In defence of ‘temptation’
A German bishop has defended the current German translation of the Lord’s Prayer – which uses the German equivalent of “Lead us not into temptation” – against the Pope’s criticism of it.
Last week, in an interview on the Italian TV channel TV2000, Pope Francis said that a better translation of the line was needed. “I am the one who falls. It’s not Him [God] pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. 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 the phrase should read: “Don’t let me fall into temptation”, and spoke approvingly of a recent translation by the French bishops who changed “Do not submit us to temptation” to “Do not let us into temptation.”
However, after many concerned Catholics had approached him, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz wrote on Facebook: “There is no way round it. We have no alternative to the German translation of the original Greek text in the St Matthew and St Luke Gospels. We must accept the Greek text as Jesus’ prayer.”
The appeal not to lead us into temptation was not concerned with “little individual temptations but with the basic decision for or against God”, he explained. Thomas Söding, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Bochum, said the present German version was very exact. The version that Pope Francis had now suggested was not a translation of Jesus’ words, he said, but a paraphrase.
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The mainly Muslim former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan has its first Catholic bishop, a year after Pope Francis visited the country. Bishop Vladimir Fekete, a 62-year-old Salesian from Slovakia, was named last weekend, after heading Azerbaijan’s Baku-based apostolic prefecture since it was created in 2011.
Catholics make up a tiny proportion of the 9.3 million inhabitants of Azerbaijan, 94 per cent of whom are Muslim. Suspected Islamist militants firebombed the first new church in eight decades, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, in 2007, but it was re-dedicated a year later on land given by President Heydar Aliyev with donations from the country’s Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox Christian leaders.
Foreign clergy plea
The head of the Catholic Church in Kazakhstan has appealed for more foreign clergy, citing mass emigration from the vast Central Asian country.
Archbishop Tomasz Peta of Astana, president of the bishops’ conference, said: “What’s most needed … is personnel, since there are few local nuns and priests – and those from outside change frequently for health reasons or because they’re withdrawn by their orders.”
The 160,000 Catholics in the mainly Muslim country of 16 million people are served by 130 priests and nuns in 250 registered parishes. Speaking to Poland’s Catholic Information Agency, the archbishop said that 3.6 million Kazakhs, including thousands of Catholics, had emigrated in the last quarter-century.
The former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has blamed a group of Argentinian clerics close to Pope Francis for his dismissal last June. In an exclusive interview for Report München on Bavarian television on 5 December, Müller maintained that the prevailing mood among this group was “prejudiced against Rome and convinced that the Curia needed ‘cleaning up’”.
“Certain forces in the background” had “from the very beginning” of Francis’ papacy suggested that he stood in the Pope’s way, and in the way of their concept of the papacy and the Church. This clique from Argentina had been convinced that it would be better for the Church if someone “with a different focus” were CDF Prefect. They alone were responsible for his dismissal, Müller claimed.
Church authorities have denounced the killing of Fr Marcelito Paez, a 72-year-old priest of the Diocese of San Jose, in Luzon in the Philippines. Four motorcycle-riding gunmen shot him on 4 December.
Fr Paez was known for his involvement in social justice outreach and for many years he headed the diocesan Justice and Peace office.
“The execution is a brutal act that aims to sow terror among those who oppose the militaristic and despotic nature of [President Rodrigo] Duterte’s government,” said Sr Elenita Belardo, a Good Shepherd sister.
In mayoral elections in Venezuela last Sunday, after candidates backed by the United Socialist Party of President Nicolas Maduro ran against a divided opposition, initial reports suggested that they won at least 300 of the 335 contests. Three of the four opposition parties boycotted the elections and turnout was low, at about 47 per cent, or 9 million voters, (some of whom are pictured here in Caracas, waiting to cast their votes). These were the final elections before the presidential poll scheduled for 2018.
Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino of Caracas said in a press conference before the mayoral elections: “Even if conditions are unfavourable, and there is limited trust in the National Electoral Council [set up to oversee electoral transparency], voting is the strongest way to express our will and to protest if we are not content.”
Two weeks after Honduras’ presidential election, the result remains unresolved. Last Friday, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla (above) filed a challenge, seeking a recount, and expressed his distrust in the Electoral Tribunal overseeing the result. At least 14 people have been killed in protests since the election. Honduran bishops have called for the impartiality of the Electoral Tribunal to be restored.
New altar unveiled
Poland’s Catholic President, Andrzej Duda, has unveiled a lavish new altar at the famous St Brygida shipyard church in Gdansk. Made of amber and silver, it is inlaid with gold and precious gems. The Archbishop of Gdansk, Slawoj Glodz, said the altar “serves as a vote of thanks for God’s care over the Polish nation – an altar of sacrifice, but also of liberation.” Gdansk was the birthplace of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa in the 1980s.
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