In a video series for Italian television network TV2000, Pope Francis said that “lead us not into temptation” is a poorly translated line of the Our Father.
“This is not a good translation,” the Pope said in the video, published Dec. 6. “I am the one who falls, it’s not (God) who pushes me toward temptation to see how I fall. A father doesn’t do this, a father helps us to get up right away.”
He noted that this line was recently re-translated in the French version of the prayer to read “do not let me fall into temptation.”
The Latin version of the prayer, the authoritative version in the Catholic Church, reads “ne nos inducas in tentationem.”
The Pope said that the one who leads people into temptation “is Satan; that is the work of Satan.” He said that the essence of that line in the prayer is like telling God: “when Satan leads me into temptation, please, give me your hand. Give me your hand.”
The Pope made his comments in the seventh part of the “Our Father” television series being aired by Italian television network TV2000.
Filmed in collaboration with the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications, the series consists of nine question-and-answer sessions with Pope Francis and Fr. Marco Pozza, a theologian and a prison chaplain in the northern Italian city of Padua.
In his question to Pope Francis on the line “lead us not into temptation,” Pozza noted that many people have asked him how God can lead someone into temptation, and questioned what the phrase actually intends to say.
The question is one of the reasons the French bishops decided to make a request for a new translation of the Our Father that they believe conveys the meaning more clearly.
According to the French episcopal conference, the decision to make the change was accepted by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in June 2013.
The new translation, released Dec. 3 to mark the first day of Advent and the beginning of the new liturgical year, now reads “ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation,” meaning, “do not let us fall into temptation,” versus the former “ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,” or “lead us not into temptation.”
The Pope’s remarks do not change the translations of liturgical texts. Such a change would begin with a resolution by an episcopal conference in English-speaking countries.
In a previous episode of the “Our Father” series, Pope Francis said “it takes courage” to recite the prayer, because it means calling on someone else and truly believing that “God is the Father who accompanies me, forgives me, gives me bread, is attentive to everything I ask, and dresses me better than wildflowers.”
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
So the Our Father is this Pope’s line in the sand for clarity? Please! A better starting point would be his years of what seem to be purposefully confusing statements and writings. It takes courage to admit one has been imprudent in making public statements, and even more courage to correct the mess. A clean house starts at home, Pope Francis.
Pope Francis is right about this and the language in the Our Father should be changed. His teaching makes a lot of sense.
Noting left untouched by this merciful pontificate
it’s unfortunate that the catholic press made a big deal out of this. he was speaking to an italian language audience whose ‘ our Father is indeed rendered in the ‘lead us not mode’, “non ci indurre…’. spanish sometime back moved to the suggested preferred mode ‘let us not fall into temptation (no nos dejes caer en la tentacion…). it was a language specific comment meant to assure italian catholics that God does not set up traps to test us. other languages such as english still could use a gentle correction using a verb like’fall’ or something parallel. i love the feel of the traditional phrasing, but i think that we could nicely render it as ‘may we not be led…
Maybe we should have left well enough alone, Latin ? So much for the vernacular.
The word in Latin is inducas, which means, among other things, lead into. I don’t know about Aramaic or Greek.
I might add that personally I have always had a problem with this sentence., I don’t agree with a lot of what Francis says,but I do agree with this Breaking the habit after 65 years might be a problem, but it would be an interesting exercise.
The original is not Latin, my friend. The Latin is a translation. Please keep that in mind.
spelling correction, hilfil’ should have been ‘hiphil’, a causative verb structure that does not always meaning literal causality. in hebrew that can allow a range from ‘he fed’ to ‘he was fed’ in rendering meaning. in this case, believers was to give the God of mercy the ‘benefit of the doubt’, knowing that the Son revealed the Father as love.
re my non sequitur- appearing ‘hilfil should have been hiphil’ prase: i outran the word limit in my first entry, having ended it stating that the verb ‘lead’ rendered the verb hiphil in hebrew. my final sentence read ‘the pope was right’.
I think the real problem is with Catechesis. Perhaps there is a deeper theological truth contained in the words “lead us not into temptation” just as there is in the hardening of Pharaohs heart. It’s not God that’s doing the hardening but rather God is permitting Pharaoh to harden his own heart. If I say “don’t make me hungry” or “you’re making me hungry”, I’m not literally accusing someone of causing a biological reaction in my body that makes me hungry. God isn’t literally leading us into temptation. But we need to pray and receive the sacraments so that his grace will prevent us from being led into temptation.
After the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, the Mass was allowed to be changed in a very radical fashion. With that being the case, can we be surprised nothing else is off limits? Altar girls, lay lectors, EMHCs, Protestant hymns and the like are just a few examples of the endless novelties that have been introduced to the Mass. Likewise, the tinkering with Catholic teaching and praxis never seems to end either.
Clinton, I find it interesting that “Protestant hymns” are a problem. Very few have and doctrinal issues and most have great music and are easy to sing. When you sing in church, I’m told, you pray twice. VII was in the mid sixties, long enough ago to not refer to today’s approach as novelties. Lectors are well established practices. Cantors are called for in the Missal.
Well Bob One, you like all liberals embrace the destruction of Catholic identity, and yeah we should not be singing protestant hymns. What is it with you liberals that everything and I mean EVERYTHING you liberals go near is either destroyed and ” changed” so that others feel comfortable. Vatican 2, a blight on the Catholic Church.
The Pope should mention the Holy Bible, as the Source for the “Our Father”– and should point out clearly– scholars must be very careful, with Biblical translations! Why, after all these centuries– do we suddenly have questioning of translations of Christ’s words, of the “Our Father?” The Church needs good, reliable, standard vernacular translations of the Bible– which will also be the Source for any Biblically-based prayers used in the Church! We say the “Our Father” at every Mass, and when we pray the Rosary! Hope the Pope can very carefully fix this problem– and no more confusion!
We need translations because very few Catholics have a good understanding of Latin. Further, vernacular languages evolve slowly so shades of meaning change. Basic teachings do not. So what was a ‘great’ translation in year X may evolve into a poor and eventually bad translation over the next two centuries.
The Bible wasn’t written in Latin. The Latin Vulgate IS a translation.
St. Luke was a Greek physician and wrote in Greek. “First Things” has an article that many might be interested in called “Why We Should Not Change the Lord’s Prayer” by Anthony Esolen, a professor of English Renaisance and classical literature. He says the Greek text says exactly what we are using in English now, and that is how the Greek speaking church always prayed it.
Holy Father, please let this prayer alone. English is not your language of faith and prayer. It is not YOUR church, but the church of Jesus Christ. You are neither Jesus Christ nor one of the inspired writers of the Gospels. Get on track to proclaim His holy Name to all men. Tell the Muslims that Jesus IS the Son of God who loves them and comes to save them too just as Jesus comes for all men. Teach us how to put Jesus’ moral life in practice. You have been in office for 4 years now. Please begin teaching us the faith, not your desires for how the world, how the church, and how the faith should be based on your Argentine Perón upbringing. Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, forever, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us…
Pope Francis now knows more about Aramaic than St. Jerome? The Pope must be really much smarter than the Apostles or Biblical writers and scholars. Even Martin Luther never thought of changing the words of Christ in his Biblical translation
While admittedly not the best translation of the original Greek, pastorally, especially at this time, making such a change would seem to me to be a pastoral disaster. English speaking Catholics (as well as Protestants and Orthodox) have prayed this for hundreds of years. For those who emphasize being “pastoral,” leave the Lord’s Prayer as it has been for generations. And, it is a prayer we can pray in common with all English speaking Christians of any tradition. And, as noted previously, better catechesis would eliminate any confusion. Such a change makes it appear the Pope is free to change the words of Scripture or even the very words of our Lord, even though that is not, of course, the case.
I agree! And just as in English classes, when reading pre-20th century literature, and the plays of Shakespear, etc.– a good teacher always explains the English language of the era, for that literary work, to the students, and helps them to understand the great works of literature! It is the same in the Church– a good priest or nun, must explain to parishioners and their children, the meanings behind the ancent Biblical passages– and include understandings from the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic languages, as well as the Latin, later on– from which our Bible came. The Pope should know this very well!
Seriously?? 8 Must have been a slow day at the Vatican. There are many current and past theologians who don’t figure the wording was/is a problem. We are mired in serious local, national and worldwide problems and a Church that is losing ground at rapid speed. Now, the wording of the Our Father becomes a priority for the pope? God help us.
it is known that that the spoken language of israel at the time of Jesus was aramaic which itself had many dialects across the roman empire.(see the amazing wikipedia treatment of the many dialcts of aramaic) yet many jews spoke greek as a lingua franca..Jesus’ dialect is sometimes called galilean aramaic. as a semitic language it shared basic grammatical forms with hebrew. the missionary church quickly put jesus’ words into the greek form, koine,’common’ across the empire. i recently read that ‘koine’, once considered a pidgin version of classical greek, is now being viewed as a full-fledged greek dialect in itself.. i agree with many here that we need a moratorium on constant change.
For what it is worth, the Greek word is “peirasmon”, “trial”, that the NA Bible translates as “temptation.” “Do not carry us into the trial,” might be a journeyman translation (Mt. 6:13).
Another perspective is contained in Luke’s version of the Our Father (Lk 11:4): “And do not subject us to the final test”—a direct link with Jesus’ earnest request to the Apostles at Gethsemane, “Pray that you may not be subjected to the test.”(Lk 22:39-40)
That said, and though PF has a good point, I would stick with the Jerome Vulgate/Douay-Rheims version. Those people were the real experts.
What is going on? Conservative Catholics criticizing the Pope? When Pope Benedict XVI was Pope, criticism of his words and deeds was not tolerated. Benedict was the Pope and was to be respected! I think Pope Francis knows very well what needs to be done in our shrinking Church. After all, he is guided by the Holy Spirit…not the RNC.
Not that Fred AKA Harold would want to spread any division himself of course.
Heavens no. Perish the thought.
Scary. HF does not seem to know this phrase does not refer to our particular sins but rather to a final judgment!
While we are at mass scriptural-translation revisionism, I wonder if the Holy Father wants to correct the 5th commandment translation to “Thou shalt not murder.”
With all the inclusive language jabber going ’round, hope he’s not thinking of changing “Our Father” to “Our Cousin.”
Anonymous 2: Biblical knowledge and scholarship has advanced considerably since the era of the King James and Douay-Rheims Bibles. The New American Bible Revised Version is an excellent choice for Worship, lectio divina and Bible study.
Hans:
I will grant you Douay-Rheims is dated in modern English usage.
Though iblical scholarship has advanced in many respects, beg to differ on original context and meaning, at which S. Jerome (d. 420 AD in Bethlehem), living within a few generations of Christ, mastered all the ancient languages—biblical Hebrew, the many versions of Aramaic, Septuagint Greek, and so-called Koine Greek—many of which were still living languages at Jerome’s time. His understanding of those original languages and their contextual meaning, the basis for the Vulgate, still stands (Divino Afflante Spiritu, #20-22) as the Catholic authoritative normative text with regard to doctrine.
By the way, I quoted Luke 11:4 from the NAB official…
Jimmy Akin from CATHOLIC ANSWERS has a great post dispelling the myths and confirming the facts about this news article. I love this pope!!! An old man with one lung, who is always smiling and joking- A one-lung man who gets up and flies around the globe to bring Scripture lessons and his affection to crowds of suffering people. LONG LIVE POPE FRANCIS!!!!
Thank you for posting this. I liked the Jimmy Akin article. It is here:
https://www.jimmyakin.org/
This is the best explanation yet when people read the whole thing.
Some Protestant versions of the Bible do say, “Thou shalt not murder”, or “Do not murder” for the commandment against killing. I read it in one Bible decades ago, and St. Matthew does have a slightly different version of the Our Father than St. Luke in the Catholic Bible. The Holy Father is not going to impose anything, just let the bishops decide for their own people.
I’m just so really fascinated but puzzled by most of the responses to this post. I don’t speak any of the ancient languages myself, but I presume that the Lord’s prayer is written in aramaic or greek, not Latin. Why do people keep insisting that Latin was the original language of the prayer? St. Jerome’s Vulgate was a translation from the original languages, and it is faulty in the same ways any translation is faulty. His translation doesn’t carry an infallible label. I have no dog in the fight over how to translate the Our Father, but it seems to me that if you insist on the “original Latin”, or even some translation based on that latin text, you might not understand how language work and the impossibility of making perfect direct…
YFC: I don’t speak any of the ancient languages myself, but… bla, bla, bla, bla…