Am I suddenly in an alternate universe – where the Fishwrap editorializes against Bergoglio, Fr. Reese calls him ‘blind’ to the clerical sex abuse issue, and now the German bishops are not siding
with him on his ‘great Bergoglian inspiration' to change the words of one of the key petitions we make to the Lord, in the prayer taught by Christ on that hill overlooking Galilee more than 2000 years ago?
German bishops reject pope’s
translation change to Lord’s Prayer
BERLIN, January 25, 2018 (AP) - Catholic bishops in Germany say they’ve debated Pope Francis’s suggestion to tweak the translation of the Lord’s Prayer, but will leave it unchanged.
France recently changed its translation of “lead us not into temptation” to “don’t let me fall into temptation,” which Francis has suggested was better, to make clearer that Catholics do not believe God ever induces someone into sin.
The pope told Italy’s Church-owned TV2000 last month that a father would never push a son into sin, and “what pushes you to temptation is Satan.”
TV2000 had been broadcasting a series of conversations between the pope and a Catholic prison chaplain, looking at the Lord’s Prayer line by line. The episode broadcast Dec. 6 focused on the line, “Lead us not into temptation.”
But the German Bishops’ Conference said Thursday
there were strong “philosophical, exegetical, liturgical and, not least, ecumenical” reasons to leave the present wording unchanged. Among other things, they say the line speaks of “the trust to be carried and redeemed by almighty God.”
Francis recently allowed individual bishops’ conferences greater leeway in translating liturgical texts, after the Vatican had previously centralized the process under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, making it appear unlikely that Rome will attempt to compel the German bishops to take up the pope’s suggestion.
To some observers of Church affairs, the decision by the German bishops may seem slightly surprising, given that they’re usually perceived as among the staunchest allies and supporters of Pope Francis in the Catholic world.
Mario Tosatti riffs on the issue, venting on the Italian bishops who seem bent on changing their Lord's Prayer the way the pope wants it.
Safe to say they will, after their TV channel dedicated six programs featuring Bergoglio, no less, to tout their 'new' translation.
Perhaps a new Dead Sea scroll will show that
the pope and the Italian bishops are right
about 'editing' the Lord's Prayer?
Translated from
January 26, 2018
I hope that the first-century Gospel fragment written in Aramaic, Greek and Latin (sort of like a Rosetta Stone), on the basis of which the Italian bishops’ conference will be discussing how to change the most important prayer in Christianity, will prove to be authentic.
It dates back to the last years of the first century A.D., and who knows? – in the absence of tape recorders to dear to the Jesuit superior-general – perhaps it may be signed by the Christ, or at least, carry his initials!
No, the existence of this fragment (or fragments) has not been revealed, but it ought to exist! Otherwise, with what nerve would any Christian dare to manipulate a 2000-year-old text that has always been considered authentic and prayed this way by generations of Christians?
The last faint hope is that in their fall assembly, when the bishops will decide on the change – from “lead us not into temptation” to “do not abandon us to temptation”, which is the professed preference of [Scriptural and Christological expert[ Jorge Bergoglio – the vote in the secret balloting (God knows what each bishop will vote, but not Galantino, and not even Bergoglio would know), the Italian bishops will vote NO in an act of belated repentance and recovery of faith and pride in the faith. Alas, I am only too aware of how illusory this wish is!
We spoke about the Lord’s Prayer issue with Fr. Nicola Bux recently, and this is what that wise and learned man explained:
“As for the clause “et ne nos inducas in tentationem", this what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Comment on the Lord’s Prayer. After having pointed out that God ‘tempts’ man to test his virtue, and that to be ‘led into temptation’ means to consent to it: "Here, Christ teaches us to ask God to help us be able to avoid sin, that is, not to be led into temptation from which we would slide into sin, so he teaches us to pray ‘And lead us not into temptation’...
Aquinas, who makes clear that it is the world, the flesh and the devil who tempt man to evil, notes that we conquer temptation with the help of God. How? "Christ teaches us to ask not that we shall not be tempted, but to ask that we not be led into temptation…
Finally, he asks: ‘But perhaps God leads us to evil the moment we say “lead us not into temptation’"? I answer that God leads us to evil in the sense that he allows it because, given man’s repeated and multiple sins, he withdraws his grace, without which man easily falls into evil. That is why we say with the Psalmist: ‘As my strength fails, do not forsake me’ (71,9). And God sustains man so that he does not fall into temptation, through the fervor of his charity, which little as it may be, is enough to preserve us from sin”.
In short,
that phrase was already ‘problematic’ in Aquinas’s time, but no one thought to change the line, certainly not to sugarcoat it, but rather, it was sought to understand it more profoundly.
In the same conversation, don Nicola called on me to verify some data (which I am guilty of not having done) – namely, if it is true that in Germany,
even atheists objected to the change favored by Pope Francis, and that the Protestants announced they were not changing anything. Not to mention that Biblical exegetes of every race and color have been asking whether Bergoglio also intends to change the original Greek text of the New Testament, of which the Latin is an exact translation. [Well, now we have the official stand of the German Catholic bishops - No, they will leave the prayer as it is.]
Recently, the priests who run the blog 'Anonimi della Croce' have been addressing this issue. In one article, they write:
The line, as it has been translated and universally prayed for centuries, comes from Matthew 16, verse 13a: “and lead us not into temptation”, but which has been maladroitly translated as “do not abandon us to temptation” [in the new official Italian translation of the Bible]. Of course, what prevailed here was the usual ‘political correctness'. How could God possibly ‘lead’ to temptation? [Bergoglio's question and objection!] Let’s change that to a translation that is softer, ‘sweeter’, more sentimental. Which is very very wrong. But I will get back to this point later.
Let us take the verse in question from the original Greek text: “καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν”. The word that interests us her is “εἰσενέγκῃς” (eisenekes), which, for centuries has been translated as “lead to”, but in the new translation, we see it replaced by the verb 'abandon to', which is completely out of place in the clause’s syntax and construction.
The greek verb eisenekes is the aorist [uninflected verb of action simply describing the action, not its time] infinitive of eispherein, made up of the adverbial prefix eis- (in Latin ‘in’ or ‘verso’, indicating a movement in a certain direction) and -pherein (Latin portare, to bring), meaning ‘bring towards’, or ‘bring into’, or ‘lead to’. Moreover the verb is linked to the substantive peirasmon (‘trial’ or ‘temptation’) through another eis. same particle we saw in the verb but used this time as a preposition which requires the accusative form for the object or complement of the verb of motion. Unlike however in Latin or German, eis can only be used with the accusative.
So we see that the Greek construction presents a clear redundancy – it underscores twice the movement towards temptation, and so, evidently, a translation that substitutes ‘do not abandon us to temptation’ is simply wrong, because it implies an essentially static process. [I would say ‘passive’ as against an 'active' mood – as if falling to temptation were God’s fault for allowing us to do so, instead of it being a result of our active will and desire.]
The Latin translation inducere, opportunely used by St. Jerome in his translation of the original Greek to the Latin Vulgate in the 4th century, is composed of ‘in-' and ‘ducere’ which is an exact translation of eispherein, followed by another 'in' and the accusative form ‘tentationem’, therefore in strict correspondence to the Greek construction. Likewise, the Italian ‘indurre in' (again with in- repeated) reproduces the construction of the Latin verb from which it comes and conveys the same significance.
Therefore, the most correct Italian translation which is faithful to the original text is what it has always been: “non ci indurre in tentazione” – lead us not into temptation – and any other translation is misleading and even grotesque.
As I have always said, respect for Sacred Scripture is fundamental, and this is demonstrated in the faithfulness of the translations to the original text [and it’s where the Novus Ordo deviated consciously and most appallingly in terms of the Mass prayers and the Scriptural readings therein]. But the tendency today is to favor the politically correct, always the ‘soft ‘ version, the sugary one, the honeyed. Completely uprooting the true significance of what the Word says to us.
Indeed, many are now asking: How can God lead to temptation? Yet there are so many Biblical passages that show how God puts temptation and trial in the way of man. Which scandalizes those in the ‘new church’ who think that God only has ‘honeyed mercy’, which means they ignore the Cross, and the trials and temptations that come with our being human.
It all comes back to my hypothesis that Bergoglio does not really think much of Original Sin – because if he did, he ought to know, as all Catholics are catechized, that all the ills of the world and of mankind are the consequences of God driving man out of Paradise because of Original Sin, and how can we complain?
All his campaigning against poverty and hunger, war and violence - and thinking he and his cohorts may be able to eliminate them from the world – is yet another form of the Original Sin, thinking man can do better than God. Bergoglio probably thinks that he would have done better than God in Eden - he would never have driven Adam and Eve out, and never punished them at all, because punishing them – and all mankind with them to the end of time – was not merciful at all.
But the test God required of his first human creatures was a test of the free will he had endowed them with – that was the first trial God put man through:Was man’s free will strong enough to resist the actual temptation that Satan presented them when he showed up in Eden? It was not – and that’s been the human story ever since.
Which is why it became necessary for God to send down his Son to live among men and teach them through his words and deeds what God expects of every human creature so he can take them back to the Paradise from which they had been expelled. The redemption Jesus brought to mankind was the second chance God has given man to recover the nature he was originally endowed with as ‘the image and likeness of God’.]