Why Is the Catholic Lord’s Prayer Different? The Latin Bible Never Had “For Thine Is the Kingdom”

The Catholic form of the Lord’s Prayer stops at “deliver us from evil,” with no closing praise. At Mass the priest adds a prayer, then everyone says, “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours.” The Latin Bible never had it, the Roman Mass took it up in 1970, and the oldest Greek copies of Matthew lack it.

The Lord’s Prayer and the Our Father are two names for the same prayer, and the Catechism uses both. Side by side, three familiar English forms differ mainly in two places: the word for what is forgiven, and the ending.

Where does “For thine is the kingdom” come from?

It comes from the worship of the early Church, not from the oldest text of the Gospel. Fr. Lawrence Farley, an Orthodox priest writing for the Orthodox Church in America, puts the evidence plainly: “the early manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus lack any doxology, as do citations in Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, and Gregory of Nyssa.” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, a Bible reference work edited by James Orr in 1915, reached the same verdict: the doxology “is not found in the leading manuscripts and is generally regarded as an ancient liturgical addition.”

Why is it in the King James Bible but not in Catholic Bibles?

The two families of Bibles were translated from different texts. The King James Version follows the Textus Receptus, the printed Greek New Testament that Erasmus compiled from the manuscripts he could reach. “Two manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) that are older than those found in the Textus Receptus do not contain the verse in question,” writes Fr. Charles Grondin of Catholic Answers. William Tyndale’s New Testament, the first printed in English (Worms, 1526, revised 1534), has “For thyne is the kyngedome” at Matthew 6:13 in its 1534 text, and the King James Version has it too.

Catholic Bibles came from the Latin. The Douay-Rheims Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and as Grondin notes, “St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate did not include it.” Modern Catholic Bibles no longer rest on the Vulgate, but they leave it out too, because the oldest manuscripts lack it. For the same reason, the encyclopedia notes, the Revised Version (British and American) omits it. The Catholic and Protestant Bibles differ in other ways, starting with the number of books.

How do Matthew and Luke differ?

The prayer appears twice in the Gospels. “St. Luke presents a brief text of five petitions, while St. Matthew gives a more developed version of seven petitions,” the Catechism says, and “The liturgical tradition of the Church has retained St. Matthew’s text” (2759). The Douay-Rheims, translated from the Latin, shows Luke’s shorter form; the King James Version, translated from later Greek copies, gives a Luke that is closer to Matthew.

Neither Gospel has the doxology in the Douay-Rheims, and the King James Version has it only in Matthew.

Do Catholics ever say the doxology?

Yes, at Mass, though only since 1970. After the people and the priest say the Lord’s Prayer together, “the Priest alone adds the embolism, which the people conclude by means of the doxology,” according to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (81). The embolism is a short prayer that, in the Instruction’s words, “asks for deliverance from the power of evil for the whole community of the faithful.” The people then answer, in the English used in the United States since 2011, “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever.”

The Roman Mass had not always included it. Fr. William Saunders, surveying the Latin evidence for the Our Father at Mass from Jerome to Gregory the Great, concludes that “none of this evidence includes the doxology.” Michael Shackleton of The Southern Cross, a Catholic weekly in South Africa, writes that it “was reintroduced in 1970 when the new order of the Mass replaced the old.” The Mass still sets it apart from the words of the Gospel, and the Catechism calls it “the doxology from the Apostolic Constitutions” (2760). It also says these words take up the first three petitions again, “now proclaimed as adoration and thanksgiving” (2855). The Catechism and its Compendium print the prayer itself ending at “but deliver us from evil.”

How do Orthodox Christians end it?

In the Orthodox Liturgy the people say the petitions and the priest answers with the ending. “After the people say the petitions of the ‘Lord’s prayer,’ the priest responds,” writes Fr. Alexis Trader, with “For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages.” The Catechism records the same Byzantine practice: it “adds after ‘the glory’ the words ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’” (2760). Farley writes that his church “uses the fullest version possible.”

Why do some say “trespasses” and others “debts”?

Matthew’s Gospel says “debts” and Luke’s says “sins,” in both the King James and the Douay-Rheims. The Catholic notes to the New American Bible explain the image: “the word debts is used metaphorically of sins, ‘debts’ owed to God.” The Didache, in Lightfoot’s translation, has the singular: “forgive us our debt.”

The word “trespasses” appears in the verses just after the prayer, where Jesus says, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14, King James Version). Tyndale used the word in the prayer itself: the 1534 revision of his New Testament reads “forgeve vs oure treaspases.” The Book of Common Prayer and the Catholic Mass in English both say “trespasses.” Presbyterian and Reformed churches say “debts,” following the Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647, which teaches the petition as “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Do Protestants say the Lord’s Prayer the same way?

They pray it, and their standard texts differ on the ending. The Westminster Shorter Catechism calls the Lord’s Prayer “the special rule of direction” for prayer and treats the ending as part of it: “The conclusion of the Lord’s prayer, which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” The 1928 Book of Common Prayer uses both endings in one service: the priest’s Lord’s Prayer at the start of Holy Communion stops at “But deliver us from evil,” and the one said later in the service, introduced with “we are bold to say,” carries the doxology. Other differences between the two traditions are set out in Protestant vs Catholic beliefs and worship.

Lutheran texts vary in the same way. The Triglot Concordia English translation of Luther’s Small Catechism (1529) gives the prayer without the doxology. The modern German text published by the Protestant site evangelisch.de prints it under the heading “Der Beschluss” (the conclusion): “Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit.” Where Lutherans and Catholics differ more deeply is set out in the Lutheran and Catholic comparison.

Do German Catholics and Protestants pray the same Vaterunser?

Yes. The German Bible Society prints the ecumenical version it describes as the one in use in worship today, which begins “Vater unser im Himmel, geheiligt werde dein Name” and ends with the doxology, “Denn dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit.” It also notes that later manuscripts of Matthew and Luke add the closing praise.

German Catholics, like Catholics everywhere in the Roman rite, say the doxology at Mass only after the priest’s prayer, as the General Instruction of the Roman Missal directs.

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