordinary Form Masses I experienced there, since all but one diocese there then used a strange modern version; while, rather ironically, I was totally at home in the Extraordinary Form Masses I attended in that beautiful land.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that I've had to pray (as a former Anglican) 'Save us from the time of trial'. What do current Anglicans pray?
ReplyDeleteIf the correct translation of the Pater Noster is "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," why do we say "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive our trespassers"? Is it correct that this translation change came about in England as a result of the Reformation? It seems to appear in Tynsdale's version of the Bible and has been used as the English language version ever since. If so, do you know why?
ReplyDeleteI predict that this will simply not catch on. They tried to change the Glory Be to the bland, pedestrian form found in the Liturgy of the Hours, but very few people use it. Not even the attempt to expunge all the “thee” and “thou” from the Our Father and the Hail Mary has taken hold. Nobody is clamoring for these changes. They will eventually go the way of the Claudian letters.
ReplyDeleteFather, Is it wrong for me to want PF's papacy to end as soon as possible?
ReplyDeleteAnd what are even the prospects of the Church getting a more Christ-focused (opposed to World-focused) Pope next?
I'm a revert to the faith (2011) and my confusion only has been growing.
It honestly seems like the good guys get punished and the bad guys get promoted. This done at such a comical level that I think "maybe I'm just being deceived". So I try to read the more PF-friendly side too. But one comes across a guy like Mark Shea and immediately I'm disgusted with his approach and bullheaded lack of charity.
It's been a rough stretch.
Until you try to pray with a stranger, you will not quite have grasped how this abstract theological tinkering with the Our Father disrupts our life of faith together in a profoundly disturbing way.
ReplyDeleteOne day I was praying outside of the Planned Parenthood of Worcester MA (USA). As I was kneeling, a nice lady and an elderly gent asked if they could join me in saying the Rosary.
They knelt next to me and indicated that I should lead. I began and soon became aware that our words were out of joint. She was adding some extra verse to the Hail Mary and she was changing the words of the Our Father! Instead of saying "and lead us not into temptation" she was saying (I found out afterwards), "and do not let us fall into temptation but save us through Jesus Christ the Lord."
I asked her to stop! I became agitated because my prayer was now all in pieces -- instead of asking God for help while babies were being attacked inside, I was forced to focus on what she was saying and why, and how I could get us all back on track, and what the heck was going on!
She became upset and told me that "the HOLY FATHER TOLD US TO CHANGE THE OUR FATHER! WE HAVE TO OBEY!" The gentleman started chastising us for arguing when we were there to pray for babies! YES! WHY?? Why was this happening?
Later we made up of course, but this episode bothered me so much. Was *I* in the wrong for asking her to pray the words of the Our Father as we pray them at Mass, as we find them in Scripture, as WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE? For the not insignificant reason that doing so allows us to pray together, instead of having to hammer out what form we will use and focus on that??
Later I became more at peace (after talking to a priest about it) -- they asked me to lead and they were interrupting me to join me -- and the default should be to pray in the normal fashion.
My conclusion: Pope Francis is indeed a sower of confusion -- he is weaponizing good people whose inclination is to OBEY -- and it has real effects, on the ground, where the Evil One is in control, outside the abortion clinic, and who knows where else.
There was this alternative with 'time of trial instead of "lead us not into temptation' I vaguely remember from one of the 'series'
ReplyDeleteNew york times (!!) has this
www.nytimes.com › 1977/11/12 › archives › anglicans-update-lords-pra...
Anglicans Update Lord's Prayer - The New York Times
12 Nov 1977 - Ch of England approves new version of Lord's Prayer that puts it in modern English ... Do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from evil.
Also another committee in AD 1988 ELLC[11] had a go
Our Father in heaven,
...Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
It appears Francis is not very innovative after all
Certainly. But I've always been open to "let us not into temptation" as an a tolerable alternative, if push were to come to shove. Of course, any deliberate change - even so linguistically slight a one - would be a dangerous and unwelcome precedent.
ReplyDeleteFor reasons I have hinted at, I do not advocate changing the translation to TIME OF TRIAL. But I have to admit that this was a valid translation of the Greek PEIRASMON, which sometimes referred to an expected great persecution, 'testing' or 'trying', of the Church, in the days immediately preceding the End.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that translation caught on very widely in the C of E. I don't think we need it.
But it is my view that PF's changes represent an unjustifiable MIStranslation.
Changing the text to TIME OF TRIAL, in my view, would be a prudential misjudgement. The Bergogliamn alteration, on the other hand, is ultra vires.
For well over a thousand years the English for ne nos inducas in tentationem has been "lead us not into temptation" (Anglo-Saxon gloss ne gelæd þu us on costnunge). I propose to continue that tradition as I don't believe that nearly fifteen hundred years' worth of saints and scholars could have got it so wrong (with the greatest respect to Pope Francis, of course: he is not an Anglophone and can't be expected to be aware of the subtleties of our most subtle vocabulary.)
ReplyDeleteThe history of the correct English wording of the Lord's Prayer, and the minor variations in that wording, is covered in a chapter in Fr Thurston's Familiar Prayers: Their Origin and History, Burns & Oates, 1953.
ReplyDeleteLeila,
ReplyDelete"Pope Francis is indeed a sower of confusion -- he is weaponizing good people whose inclination is to OBEY -- and it has real effects, on the ground, where the Evil One is in control, outside the abortion clinic, and who knows where else."
Yes, 'sower of confusion' at the very least. Thank you for saying this.
I waited a while for them but among commentators I respect, @SteveSkojec on twitter has said 'a bad pope' and @HilarityJane has said the "h" word. I can only concur.
Tony Last,
on a cursory viewing lasting no more than two minutes Mr Shea seems a futile person with too much time on his hands, best ignored. Some people may not be personally evil but should be avoided for the effect they have on oneself, so in that sense. I avoid all anglican functionaries and their ministrations, not because of whom they may be, but because what they represent is rebellion against God. (Hmm. This is blunter than I intended to be this evening).
& May you always be safe from the clutches of ladies named Brenda and men called Todd.
Time was, this platform allowed one to insert the reply under the comment being addressed, but no longer, so here we are.
To William Arthurs: Thank you for the referral of Fr. Thurston's book. I finally found a copy of it and the chapter on "The Our Father in English" was enlightening. Answered my questions. Thank you again.
ReplyDelete