It's not Biblical!

 

WHEN PROTESTANTS TELL US, "IT'S NOT IN THE BIBLE."

Fr. William Saunders, edited

Who Added The Doxology?

    Recently, a Protestant friend showed me something he found in the newspaper:

"Why do Catholics not include, 'For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, now and forever,'... at the end of the Our Father, aka, the Pater Noster. Protestants have it, so why did the Church change it and start teaching a different tradition of men? Can you help me?" —A reader in Alexandria

    For the asnwer we will have to go back to the beginning. When discussing prayer with His then-disciples, it is recorded that Our Lord gave then only one prayer to use. There may have been others, but as St, John says at the conclusion of his Gospel.... 
"There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written."
- John 21:25

    So we have only one full prayer recorded, and it goes like this... 
"This is how you are to pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one."
- Matthew 6:9-13 

    A similar version is found in Luke 11:2-4.
And neither version includes the ending sentence we are used to, "For your kingdom come, etc...."

    In the Bible, we find the practice of concluding prayers with a short, hymn-like verse which exalts the glory of God. This section that concludes the Lord Prayer with, "For your kingdom come, etc..." is an example of that pracitce, and it is technically called a "Doxology." A similar example to the doxology in question is found in David's prayer located in 1 Chronicles 29: 10-13 of the Old Testament.
    This was the tradition of Jews, to frequently use these doxologies to conclude prayers at the time of Our Lord's life.
    In the early Church, long before the Bible existed, the Christians living in the eastern half of the Roman Empire followed this practice by adding the doxology, "for thine is the kingdom..." to the Gospel text of the Our Father when reciting the prayer at Mass.
    Evidence of this is also found in the ancient "Didache" (The Way, or the Teachings of the Twelve Apostles), a first century manual of morals, worship and doctrine of the nascent Church in that day.
    Then, when copying the Scriptures, the Greek-literate scribes were known to appended the doxology onto the original Gospel text of the Our Father...which didn't include it initially.
    However, most texts today - if they follow scholarly study of the originals - would omit this inclusion. Or, perhaps, they would relegate it to a footnote, or inform the reader that it was a later addition to the Gospel.
    This is why official, "Catholic" Bibles, including the original 'Vulgate,' the 'Douay-Rheims,' the 'Confraternity Edition,' and the 'New American Bible' do not, and never have, included this doxology.
    This is no tto say that the Our Father is considered unimportant.
In the western half of the Roman Empire and in the Latin rite, we see quite opposite - we see the great importance of the Our Father at Mass.
    St. Jerome (d. 420) attested to the usage of the Our Father in the Mass. 
    St. Gregory the Great (d. 604) placed the recitation of the Our Father after the Canon and before the Fraction of the Host.
    The Commentary on the Sacrament of St. Ambrose (d.397) meditates on the meaning of, "daily bread" in the context of the Holy Eucharist.
    In this same vein, St. Augustine, (d. 430) saw the Our Father as a beautiful connection of the Holy Eucharist with the forgiveness of sins.
    In all instances, the Church saw this perfect prayer which our Lord gave to us as a proper means of preparing for holy Communion. However, like the Bible, none of these documented works include the doxology, either.
    So what gives? Why do Protestants have it, and Catholics don't?
    Well, the answer to the second part of that question should be obvious by now: it was never in the original biblical texts.
And The Church has always taken exhaustive, studious, and investigative steps to ensure that she holds tight to the originals.
    Now as to why Protestants have the doxology. To answer that, we must acknowledge that the English wording of the Our Father that we use today reflects Henry VIII's version of the 1525 Tyndale translation, mandated for use by that English king - while he was still in communion with the Catholic Church.
    Later in 1541, after his official separation from the Holy Father and The Church, Henry VIII issued an edict saying,

"His Grace (meaning himself) perceiving now the great diversity of the translations (of the Pater Noster etc.), hath caused an uniform translation of the said Pater Noster, Ave, Creed, etc., to be set forth, willing all his loving subjects to learn and use the same, and straitly (sic) commanding all parsons, vicars and curates to read and teach the same to their parishioners."
    This English version of Henry VIII, while no longer within the Catholic sphere, was also without the doxology of the Our Father. But it became accepted throughout the English speaking world at the time, even though the later English translations of the Bible, including the Catholic Douay-Rheims (1610) and Protestant King James versions (1611), had different renderings of prayers as found in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
    Later, the Catholic Church made minute modifications in the English: "who art," replaced "-which art," and "on earth," replaced "-in earth." But these effectively changed nothing. 
    During the reign of Edward VI, the Book of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552 editions) of the Church of England did not change the wording of the Our Father, and it did not add the doxology.    However, when Elizabeth I came to power, she had it in for the Catholic Church. She expelled clergy, confiscated Church properties, and made it illegal to pursue Catholic worship. Likewise, she drove a push to rid the Church of England from any Catholic vestiges.
    So, at her bequest, the Lord's Prayer was changed to include the doxology, and in this way she made it "different" from Catholic versions.

The Pregnant Irony
    If you haven't caught it yet, or refuse to accept it, let me make it clear: The irony of this is that some Protestants happily accuse Catholics of not being "literally" faithful to Sacred Scripture and, "...teaching the traditions of men rather than the Bible."
    But in fact, as with so many other cases, we see that the Catholic Church has been the one faithful to the Scriptures...., while Protestant Churches have added their own versions, intepretations, and traditions to the Bible, and to the word of Jesus.*

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* This is also the case with things like the Rosary, The Eucharist, Baptism, The Sacraments, and so on. These things are based wholly on Scripture, and are themselves formed by those sacred writings. 

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    Father Saunders is president of the Notre Dame Catechetical Institute and associate pastor of Queen of Apostles Parish, both in Alexandria, VA.

Taken from March 17, 1994, Arlington Catholic Herald