Lord, Don't Hear My Prayer

[traichuoi]

[u][b][url="http://www.beliefnet.com/story/44/story_4484_1.html"]Lord, Don't Hear My Prayer[/url][/b][/u]
by George Wiegel
[quote]As I understand the theory behind the General Intercessions or Prayer of the Faithful, the petitions are supposed to be short and rather formulaic: we are to pray for the universal Church and its pastor, the local Church and its pastors, the civil authorities, the sick, the dead and dying, and the world's salvation, adding special local needs as required.

Yet the subscription services that supply many parishes with their general intercessions often turn the petitions into mini-sermons in which various messages, theological and political, are encoded. I particularly dislike the now-widespread custom of jumping immediately from a pro forma prayer for the universal Church or the Pope to a second, much lengthier petition for some political desideratum, often accompanied by a protracted secondary clause suggesting, not too subtly, that all social goods are to be secured by government action.

These canned petitions do have one use, though: they reflect with considerable precision the default positions on certain questions in today's U.S. Catholic establishment.

Take, for example, a petition I heard (in the #2 slot, of course) a few weeks ago: "That all world leaders may put aside their political differences and work for true and lasting peace, let us pray to the Lord." I didn't. Why? Because that petition, however innocently crafted, reflects a host of misconceptions about world politics, world peace, and world order: misconceptions that I have been trying to counter - evidently, without much success! - for more than a quarter-century.

Why couldn't I answer "Lord, hear our prayer" to the petition I just cited?

First, because I don't believe that "political differences," in the normal sense of that term, define the fault-lines in world politics today. The differences between the civilized world and Al-Qaeda, or between the United States and North Korea, or between Christian blacks and Muslim Arabs in Sudan, or between the Russians of Beslan and the terrorists who held their children hostage and then murdered them in cold blood, are not "political differences"-if by "political differences" we mean disagreements about the best means to achieve commonly-agreed public goods.

The difference between the civilized world and Al-Qaeda is that the civilized world wishes to run its affairs by the rule of law, and Al-Qaeda wishes to impose its Islamist will on others through indiscriminate violence and the murder of innocents. North Korea is run by a lunatic with a couple of nuclear weapons who has no compunction about starving his own people; our "differences" with him and his regime are not "political," in the sense that House Speaker Denny Hastert's "differences" with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are "political."

Prayers that suggest otherwise are unreal.

Secondly, I couldn't answer "Lord, hear our prayer" because, as a matter of considered moral judgment, I don't want my political leaders to put aside their differences with Al-Qaeda, or Kim Jong-il, or the nuclear-weapons-seeking mullahs of Iran, or the Islamists who commit genocide in Darfur and Beslan. I want my political leaders to craft wise policies, guided by moral reason, to insure that, if I may put it bluntly, we win and they lose: that is, that the civilized world and the rule of law prevail over terrorists and crazies.

Third, I couldn't say "Lord, hear our prayer" to that oleaginous petition because it smacks of the psychobabble that has corrupted Catholic thinking about world politics for forty years or more. In the classic Catholic understanding of the word, peace is "order": the "order" of law-governed societies whose domestic and international affairs are guided by a commitment to the rule of law and the political adjudication of conflict. "Peace," as Catholics have understood it since Augustine, is not a matter of therapy; it's a matter of law and politics. But you couldn't tell that from the petition above, which sounds far more like Rodney King ("Why can't we all just get along?") than The City of God ("Peace is the tranquillity of order").

Am I making too big a deal out of this? I don't think so. The worship we offer God, including our intercessory prayer, should arise out of our deepest Catholic convictions. It shouldn't be shaped, and mis-shaped, by the shibboleths of the therapeutic society. [/quote]

What do you think?

Edited February 15, 2007 by traichuoi

[curtins]

he makes some excellent points

things i never thought of before

[Maggyie]

I have been at a lot of Masses where the Prayers of the Faithful veered into sermonette territory. And how annoying when it it does. Mass is for the worship of God, not advancing agendas! But I don't think the example that Mr. Wiegel used:
[quote]"That all world leaders may put aside their political differences and work for true and lasting peace, let us pray to the Lord." [/quote]
is bad enough that it doesn't deserve a "Lord, hear our prayer." If prayers are sincere, I don't think they deserve to be called "unreal."

Also, in my experience, there's about five seconds between the petition and the congregation's response. That's not really enough time to do a sophisticated political/theological analysis of the prayer, is it?

[the_rev]

During the intercessions I usually find myself not thinking about the intention but on the other adn just by defaul respond Lord Hear our prayer, even though I may not know what was just said.

[MissScripture]

[quote name='the_rev' post='1195579' date='Feb 14 2007, 10:45 PM']
During the intercessions I usually find myself not thinking about the intention but on the other adn just by defaul respond Lord Hear our prayer, even though I may not know what was just said.
[/quote]
I'll admit, I do the same thing. Although, sometimes they are worded so oddly that I don't know what they're saying when I do pay attention.

[MIKolbe]

our parish lets the people kinda just speak out their personal petitions after the general ones are read... makes for some interesting petitions..

[XIX]

I always pray for chastity. I wonder if that falls under his category, though I think it doesn't because my petitions are not inherently political at all. I wanna be chaste. I want other to be chaste. I want others to know that i want chastity because that means I am serving as an effective witness.

[MissScripture]

[quote]our parish lets the people kinda just speak out their personal petitions after the general ones are read... makes for some interesting petitions..[/quote]
We did that at Mass on Thursday mornings in highschool...but I never said anything, so there really weren't many (since I was the only student who went).

Edited February 15, 2007 by MissScripture

[Groo the Wanderer]

[quote name='the_rev' post='1195579' date='Feb 14 2007, 10:45 PM']
During the intercessions I usually find myself not thinking about the intention but on the other adn just by defaul respond Lord Hear our prayer, even though I may not know what was just said.
[/quote]

Owie! Our pastor said he's gonna slip in something one day like "Lord, send the bombs to rain down upon us and blast us all to Hell and back" just to see if people are paying attention and not responding by rote....

[SJRod55]

[quote]During the intercessions I usually find myself not thinking about the intention but on the other adn just by defaul respond Lord Hear our prayer, even though I may not know what was just said.[/quote]

Many times I am in foreign churches and do not understand the context or direction of the intercessions therefore I alas have to make a default response. I find my ignorance is my downfall and it is a humbling moment during the mass when I realize even more my short comings and ask God to allow me a better understanding.

[Starets]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1195781' date='Feb 15 2007, 10:17 AM']
Owie! Our pastor said he's gonna slip in something one day like "Lord, send the bombs to rain down upon us and blast us all to Hell and back" just to see if people are paying attention and not responding by rote....
[/quote]

Lord, hear our ... WHAT?!?!?!?!
:

[Lil Red]

[quote name='Groo the Wanderer' post='1195781' date='Feb 15 2007, 07:17 AM']
Owie! Our pastor said he's gonna slip in something one day like "Lord, send the bombs to rain down upon us and blast us all to Hell and back" just to see if people are paying attention and not responding by rote....
[/quote]
i betcha most of the people would still respond!!!

i agree with George (i usually do, i'm a groupie ). i get really frustrated sometimes with the petitions that are being said at my church

[Catholictothecore]

Peace is "lack of war" like wellness is "lack of symptoms"

[traichuoi]

[quote]Secondly, I couldn't answer "Lord, hear our prayer" because, as a matter of considered moral judgment, I don't want my political leaders to put aside their differences with Al-Qaeda, or Kim Jong-il, or the nuclear-weapons-seeking mullahs of Iran, or the Islamists who commit genocide in Darfur and Beslan. I want my political leaders to craft wise policies, guided by moral reason, to insure that, if I may put it bluntly, we win and they lose: that is, that the civilized world and the rule of law prevail over terrorists and crazies. [/quote]

I am also a groupie of George...

In this statement above, he really hit the heart of it for me. To put differences aside really rejects the reality of what is actually occurring. It is as if a husband and wife don't discuss differences until truth is reached during an argument, but just agree to not talk about it anymore. That doesn't solve anything.

Although these petitions are most likely written with the best of intentions, they do too often land far off what the rubrics call for. I think, too, that as a church, we can't approach prayer only with good intentions. Careful attention should be paid, not careless babble.

[MissScripture]

I think I'm probably going to be paying a lot more attention to the petitions at Mass, now.