Pater-noster

Pater-Noster (Lat. for Our Father), the name among the Romanists for the LORDS PRAYER SEE LORDS PRAYER (q.v.). It is claimed by many Protestants that this prayer was not intended by Christ as a formula of Christian prayer, because it contains no allusion to his atonement, nor recognizes the offices of the Holy Ghost. It has nevertheless been generally adopted by the Protestant churches in worship on account of its beauty and terseness, and because Christ gave it in illustration of the simplicity of Christian prayer. But Protestants condemn the too general use made of it by the Romanists. Since the 13th century they have used it in the opening of divine service, and by the Council of Trent a catechism was published which contains a detailed exposition and commentary of it; and in all the services not only of the Roman Missal, Breviary, Ritual, Processional, and Ordinal, but in all the occasional services prescribed from time to time, it is invariably introduced. In the Rosary (q.v.) of the Virgin Mary it is combined with the Hail Mary, the prayer addressed to the Virgin (whence the larger beads of the "Rosary" are sometimes called Pater-Nosters), and perhaps the most usual of all the formal shorter devotions among Roman Catholics is the recitation a stated number of times of the "Pater," with one or more Ave Marias," generally concluding with the Doxology. The Roman Catholics do not use the concluding form of this prayer as commonly used by Protestants, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen."