German Catholic bishops announced Thursday that after long debate they decided to reject Pope Francis’ suggested change to the Lord’s Prayer and leave it unaltered.
The German bishops refuted Francis’ claim that the line “lead us not into temptation” was incorrectly translated and should instead be changed to the version adopted by French Catholics that reads “do not let us fall into temptation,” according to Crux Now. Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic church, claimed the change was necessary to clarify that the Catholic church does not believe God leads people into sin.
Germany’s bishops argued there are profound “philosophical, exegetical, liturgical and, not least, ecumenical” reasons to leave the prayer as it currently reads.
The bishops said they will keep the original version of the Lord’s Prayer in order to maintain common ground with Protestants and with churches in other countries, and also argued the original version implies “the trust to be carried and redeemed by almighty God.”
The crux of the matter is the Latin word “tentationem.” Many churches translate to this word to “temptation” and thereby associate it with sin. Some translations, however, interpret the word to mean “trial” or “testing” as in the kind that Job endured during Old Testament biblical times or the tribulations associated with persecution in the end times mentioned throughout the New Testament.
Francis suggested an alteration in response to the “temptation” translation.
“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,” Francis said, according to the Catholic Herald.
Francis’ alteration could prove problematic for churches in countries where the translation of “tentationem” or the Greek “πειρασμόν,” for those that translate from the text’s original language, comes out to trial or testing.
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