Catholic

Are you too proud to admit your faults?

Everyone makes mistakes. But there is an epidemic in the world today of people who can’t admit they did something wrong. God says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). But first we have to be sorry about what we’ve done.

according to God’s way of doing things, there are three steps to changing our behaviour.

  1. First there is confession, which is admitting what we did.
  2. Next there is repentance, which is being sorry about what we did.
  3. Then there is asking forgiveness which is being cleansed and released from what we did.

The inability or resistance to do any of these three steps is rooted in pride. A man who cannot humble himself to admit he is wrong before God and before man will have problems in his life that will never go away. “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 26:12–NIV).

Too many of us have fallen because of pride and the inability to confess and repent. Unconfessed sin does not just go away. It becomes a cancer that grows and suffocates life. “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsake them will have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

The Catholic Church Standardize Mass

Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, Rome

Image via Wikipedia

Catholics attending church in the English-speaking world on Sunday; the first Sunday of Advent, heard a new version of Mass (liturgy). That’s because as of Sunday, churches across the globe are required to do the same mass.

These changes may cause some to use cheats sheets as their churches adopt a more formal translation of the original Latin service. But according to the Vatican, the changes were necessary to more accurately reflect the original Latin version, based on a principle called “formal equivalence.”

Thus, instead of saying Jesus “was born of the Virgin Mary,” Catholics will say he “was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.”

Instead of saying, “I have sinned through my own fault,” they will say, “I have greatly sinned,” and add, “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”

Instead of saying Jesus is “one in being with the Father,” they will say that he was “consubstantial with the Father.” Consubstantial, which comes from the Latin word “consubstantialis,” which means: having the same substance or essential nature.

Some of the more noticeable changes for churchgoers include the much-used response “And also with you” being replaced by “And with your spirit.”

“It’s a historic moment in the life of the Church and the English-speaking world,” Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast told the Catholic Register earlier this month.

Prendergast was the Canadian representative on the Vox Clara Committee, formed to oversee the new English translation of the Roman Missal.

“The hope is that the higher register of the vocabulary and the restoration of biblical allusions will enrich our life of prayer, heightening reverence and making the liturgy more solemn, more beautiful,” Prendergast said.

The prayer that has undergone the most change is the Gloria, said Prendergast. “When translators translated it in the 1970s, they not only abbreviated it but they rearranged the wording,” he said.

What was lost in translation was the going overboard with praise of God, he said. “We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you” has now been added.

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