Prayers at Mass

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EphelDuath

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During the “Lord, hear our prayer” part of Mass, my parish always says “for our troops, that they may be safe, Lord hear our prayer”, or something like that. Is this unusual? If not, why does the Church not also pray for the other side’s troops?

Also, a lot of the prayers will be something like, “for world peace, especially in Israel and Gaza”. Why especially Israel, and not Sudan or any other country caught in war? (This is just an example, I’m not harping on Israel.)
 
EphelDuath said:
During the “Lord, hear our prayer” part of Mass, my parish always says “for our troops, that they may be safe, Lord hear our prayer”, or something like that. Is this unusual? If not, why does the Church not also pray for the other side’s troops?

Also, a lot of the prayers will be something like, “for world peace, especially in Israel and Gaza”. Why especially Israel, and not Sudan or any other country caught in war? (This is just an example, I’m not harping on Israel.)
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every intention in the prayer of the faithful does not have to include all the needs of all the people in world, or even in the congregation. If we pray for the sick of the parish, including (list of names of those who have asked for prayer) we are not excluding everyone whose name is not on the list. The prayers are chosen in a specific order–for the universal Church, the needs of the world, our country, our community, our parish, families and ourselves, but the specific intentions are just a focus and intended to represent all such needs. Praying for justice in Iraq does not mean we don’t wish justice elsewhere. The intentions are more like examples, and in now way meant to be exclusionary, quite the opposite. but I think if we just said “and world peace” every week it would start to sound like the Miss America pageant.
 
The general intercessions are originally composed for each Mass, although there may be some text or book like this one which the writers use as a rough guide. They almost always include an intention which mentions the armed forces, so yes, what you’re talking about is very regular.

Patriotically speaking, it would be considered to be in poor taste to mention our US armed forces in the same lines as those with whom we are in combat. It’s not as though we specifically wish harm on them, because that’s covered in the intentions which ask for world peace, but it’s sort of like going to a sports game and rooting for both teams–only with our country. Also, not all of our armed forces are engaged in combat right now. The “other side’s troops” aren’t specifically mentioned because there isn’t always an “other side” and we’re praying for all the US troops.

The intentions referring to Israel and Gaza may have to do with the recent happenings there or, more likely, out of respect to the Holy Land.
 
passus said:
Patriotically speaking, it would be considered to be in poor taste to mention our US armed forces in the same lines as those with whom we are in combat. It’s not as though we specifically wish harm on them, because that’s covered in the intentions which ask for world peace, but it’s sort of like going to a sports game and rooting for both teams–only with our country.
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But that’s the thing. The Church is supernational; there are Catholics on both sides of the fight, sometimes. Why would we want “our country” to win at the expense of others? Shouldn’t the prayer be that the conflict end with as few casualties as possible, with terms favorable to both sides?
 
EphelDuath said:
But that’s the thing. The Church is supernational; there are Catholics on both sides of the fight, sometimes. Why would we want “our country” to win at the expense of others? Shouldn’t the prayer be that the conflict end with as few casualties as possible, with terms favorable to both sides?
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The vast majority of the “enemy” is not catholic. (While only 30 years ago, Iraq was mostly Catholic, about 50-65%, it’s now less than 10% Christian, with the majority being Catholic, a large group being Assyrian Church, and some Orthodox and protestants.) And the Iraquis still fighting are almost exclusively militant muslims, extrremists, and haters of all things Western, all things Christian, and especially haters of Americans.

Afghanistan is almost universally Muslim.

But that’s irrelevant. Asking the Lord to protect the soldiers is uniformly historical.

Likewise, it is traditional, appropriate and good to pray for God to soften the hearts of the enemy.
 
Aramis said:
… While only 30 years ago, Iraq was mostly Catholic, about 50-65%, it’s now less than 10% Christian, with the majority being Catholic, a large group being Assyrian Church, and some Orthodox and protestants…
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Uh … I don’t think so. The intra-Chistian breakdown is more or less accurate, but 30 years ago the Christian population of Iraq was probably under 10% of the whole. I believe it is now below 3%.
 
My source was the 1990 CIA world factbook.

it also noted that only muslims were counted as citizens.
 
Please stay on topic. Start new threads in the appropriate forum to discuss side issues. Thank you, all.
 
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