The Lord’s Prayer Word Change: Yes: “Do not let us enter into temptation.” No: “Lead us not into temptation,”

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  • January 26, 2018
ROME – After special study, the German bishops’ conference decided to stick with the traditional wording in the Lord’s Prayer while the Italian bishops’ conference has decided to change the words of the prayer in their translation of the Roman Missal.

The decisions come after the French bishops decided that beginning early December last year, French Catholics would change the line, “Lead us not into temptation,” to the equivalent of “do not let us enter into temptation.”

French-speaking Catholics in Benin and Belgium began using the new translation at Pentecost last June. The common Spanish translation already is “no nos dejes caer en la tentacion” or “do not let us fall into temptation.”

The issue got wide attention after Pope Francis discussed the line, “And lead us not into temptation,” with Father Marco Pozza, a Catholic prison chaplain, Dec. 6, as part of a television series on the Lord’s Prayer.

Pope Francis said the Italian and English translations of the “Our Father” can give believers the wrong impression that God can and does lead people into temptation. He told Father Pozza, “I’m the one who falls. But it’s not (God) who pushes me into temptation to see how I fall. No, a father does not do this. A father helps us up immediately.”

“The one who leads us into temptation is Satan,” the Pope said. “That’s Satan’s job.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its discussion of the Lord’s Prayer, says, “Our sins result from our consenting to temptation; we therefore ask our Father not to ‘lead’ us into temptation. It is difficult to translate the Greek verb used by a single English word: The Greek means both ‘do not allow us to enter into temptation’ and ‘do not let us yield to temptation.'”