Should the Sixth Petition of the Our Father Be Translated as “Do not Let Us Fall?”

I am grateful to Catholic World Report for publishing an article I wrote on whether it is best to translate the sixth petition of the Our Father as “do not lead us” or “do not let us fall.” You can read the article HERE.

The article began as a Facebook comment and evolved to a blog post which I submitted to CWR instead. I have reproduced the unrefined Facebook comment below (click “Read More” if you are on the homepage) followed by a comment from another person because there are a few elements I could not incorporate in the CWR article that I may return to later. Fr. Z suggests looking at the Catechism’s explanation and Fr. Hunwicke offers some interesting information on how the Our Father was viewed eschatologically in its fourth petition. Also, it appears the Italian Bishop’s Conference is changing their translation of the sixth petition.

Review of “God is not Nice”

Ulrich Lehner. God is Not Nice: Rejecting Pop Culture Theology and Discovering the God Worth Living For. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2017 (ISBN 978-1594717482) xii + 147 pp., Pb. $16.95. Available on Amazon HERE.

“This is a God who invites you on a great adventure that will change your life and who dares you to attempt great things. In the words of Mr. Beaver from The Chronicles of Narnia about Aslan, ‘He’s not safe, but good.'”

Ulrich Lehner’s book, God is not Nice, is a must read for everyone today interested in how we have exchanged the God of the Bible for a counterfeit.[^1] Lehner acutely points out that we have God has been made into a sweet sentimental grandpa figure who pats us on the head to assure us we are still good when we do something wrong but without demanding any change in our lives. This god is predictable, unchallenging, pleasant, and confortable; in a nutshell, this is a nice god. Lehner dispels the myth of the nice god by tracing these philosophical and theological influences on our conception of God, particularly those originating from the period of the Enlightenment.