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Bring back the imprecatory psalms, with Timothy Troutner

Church Life Today

​​“O God, smash the teeth in their mouths!”“Make their eyes so dim they cannot see.”“May his children be fatherless, his wife, a widow.”Who prays like that? Well, we do: Christians. Those petitions––those curses––that I justrecited come from Psalm 58, Psalm 69, and Psalm 109. But we don’t hear themvery often: not in the public liturgy as at Mass, not in the liturgy of thehours that we might pray alone. What is being lost by not praying things likethat, in just those words: the words of Script...