At First Things, Charlotte Allen deftly explains the spectacularly bad move to change the official wording of the Lord’s Prayer in Italian.
In effect, she points out that this tinkeritis (my word) is yet another abysmally obtuse reaction by bishops and so-called experts to the decades ongoing erosion of Catholic identity that they caused in the first place. Okay, that last part was mine.
Here’s a sample, though I recommend that you read the whole thing. She starts out with an explanation of how the wording – in Italian – of the Lord’s Prayer will change and why (hint: it’s called a ‘bad translation’). Then she gets into the meat of it: dumbing things down doesn’t help. My emphases:
[…]
It is always irritating when professional liturgists, theologians, and prelates deem ordinary Catholic laypeople mentally incapable of looking beyond the surface meaning of “lead us not into temptation” and understanding that the words might actually imply a subtle and nuanced understanding of God the Father’s providential concern for sinful humanity. It is especially irritating for English-speaking Catholics to face—possibly—the prospect of changing, on a whim of bishops or pressure from the pope, the deliberately archaic language of their own beloved Christian prayer that has included the words “lead into” as a translation of inducas since Anglo-Saxon times. Proposals to “modernize” the English Our Father have surfaced from time to time, but so far both clergy and faithful have rejected them.
The problem is deeper than just the unwarranted dumbing down of an ancient phrase. Updating the ne nos inducas is another knot in a long string of failed efforts to reverse the catastrophic decline of practiced Catholicism (especially European Catholicism) in the wake of Vatican II by piling on more of the accommodations with secular modernity that Vatican II supposedly mandated. To most of the theologians—nearly all hailing from Europe—who engineered the supposed liturgical and disciplinary “reforms” of the Church in the wake of the Council, many traditional rules and practices were simply too arcane and rigid for the secularized modern mind to deal with.
[…]
In this context, fiddling with translations of ne nos inducas in tentationem isn’t just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s doubling down on a strategy of post-Vatican II accommodation with secular culture that has so far failed miserably. Even worse, it’s playing fast and loose with the Gospels and Christ’s own words.
Brava. Fr. Z kudos.
The answer: Tradition.
If only we had a common language of prayer in the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church.
Somewhere in my stacks and stacks of books I have a reprint of an old Italian catechism. It lays out everything that the children were to learn for 1st Communion, etc. Included are lots of prayers in Latin.
Also, I have a new edition of the classic catechism of St. Robert Bellarmine, translated into English with an introduction by Athanasius Schneider. Doctrina Christiana: The Timeless Catechism of St. Robert Bellarmine (US HERE – UK HERE). This is terrific. Remember that St. Robert Bellarmine wrote in a time before we moderns got all grown up an too sophisticated to do things like… you know… think, make distinctions, remember stuff. His catechism breaks down all the articles of the Creed and of the Our Father. He provides a crystal clear explanation of “ne nos inducas“. This catechism is written as a dialogue. It was intended for catechists and it was written at the express bidding of Pope Clement VIII and was approved in 1598.
S. Enlighten me about the sixth petition: “and lead us not into temptation.”
T. In this petition, we ask for help against future evils, clearly against temptations, through which we fall into sin. Therefore, you would know that here we especially pray to God, lest he would permit us to be conquered by temptation. To be sure, because temptations are very dangerous, and victory over them is uncertain, therefore, we ask God, lest he would permit us to be tried, especially when he sees the devil will be the victor. For that reason, we gather a characteristic proof that it is beyond doubt the devil not only cannot conquer us, but cannot even tempt us, unless God should permit it.
S. I do not sufficiently understand this matter of speaking, “and lead us not into temptation.” It seems this phrase means that God usually leads us into temptation, and we ask him lest we would do that.
T. To lead into temptation, or to send into temptation, or to send one into temptation or to urge one to sin is proper to the devil, but by no means is it proper to God, who pursues sin with the utmost hatred. Just the same, by speaking, according to this phrase of Sacred Scripture, where it is repeatedly attributed to God, to lead into temptation is nothing other than for God to permit someone to be tempted, or to be conquered by temptation. This is why the sense of this petition is what we have said, namely, that since we recognize on the one hand, the weakness of our nature, and on the other, the deceit and power of the devil, we pray to God that he would not simply prevent us from being conquered by temptation, but also by being beaten by temptation when he sees that we are not going to be victorious.
In Bellarmine’s Short Catechism of 1614, for children, he explains.
Student: Declare the sixth (petition of the Our Father).
Teacher: We demand (ask) in the sixth that God deliver us from temptations which are evils to come, or not permitting us to be content, or giving us grace that we will not be overcome.
Heck… even Lutherans get this. In Luther’s Small Catechism he wrote:
The Sixth Petition
And lead us not into temptation.What does this mean? God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.
It is the task of bishops and priests to explain all these articles of the Creed, the petitions of the Our Father, the meaning of the Decalogue, and the basics, to their people. That’s why after Trent, the Roman Catechism was produced: so that parish priests had a sure reference to the content of the Faith, the fides quae creditur, so that they could preach and teach it to their people. The fact is, back in the day, the Fathers of Trent realized that catechism was in appalling shape. That’s why they did what they did.
Can we say that things are a whole lot better now? Sure, we have greater resources than even before. However, today we have to fight also the debilitating effect of horrible sentimentlist education and the accumulative brain-melting effect of screens.
Priests and bishops are included.
When I was in major seminary in these USA, one day we were walking out of a Christology class. I heard one guy say to another, “That whole two natures in Christ thing is pretty interesting.”
PRETTY INTERESTING? He had never heard of this before and he was in 2nd year of major seminary.
Okay… end of rant.
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Italy does seem to have an appalling set of bishops even with very stiff competition these days, thanks in part to our Holy Father Francis.
NEVER under estimate the Dark One in its ability to influence; even those who are SUPPOSED to be on God’s side….
Yours and the analysis brought to bear by Charlotte Allen are just spot on. I wish you could rant louder and forever – but be heard. Is there no one with ears to hear and eyes to see in a position to bring our ecclesiastical pathology to its terminus? Has common sense been totally abandoned in the service of preserving a rogue council which was nothing but a shipwreck as was widely observed as it was transpiring? What exactly is the investment in upholding the credence of an event which had exactly the opposite effect of its stated goals? What kind of individuals persist in a course of action which is manifestly counterproductive? Unless what is being effected is exactly what was desired from the beginning but was deliberately unarticulated.
This circus is actually taking on the characteristics of a science fiction parable. It is nothing less than sadistic. How much longer can we continue on this course without looking at ourselves and perceiving the enabler or the masochist? This has become exceedingly unhealthy spiritually, undoubtedly, but emotionally as well. Erroneous cognitive acrobatics can have no other effect.
There has been no shortage of outrages in the past sixty years, and no shortage particularly in the past five and three quarter years. But the deliberate mutilation of the “Our Father” honestly appears to bring this three ring circus to a new level of debasement.
Those who have governance of Christ’s Church appear to have no governance over their own impulses and imaginations. In the face of this brutal reality what are the faithful to do, especially since for five decades authentic and accurate catechesis has been deliberately withheld. There are in essence two generations of the baptized who have not been catechized and can be led off a cliff with insufficient awareness to even question what is happening to them. Thus you have a seminarian without knowledge of the hypostatic union. Doesn’t surprise me an iota.
Could our predicament be more dire?
Just another reason for Latin to be brought back into the Liturgy. Latin they say is a dead language, you can’t change a dead language.
What will the Italian Bishops think of next…how awful
Maybe it’s just a thing with Popes since Vatican II, the compulsion to leave their mark on one sacred cow or another. Even with Benedict XVI (how I do miss him in the Chair, but that’s another story), there were the additions to dismissals in the ordinary form of the Mass, as if “Ite, missa est” was not enough. What was the value added to that (assuming it was actually his idea, and I do wonder …)?
Maybe one day we will have a Pope who will be known less for what he does, and more for what he leaves well enough alone.
Maybe not in my lifetime.
It is harder for parents and grandparents to teach prayers to young children when each generation is using a different translation. Sigh.
It seems they are trying to make this so much more difficult than it needs to be. We believe that Jesus was true man. We also believe he was tempted by the devil. All three synoptic gospels say that Jesus was led out to the desert by the Spirit to be tempted. All we are asking is that the same does not happen to us. Right?
Some time ago, I too was unsure what the Sixth petition meant. So I looked it up and found the explanation. Really, it’s not complicated and it astounds me that the elite of the Church either don’t understand it themselves or think we, the faithful, don’t understand and have no capacity to find out!
I will continue to pray the way Our Lord taught us.
I wonder how long before the prelates change the gender pronouns in the Lord’s Prayer. That is surely next.
Usquequo, Domine?
@ Gab, coincidentally, US Catholic has a silly new article that argues Catholics should use feminine pronouns to refer to God in liturgy and personal prayer. It also claims that referring to God as masculine has caused the Church to virtually worship male power, which has led to the clergy abuse crisis. Not a very well reasoned article. But there are people who are advocating such a thing. The first step has been that the major music publishers have revised traditional hymns to avoid masculine references to God or to human beings. Like today, my parish sang “Good Christian Friends, Rejoice” instead of “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”.
It is ironic, John XXiii called Vii to combat just this thing, novelization, inadequate education, the resistance of Latin. He asked that our priests be teachers and leaders. He wanted to present the traditions of the church in a new light to bring people deeper into them, not to cover them up and pretend they never existed.
Unfortunately many priests seem to be more interested in being administrators and politicians, with little interest in leading souls to heaven. A butt in the pew and a dollar in the basket is far more important than a soul in heaven. They do not want to explain or teach or challenge.
Thanks be to God, this is not true of all priests and bishops and I might be a bit jaded in my assessment, but I long to be challenged and provoked into action but good and faithful priests.
O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests;
for your unfaithful and tepid priests;
for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields;
for your tempted priests;
for your lonely and desolate priests;
for your young priests;
for your dying priests;
for the souls of your priests in Purgatory.
But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me:
the priest who baptized me;
the priests who’ve absolved me from my sins;
the priests at whose Masses I’ve assisted and who’ve given me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
the priests who’ve taught and instructed me;
all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way, especially ____
O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart,
and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
The hypostatic union is nothing compared to the debates I had with a fellow seminarian upset that attending his Episcopalian priest friend’s Sunday service did not satisfy his Sunday obligation.
It was like talking to a brick wall.
Benedict Joseph, come sit next to me. You’re a kindred spirit. They shall apparently leave no stone unturned, and there is no limit and no one to limit them. The sky’s the limit. They don’t disturb my peace, because I stopped listening. I shall not change one word of the Our Father, and the idea that anyone can is absurd. But someone ought to be bringing an imperfect council. Let them answer for not bringing one. They are hirelings, all of them.
Thank you, Fr. Z., for another great explanation. You’re doing yeoman’s work, informing and trying to keep people off the ledges. You must hear from many upset Catholics. Poor things. For Rome to keep holding people over the fire like so many hot dogs, is cruel and inhuman. They have their claws in everything.
May God sustain you, Fr. Z., you and all faithful priests.
My simple and elegant solution is to pray in Latin. Period. I have taken the time to memorize all of the basic prayers in Latin, which is what people used to do many years ago. I pray the Rosary and the Angelus in Latin. Result: peace of mind.
We need three petitions to be formulated.
1. A petition signed by laymen (preferably, with their names in clear) saying (a) they will not adopt the new words in prayers at home; (b) they not follow the new wording in saying the Lord’s Prayer at mass; (c) they will encourage all they run into to join them in refusing to use the new words. And request the Vatican to repudiate the proposed change.
2. A petition signed by priests, (using pseudonyms or Xs or whatever), saying (d) they will be silent when the time comes to say the 6th petition at mass; (e) they will carefully instruct their flock on the wrongness of the new words, and the wrongness of both the intention and the decision of the bishop’s conference to change the words; (f) encourage all the faithful to remain using the old words. And ask the Vatican to repudiate the proposed change.
3. A declaration signed by bishops (using their own names, if they are bold enough, or using pseudonyms if not) saying: (g) they will use the old words and reject the new words when they say the mass; (h) they will instruct their priests that they may use the old words and reject the new words if they wish, or (if they are uncomfortable with that) at a minimum be silent and say nothing when it comes time to say the 6th petition; (i) they are forbidden to instruct the faithful to say the new words; (j) they are forbidden to reprimand or correct the faithful who say the old words; (k) they required to read to the faithful a letter from the bishop explaining the change (which will explicitly state the wrongs in the bishops’ making this change, and will explicitly permit the faithful to continue saying the old words both in private and in public prayer); and (l) if a priest has a problem with obedience to these directives to report this to the bishop immediately so the bishop can “help him in the most pastorally appropriate manner”.
There is no sin in retaining the noble and holy customs of 800 years’ standing when they are being changed for no good reason.
@Sawyer, I do believe some people have gone mad. satan must be rubbing his hands with glee.
“… We would say that, through some mysterious crack—no, it’s not mysterious; through some crack, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God.” Pope you-know-who.
Modifying the Lord’s Prayer effectively changes, “Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us” to “Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words Pope Francis gave us”.
Pope Francis is not our Saviour. His machinations in this matter, stoked by unbounded conceit and hubris, are an intolerable sacrilege.
@Kathleen19. You are absolutely correct. They know no limits. They are without boundaries. The good news is that eventually such a disposition will bring them down. Eventually. What transpires between now and then…
St. Augustine (de Bono Perseverantiae); For every one is tempted, as it is written, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed; but God tempts no man – that is to say, with a hurtful temptation. For temptation can be beneficial when we are not overwhelmed, but proved, according to that which is said “Prove me, O Lord, and try me”. Therefore, with that hurtful temptation which the apostle signifies when he says, “Lest by some means the tempter has tempted you and our labour be in vain (1 Thessalonians 3:5), God tempts no man, as I have said – that is, He brings or leads no one into temptation. For to be tempted and not to be led into sin is not evil – nay, it is even good; for it is to be proved. When, therefore, we say to God, “Lead us not into temptation” what do we say but “Permit us not to be led”. Whence some pray in this manner and it is read in many codices, and the most blessed Cyprian uses it that way: “Do not suffer us to be led into temptation”. In the Greek gospel, however, I never found it otherwise than “Lead us not into temptation”. We live, therefore, more securely if we give up everything to God and do not entrust ourselves partly to Him and partly to ourselves. When the martyr would expound the same clause of the prayer, he says among other things “But when we ask that we may not come into temptation, we are reminded of our infirmity and weakness, lest any should take to himself the glory either of confession or suffering as his own; since the Lord Himself, teaching humility, said, “Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
On those who would monkey with the words of Jesus, on marriage, the Lord’s prayer, or anything else:
I tear out my hair, Father Z:
Since the word of the Word’s error free,
If Jesus once said it,
Who are we to edit?
And who’d dare that editor be?
Andrew, a hit, with open sights, in the ten ring at a thousand yards.
May I be permitted to point out that the ‘new words’ are not actually incorrect and the French have been saying as much for hundreds of years? It is an imprudent time to change the prayers, and if people still understand the prayers it is better to have continuity than nuance, but when there are so many evil things coming out of Rome, would it not be prudent to humbly accept this aggravating change for the love of holy obedience? We must love our Holy Father. Can we not offer this for his conversion?
but when there are so many evil things coming out of Rome, would it not be prudent to humbly accept this aggravating change for the love of holy obedience? We must love our Holy Father. Can we not offer this for his conversion
That is indeed the question, Mrs. McD. Does holy obedience ask, or require, that we simply submit to this?
I honestly don’t know that it does. We should submit to our superiors when they make true law that binds us. But true law that binds us must be true law, and it is arguable that what we have here is not so.
St. Thomas explains the definition of law, by running through each of the four types of cause that make law to be true law, the matter and form, the agent and end causes: Law is a command, made by him who has care of the common good, made to pursue or protect the common good, and promulgated.
I don’t yet know how the bishops’ decision is formulated, but if it is not promulgated as a command but as an option, or in some way not mandatory, then nobody is required to follow it. Much more seriously, if one examines their claimed rationale for the change and it is unfounded, based on false theories, lies, mistakes, etc, then it may well fail of the requirement that it be made in order to pursue or protect the common good. It is sometimes the case that bishops’ conferences are so far out of touch with reality on matters of practice (e.g. on what people actually need), and also out of touch with reality on the philosophical underpinnings of our Catholic faith and practices (e.g. the principles of law, of punishing offenders, of the meaning of sacrifice in the liturgy), that when they express a rationale for making some change, that rationale is completely unrelated to pursuing or protecting the common good. It would be one thing for a legislator to make a simple error of judgment (like misjudging whether the true value of pi is greater or lesser than 3.14) about whether A or B will be a better rule; it is quite another when the legislator’s thinking is so far unconnected to reality as to be “not even wrong”, i.e. so deformed as to not even get up to the level of “error” (like asking whether pi is more blue than commutative justice).
If the bishops have made this change not out of love for the common good, but out of pride (one version of which is the ever-present “tinkeritis” that finds its home in bureaucratic minds in large organizations), or out of love of something else (like love of change, love of newspeak, love of liberalism and its dead philosophy (i.e. a desire to see liberalism triumph over everything, even the true faith)), then on that basis it would fail to have the full nature of law as St. Thomas sets it forth.
I have not examined the bishops’ explanation of the reason for this change, so I don’t where it lands. So maybe the above criticisms don’t apply to it and it constitutes true law. But if it is not true law, and if we are not morally obliged to submit to this new-fangled thing, it could actually be an occasion of charity to resist the change instead. We could then apply the suffering that comes from the mere fact of having to resist the foolishness of our superiors in a matter that does not bind us to obey them, and offer that for the conversion of them and the pope.
In any case, it is hard to imagine a decree of the bishops that would so alter the words of the Our Father that would impose an obligation even on your private prayers, so it is almost certainly the case that whatever the rule is, it doesn’t bind anyone to saying the new words in private.
Such a modification is not surprising when we take into account the soteriology that is underneath such a move as this. While there is a difference between German, French, and South American heterodox positions, there are three (to poke at the Jesuit methodology) unifying points:
1.) Denial of the Father’s absolute Sovereignty. All that was, is, and shall be is according to the Father’s will, either in actively bringing about the good or permissively in allowing evil. “Lead us not….” starts from a position of the Father’s absolute Sovereignty; the position of Job that all things come from the hand of God. The change to the position constructs a metaphysics that sees part of the events of creation as being outside of the Father Sovereignty. It is a regression to the incorrect answer to questions of the Old Testament “why have you abandoned me oh Lord?”, answering that God can and does abandon His people. This ignores the very reply of the Old Testament that God does not abandon His people but rather it is the people that have abandoned God. God remains true to His covenants even if the people are false.
2.) Denial of free will and the mystery of sin. The fear of being in a position of being tempted is an acknowledgment of man’s fallen condition and dependence upon God. It is, on one hand, a desire not to be tried and refined at the Father’s hand, but also an acknowledgment that the soul will rest in God, who is in control, during this trial, if God should permit it. This part of the petition is equivalent to Christ’s “let this cup pass from me…” It is man’s free will, the will that freely chooses according to the good, that speaks here acknowledging man’s fallen situation and choosing to allow God to do as He sees fit, knowing that God is in charge of all things. The purpose of these trials and temptations, these sufferings, is the purgation of the human soul. In the modification, this is lost. The now the mystery of sin is converted into something that is outside of God, something that serves no positive purpose that the soul can be abandoned in to. Again, it is a massive regression seeing God as a cosmic (potential) abandoner. Depending on how the underlying theology is approached, some come to this modification from the point that man can do nothing but sin and God can do nothing but accompany that individual in their temptations and resulting sins. There are some people that God accompanies in their sin and some people that God abandons to their sins — a twisted hybrid of Luther’s snow-covered dung and Calvin’s double predestination.
3.) Denial of grace and theosis. The end purpose of the mystery of Catholicism is theosis for the glorification of the Father. When we pray the Our Father, this is desire boiled down. Here this petition to not be lead into temptation, into trial, into difficult refinement is because it is against the disordered passion of fallen nature and also the elevation of human nature beyond nature to a supernatural participation with God. Again consider sinless Christ’s, “let this cup pass…” and the difficulty that His human nature had to undergo. The modification to this petition denies the transformation in grace by truncating God’s activity during temptation either to accompanying or abandoning. In the desired outcome of this petition, God does nothing that alleviates man from sin and man co-operates not with grace — man is tempted (and falls depending on other underlying positions) and God simply accompanies (often posited as with a sympathetic ‘I feel your pain’.)
In the end, this is all a game. Change the practice. Change the language to reflect the practice. Change the dogma to reflect the language. Change the practice to reflect the dogma. And so on.
I’ve never used what is now the standard English version of the Lord’s Prayer. I say “which” art in heaven, not “who”, “in” earth as it it in heaven, not “on”, and “them that” trespass against us, not “those who”. I was brought up with the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and I’m changing what I say now!
To correct my previous comment, I’m NOT changing what I say now!
I’m also concerned the Italian bishops did not correct the translation of “pro multis” from “per tutti” as Pope Benedict XVI had specifically legislated.
Fortunately for us English-speakers, our own English translation of the Lord’s Prayer is already deliberately archaic in word-choices–and most English-speaking Christians like it that way.
The translation we use today was pretty much set in stone during the sixteenth century (we have our Protestant brethren to thank for that), and it preserves many archaisms: “thy” instead of “your,” the optative subjunctive (“thy kingdom come”) and such words as “trespasses” and “hallowed” that have somewhat different meanings in ordinary English usage today. Still, English-speaking Christians seem to have had no trouble memorizing those archaic cadences.
There have been sporadic efforts by liturgists Catholic and Protestant to “update” the language of the Lord’s Prayer, but they have been met with huge resistance–because most English-speaking Christians are fond of the prayer the way it is. They cherish the archaisms as a kind of sacral diction.
This is a very different situation from what prevails in other linguistic communities, where there seems to be no particular popular attachment to any particular language choices–so different vernacular versions of the Lord’s Prayer have been promulgated over the centuries with very little opposition. (When I was taking French in high school, the formal plural “vous” was used to address God in the Lord’s Prayer, but it’s been subsequently replaced with the singular “tu”–which is actually more faithful to the Latin.)
Interestingly, many English-speaking Catholics seem to have had no trouble “updating” the Hail Mary. I hear people praying “the Lord is with you” and “fruit of your womb” all the time. That sounds jarring to me but not to them, apparently.
In short, English-speakers are wed to the traditional English version of the Lord’s prayer in a way that speakers of other languages aren’t. Presumably our bishops could push some “updated” version of “lead us not into temptation” down our throats, but they’ll probably have a hard time getting a consensus for that even in their own episcopal ranks.
@Simon_GNR:
I have a convert friend who was raised on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and she’s just like you: “which art in heaven,” the “quick and the dead,” etc. I love it–but I could never carry that off myself without feeling like Pretentious Patty. I have to stick with what the Irish nuns taught us in parochial school before they all decamped from their convent in 1966.
When I was a child the form was “lead us not into temptation.” When I was an adult it seemed to have changed to “save us from the time of trial”, but now seems to have reverted to the form I knew as a child.
@Sawyer: Last Sunday we were invited to sing: “Pleased with us in flesh to dwell.” I had exquisite pleasure in singing: “Pleased as Man with man to dwell”, but not so loudly as to be offensive.
I can’t imagine the frustrations of those who’ve been Catholic longer than I have. I’ve seen three changes in 15 years. Not especially fond of ‘consubstantial’, vs, ‘one in being’ and I have to keep switching out of the Apostle’s creed and remember, “oh we’re doing the other one here”. Not fond of the ‘keep it under the roof’, so I just say the first bit, pause and then the last bit. Fits just fine. And with your spirit might be closer to the latin, but it just sounds so stilted in English. Languages are different, formalities are different.
At this point I’m basically ready for ‘let’s just learn the latin do it in Latin and be done with it’. If we’re supposed to be saying Mass in Latin, then let’s do that. Our choir did a fantastic job with the Christmas hymns including latin verses of Adeste Fideles… took a bit to switch to it, but we did just fine.
Put a missal in the pews, and you’d have my ideal parish. That way I can follow along with what is being said and not try to stumble and figure out where I’m supposed to be at… “Oh wait, this is where we’re supposed to kneel, but this congregation doesn’t do that, etc.”
Why are we using English anyways?
The archaicisms are there for a reason, to preserve tone, character and substance. I was taught that way with the Lord’s prayer as a child, one of the few things that I taught.
I suppose now we’ll be saying something different, just like we kneel at the wrong times and places here, and I’m supposed to ‘do whatever it is they do now’, even though that wasn’t what I was taught or what Catholics do elsewhere. Is this pat of your sneaky plan Father Z? ;)
Grant M: I’ve been singing “Hark the Herald” that way for 19 years now, ever since a choir director I had tried to chance it in college. NOPE! :-p