Sunday 10 December 2017

POPE FRANCIS - "CHANGE OUR FATHER"

POPE FRANCIS HAS said that the English wording for the Our Father prayer should be changed, because it implies that God “induces temptation”.


The close of the Lord Prayer’s asks God to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.
The pontiff told an Italian broadcaster that the wording should be changed to reflect that it was not God who led humans into sin.
He said to TV2000: “It is not a good translation because it speaks of a God who induces temptation.
I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn’t do that. A father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation. That’s his department.
Pope Francis highlighted the French translation of the Our Father, which uses the phrase “do not let us fall into temptation” instead.
The Lord’s Prayer appears in the gospel of Matthew.
The version we have now was translated from Latin, which was in turn translated from Ancient Greek, which was then translated from Aramaic, the language spoken at the time of Jesus.


PAT SAYS:
I think that Pope Francis is unnecessarily fiddling around with the Our Father.
We all know that the Lord's Prayer was not composed in English and that it has undergone many different translations.
I never met ANYONE who took the words Francis is talking about literally.
"Lead us not into temptation" has always meant to me: "Do not allow us to fall into temptation". I never thought of it, until now, as possible meaning that God Himself leads us into temptation. 
FEMINISM:
Nor do I like it when priests or people say: "Our Mother/Father who art in Heaven" or simply: "Our Mother who art in Heaven" in an effort to placate extreme feminists.
Why mess around with ancient formulas just because someone, someone thinks it is not PC?
God, in so far as we can say anything about Him is a Spirit. That Spirit embraces masculinity and feminity and any other "inity" that exists.
But because we are human and have limited human language we have to use human concepts to think about God and human words to speak about God.
I know that thinking of God as "Father" - while it is Biblical - is also traditional and tradition has been patriarchal.
But we do not create a new "matriarchal of bi-archal tradition" in an attempt to try and understand the non-understandable.
Of course, we can use INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE on a daily basis and in the liturgy.
Often in Mass instead of saying things like "all men" I say "all men and women".
But I have no desire to start saying "Our Mother who art in Heaven" - whether the feminists like it or not!!!



41 comments:

  1. You are spot on there, Pat. I think the Pope should not concern himself with this. The Our Father is ingrained into the depths of our souls. A new translation would never be accepted never mind “catch on”.

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  2. "The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan." Mark (1:12-13).

    "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil". Matthew (4:1).

    "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil." Luke (4:1-2).

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  3. God is neither male nor female. The old testament people had a mentality that God punished wrongdoing. I see no problem with Francis insight as long as people are aware of the context in which he puts it forward

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    1. That's correct Sean, bit people won't have that amount of insight as even today's responses here already demonstrate. I predict that today's comments will deteriorate into Pope-bashing.

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    2. You predicted correctly poster 12.33

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  4. He wants to re-write the bible. We’ve heard it all now. Won’t someone tell the old Jesuit loud-mouth to put a sock in it ?

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    1. We would prefer to address those "loud mouth... put a sock in it.." sentiments to you, yourself poster 9.07.

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    2. Hardly a coherent comment and certainly not a convincing one.

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  5. I always understood the "And lead us not into temptation..." as asking God to prevent us from all that would destroy our integrity and dignity as his children. I don't understand the impulse to change. There are indeed many subtle and not so subtle temptations/decisions/choices which will not lead us on God's pathways.

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  6. Francis is such an attention-seeker and he's ridiculously loquacious, usually scolding and firing off insults. He thinks off the top of his head, and won't stop talking.

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    1. I read hes quite contrary behind the scenes. snapping at staff and throwing his toys out of the pram.

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    2. Absolutely not true... @ 10.02

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    3. Another knee-jerk reaction.

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    4. He has a volcanic temper behind the scenes, even waiters and drivers get blasted.

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    5. Really? And the convlave elected him.

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    6. Anything else derogatory you could come up with? You have shown quite an imagination already.

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    7. But some gullible folk believe everything they read... They seem unaware of the "fake news" phenomenon.

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  7. 9.07. Quite an over exaggeration and an ignorant, ageist, demeaning commment!! We can only imagine the integrity of your prayers!!!

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  8. Did henry viii change the our father ?

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  9. Here's an interesting site I've just stumbled upon!
    http://www.thenazareneway.com/lords_prayer.htm

    "ela patzân min bischa.
    but let us be freed from that what keeps us off from our true purpose."

    I recall other renditions from my memory:

    "Do not put us to the test!"

    and

    "May we not be found wanting in the time of trial!"

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  10. The version which Jesus taught to his close friends is fine by me. I don't usually feel the need to prove that I know better than He does.

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    1. In Aramaic? Unfortunately we don’t have it.

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    2. For poster@ 13.34
      . You're obviously the sort of person for whom everything needs to be spelt out (otherwise you wouldn't get it..)
      So, especially for you--
      No, not specifically Aramaic but the usual Douay close translation of it.
      And yes - -we do have that.
      If you need further help, continue to try and explain your difficulties. I am sure there's always someone around with the patience but it won't be me!

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    3. So Jesus taught the Douay version?
      And Mary said the rosary.

      Anachronisms both, wouldn’t you say!

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    4. Douai not a translation of Aramaic, friend.

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  11. The current debate is wholesome and is actually an argument for keeping the translation. It stimulating discussion and showing that the words people use in prayer matter to them.

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  12. I see you good friend, Max Clifford is dead, Pat.

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    1. Saw that. Never knew him or talked to him.

      From fame and wealth to disgrace and death in a prison cell.

      Thought provoking.

      Foolishly he thought he could never fall.

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    2. There are a lot of people like that but it is a true saying that pride comes before a fall.

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    3. Max Clifford RIP

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  13. Pat religious language is human language. If enough people want to call God mother then encourage them. The Church of Sweden has decided to use gender neutral language in relation to God. I am totally disgusted how the feeling of many women that God is portrayed as male and they feel excluded does not bother you. Religion is for people not people for religion which is why bad dodgy doctrines should be dropped. As for the lead us not into temptation the fact remains that most Christians do not see God as that good. People believe the faith teaches that God vindictively tortures sinners forever in Hell. God gets the blame for killing babies and the Bible says, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7. Somebody creates the evil impulse so no matter anybody says God has far more to do with temptation and the evil impulse than Satan or whoever. It is actually disturbing how a faith with such terrible doctrines and sexists can have so much power. Nobody has the right to ignore those problems.

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    1. 13.53
      It may come as a surprise to you to realise the church has never said that any individual human being is in hell.
      Your question is valid. Where does evil come from?

      For what it’s worth my position is that evil is a necessary consequence of God’s giving us freedom or freewill.

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  14. A@13:53 you make some interesting points so thank you.
    As a non believer in deism, Christian or otherwise, had I not some understanding of the psychological and social imperatives of childhood and tribal environmental conditioning, I would be amazed at the reliance
    Christians place on such a controversial collection of writings collectively
    called the bible.


    Having said that, even accepting parts of it as having a significant validity, the contradiction between an all powerful loving God as the Prime Mover and Origin of all creation, and the existence of the reality of evil must certainly
    raise questions about the various interpretations, explanations and beliefs put forward by religious believers.
    And referring back to Adam, Eden, original sin etc: mythological convolutions! Nevertheless, many clerics make a fine living out of perpetuating the myths capitalising on human frailty with continued 'smoke
    and mirrors!'
    MMM

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    1. MMM, your comments are always most rational.

      But can EVERYTHING be looked at in a purely rational way?

      As someone trying to be a Christian I place great emphasis on the Bible - though never taking it literally - as, for me, the God I believe in speaks through it to me.

      Of course I also know I all all religions have many contradictions and nonsense.

      I also know all about the money changers in the temple.

      But at times a bit of scripture creates in me the same sensation as a musical masterpiece, a work of art, a heroic individual, a glass of good wine etc does.

      It is horses for courses - once their is no abuse involved.

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    2. A few points:
      1. Deism is a term used to refer to a direction which elements of Christianity took in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its principal characteristic is the belief that once God had created the world, God left it to its own devices and remained at a remove, so to speak.

      The major issue you raise is as old as religion, i.e. theodicy, or the issue of evil and the God of love, as one author put it. It’s slso an issue that some biblical writers trued to grapple with, notable, but by no means, exclusively, the aithor of Job. Some prophetic books too.

      You are being more than cynical in your remarks about making a fine living from Adam & Eve. Every reader who accepts the scientific approach to the bible know that the genre of these stories is etiology: an attempt to account for howwegot here. So, Gen 1-11 falls into this category , myth, not science.

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    3. Pat: you ask about looking at matters in a rational way.
      If I were to join those who believe in a Creator God, I would thank Him/Her/It for the great gift of a brain, and the ability to use it. And using it, I would struggle to find any semblance of significant purpose, sense or reason behind the reality of humankind's existence and lot here on planet earth as a manifestation of God's "love" for we humans.
      I feel obliged to use my rationality, howsoever it has come about. And having done so, I have to say I find the evidence very heavily stacked against any belief in a creator god.
      Unless of course I abandon the gift of reason and in some misguided supplicant posture succumb to the false palliative of religious belief.
      MMM

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  15. Francis' smile is fake, it never reaches the eyes. He looks like Genial Harry Grout from Porridge.

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    1. The eye if the beholder springs to mind.

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  16. I have seen Pope Francis smile with great tenderness at people who had travelled distances to see him in spite of illness or disabilities.
    I have noticed bullying herd behaviour on this blog.. One person starts off the stinging criticism and then we get Open Season with each poster trying to outdo the previous one to come up with more and more nasty comments.

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  17. Quite right. The Greek "me hemas eisenenkhas eis ton peirasmon" means exactly the same as the Latin "ne nos inducas in tentationem" and the English "lead us not into temptation". The Irish "ná lig sinn i gcathú" is close to the change made in the French (from "ne nous soumets pas à la tentation" to "ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation".

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