Whose glory are we talking about?

In the mass as official, I find:

Priest:  Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice
may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.
All:  May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands,
for the praise and glory of his name,
for our good, and the good of all his Church.

It’s just before the preface, followed by holy, holy, etc., the old “Orate Fratres.”   Fine.

256px-Holy_Mass

But I hear oftener and oftener this:

Priest:  Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice
may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.
All:  May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands,
for the praise and glory of God’s name,
for our good, and the good of all his Church.

Why do priests do that?  Remove the “his” for the unnecessary “God’s”?  Whose else would it be?  I suspect it’s a sort of between-us-chickens thing: “his” is masculine, and there’s too much of that in the church.  So start saying “God’s,” and people will get the message.

Look, if that’s why they do it, why don’t they preach on the topic?  Tell parishioners who pay attention what they are doing and why?

Later: Another oddity, heard just yesterday,

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.”

in the Luke passage becomes

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children for ever.”

No faceless bureaucrat is doing this, but the priest on the spot.  Somewhere they are picking this up, but they are not telling us where.

3 thoughts on “Whose glory are we talking about?

  1. Some even change the “your hands” to “our hands.” It is my belief that this is yet another attempt to politically correct our liturgical language but it unfortunately leaves us with much less poetic expression and somehow seems to feminize (or feminazi) our God, which is sad, shameful and downright silly. We are also quite presumptive when we are so concerned about the genderless nature of our God when Jesus himself did not seemed concerned about it at all. Thanks for all you do!

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    1. Thanks, Tom. Again, a key issue is the sneakiness of it. How’s for a sermon explaining why and inviting comments from the people of God? (Good idea, Jim.)

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  2. Reblogged this on Sunday sermons, weekday observations and commented:

    Why do priests do that? Remove the “his” for the unnecessary “God’s”? Whose else would it be? I suspect it’s a sort of between-us-chickens thing: “his” is masculine, and there’s too much of that in the church. So start saying “God’s,” and people will get the message.

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