This might be an easy one, but a Protestant friend of mine went to his first Catholic service (a funeral) and he said they did the Lord’s prayer WRONG. He said, the Lord’s prayer the way it is printed in the Bible was not said. I didn’t really have the resources to get into a discussion about it, but I am assuming it depends on which version of the Bible you are using, no?
The original Lord’s Prayer was written in Greek. When the Greek has been translated into English the translators have sometimes used different English words. This explains why your friend might be used to saying, “And forgive us our debts,” whereas Catholics say, “And forgive us our trespasses.”
With respect the doxology (For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever), Haydock’s commentary on Matthew 6:13 says in part:In the Greek we here read, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory; which words are found in some old Greek liturgies, and there is every appearance that they have thence slipped into the text of St. Matthew. They do not occur in St. Luke (xi. 4.), nor in any one of the old Latin copies, nor yet in the most ancient of the Greek texts. The holy Fathers prior to St. Chrysostom, as Grotius observes, who have explained the Lord’s prayer, never mention these words. — And not being found in Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, &c., nor in the Vatican Greek copy, nor in the Cambridge manuscripts. &c. as Dr. Wells also observes, it seems certain that they were only a pious conclusion, or doxology, with which the Greeks in the fourth age began to conclude their prayers, much after the same manner as,
Glory be to the Father, &c. was added to the end of each psalm. We may reasonably presume, that these words at first were in the margin of some copies, and afterwards by some transcribers taken into the text itself. (Witham) (
source)If your friend will not accept the idea that the doxology in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer might not be part of the original Bible text, as mentioned above, you might want to direct him to Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, in Luke 11:2-4, where there is no doxology. Then explain to him that Catholics simply use Luke’s version.
