Since several people have come up to me to ask about this, I thought I should address it in the bulletin. Not long ago, the secular media started reporting that Pope Francis wants to change the words of the Our Father. Since the Our Father is one of the first prayers that we learn as children, and with the Hail Mary the prayer we say the most, naturally a change to the Our Father could be upsetting. So, what in fact is going on.
The Our Father is also known as the Lord’s Prayer because Jesus gave it to us Himself. The account is recorded in both St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s Gospels. The disciples, observing Jesus praying, ask Him to teach them how to pray. Since Jesus gives us the prayer, the Our Father is also considered the perfect prayer. So no Pope could change what Jesus said.
However, we encounter our first problem. As I noted, both St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s Gospels record the Lord’s Prayer, but the two versions are not identical. St. Luke’s is a bit shorter, and he avoids some words that would make less sense to his non-Jewish audience. St. Matthew uses “And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” St. Matthew was writing his Gospel for a largely Jewish audience, and in the Semitic language, “debts” are a metaphor for “sins,” so his audience would have clearly understood that he was talking about the forgiveness of sins. St. Luke’s non-Jewish audience would not have thought about “debts” in that way, so he says, “and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”
Many English-speaking Protestants still use the word “debt” but English-speaking Catholics uses the word “trespasses.” Why? Because hundreds of years ago, one Protestant reformer (John Calvin) taught a “strict” predetermination and saw material wealth as a sign that one was saved and going to heaven, whereas being in debt/poor was a sign that one was damned. Of course the Catholic Church does not hold to such a teaching, so they wanted to avoid the word “debt.” Yet they wanted to emphasize that only God forgives sins, so they did not want to say “and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” So it was decided to use the word “trespass” which means to do something wrong to someone.
All this emphasizes the other important issue; we are dealing with translations. The Gospels were written in Greek, so we have to do our best to translate the Greek word into the target language (English, Spanish, French, etc.) using a word that conveys the correct theological meaning. That is why the same Greek word can be translated as “debt,” or “sin,” or “trespasses.”
Now let’s get back to what Pope Francis said. Recently the French bishops decided to change the translation of the Our Father. The previous French translation was very similar to what we say in English, “and lead us not into temptation.” The objection that the French bishops want to address is that God NEVER leads us into temptation. While God may permit the Devil to tempt us, God does not do the tempting. The new French translation says something like, “do not let me fall into temptation.” This is very consistent with the Greek, and theologically it is correct: God does not lead us into temptation, but He can provide us the clear insight to recognize the truth and the moral strength to do what is right so as not to give into temptation.
In an interview with a reporter, Pope Francis was asked what he thought about the new translation and he reportedly said that he thinks it is good, that it sounds better to modern ears to make it clear that God, as a loving Father, does not lead His children into temptation. The reporter, knowing that the Italian bishops are considering a similar revision of the Italian translation of the Lord’s Prayer, asked Pope Francis what he thought, and he said that the Italians should consider a similar revision of the translation.
Pope Francis NEVER suggested a change in the Our Father as in changing the Greek text of the Gospels. In fact, he did not even suggest that all languages change their translation to reflect more of how the French translated it. He just said that he thought that the French translation was a good one.
Should we be expecting a change in the English translation of the Our Father any time soon? I don’t think so. When the US bishops were revising the translation of the readings at Mass (and later the New American Bible, which we use at Mass) there was some discussion to change the translation of the Our Father since the word “trespasses” is not all that close to the Greek, but the bishops decided that the current translation of the Our Father is so embedded in the spiritual lives of American, English-speaking Catholics, that the change would be too upsetting.