Teach Us to Pray: The Lord's Prayer, Catechesis, and Ritual Reform in the Sixteenth Century by Katharine Mahon

Abstract

Reviewed by: Teach Us to Pray: The Lord's Prayer, Catechesis, and Ritual Reform in the Sixteenth Century by Katharine Mahon Anna Marie Johnson Teach Us to Pray: The Lord's Prayer, Catechesis, and Ritual Reform in the Sixteenth Century. By Katharine Mahon. London: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019. 169 pp. Historical accounts often present the early church and the Reformation as high points of Christian formation, with the Middle Ages as a deep nadir. Katharine Mahon, in this revision of her Notre Dame dissertation, challenges that view by tracing the uses of the Lord's Prayer through the late Middle Ages and Reformation in catechesis, liturgy, and private prayer. Mahon identifies three effective touchpoints in the Reformation to gauge the changing uses of the prayer: Luther's catechetical works, the catechism in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and the 1566 catechism by Jesuit Peter Canisius. A cornerstone of Mahon's argument—and the distinct strength of this book—is her contention that medieval formation in the faith, far from being less rigorous than in other eras, was quite extensive and holistic. Mahon emphasizes that medieval Christian [End Page 97] formation was embedded within ritual systems and aimed to form Christians as ritual participants. Knowing the Lord's Prayer was a signifier of one's membership in the church and a means of formation as part of the ritual life of the church, especially in the sacrament of penance. Mahon traces a decisive shift from a late medieval emphasis on ritual to a Reformation emphasis on knowledge and understanding. In the Reformation, Mahon argues, the late medieval "unified ritual pattern" (11) of the Lord's Prayer across catechesis, liturgy, and private prayer was dissolved and replaced by a narrower emphasis on understanding the prayer's meaning through memorization and explanation. The last three chapters outline late medieval and Reformation usage of the Lord's Prayer in catechisms, liturgies, and instruction on private prayer. Mahon emphasizes that later authors encouraged readers to comprehend the prayer and to repeat it with earnest faith. At least within the catechisms, the function of the Lord's Prayer, she argues, became "a text … rather than a performance" (74). Mahon identifies the Protestant concept of faith as the rationale for this change. While she often takes pains to present Reformation-era changes in an ecumenical tone and to note continuity between late medieval and Reformation practices, her view of Protestant understandings of faith draws sharp lines and pushes distinctions too far. For example, she presents a Protestant view of faith as an arid, purely intellectual, and individualistic concept that makes the Lord's Prayer into "a piece of knowledge to be tested for accuracy and comprehension, alongside other pieces of knowledge," (73) which she contrasts sharply with medieval usage as "ritual communion, identification, or participation" (78). Elsewhere, she nuances this view, recognizing that reforms by Luther and others emphasized liturgical participation for the purposes of identification, formation, and faith (96). She also grants that, while Luther thought the liturgy should be comprehensible, he retained a belief that liturgy addresses worshipers beyond reason and can only be apprehended by faith (100). Despite these caveats, Mahon maintains that the Reformation fundamentally changed the use of the Lord's Prayer from ritual formation to knowledge. [End Page 98] For this reviewer, the sharp lines she draws between late medieval and Reformation-era use of the Lord's Prayer occlude more than they outline. In both the late Middle Ages and the Reformation, the Lord's Prayer was used to understand the faith, to move the heart towards strengthened faith, and to participate in communal and ritual Christian life. It is true that Reformation-era reformers wanted worshipers to understand what was happening in the worship service, and that they emphasized comprehension and memorization of the Lord's Prayer more than medieval teachers. Yet they, too, encouraged participation in worship for formation in a ritual community. While much changed in the Reformation, the purposes of the Lord's Prayer in catechesis, liturgy, and private prayer had more continuities than discontinuities with the late Middle Ages. In both eras, churches taught the Lord's Prayer to build up faith in...