ONSIGNOR Schuler was a smart man who taught in the seminary for years. He’s seldom wrong, but having read his 1993 Editorial, I felt he was in error. If you read Number 6 of the petition he mentions, the following claim is made:
In the proposed ICEL Sacramentary [which would ultimately be rejected in 1998], the text of the Our Father has been changed, and the following phrase added: “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever.”
I thought to myself, “What’s he talking about?” As far as I can remember, those words have always been in the Novus Ordo Missae. Click here and you’ll see these words were part of the official 1975 Missale Romanum.
WITH MY CURIOSITY PIQUED, I opened up a 1970s copy of the Missal, and neither the Latin nor English words were there. “This can’t be right,” I said again. So, I looked in another edition from 1970, and once again both the Latin and English were missing. Perhaps Msgr. Schuler was correct after all? Oops! I realized that somebody had “cut and pasted” different versions of the 1970 Ordo Missae into a 1965 Missal, so I kept looking in different spots and eventually found those words in English. (Remember: the 1965 Missal does not have those words.)
So … I need to ask again: Why do Msgr. Schuler and CREDO make that claim? Is it possible that ICEL had relocated that doxology in an earlier draft, placing it directly at the end of the Lord’s Prayer? Schuler and CREDO are correct in the second part of their statement:
Other modifications are proposed for the Our Father. “Lead us not into temptation” becomes “save us from the time of trial” and “trespasses” becomes “sins.”
You can verify this by viewing page 665 of the following document, uploaded by Richard J. Clark:
* * 1998 Sacramentary (Rejected)
By the way, I see the Rejected 1998 Sacramentary tried to eliminate the last vestiges of “Thy”:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.
If you glance through that Rejected Sacramentary, you’ll see that Richard’s analysis was correct. Some supremely goofy stuff can be found in it, and perhaps that’s why, shortly thereafter, Rome hit the “reboot” button on ICEL …
[By the way, some people used to criticize ICEL’s version: “All glory and honor is yours, etc.” But it’s been a while since I last heard that criticism.]
