In June 2008, the Congregation for Divine Worship quietly issued Prot. 213/08/L, a short letter that commanded every Roman-rite community to eliminate the name “Yahweh” from public worship. Bishops were told that wherever the Hebrew text reads the four letters—YHWH—Catholics must substitute “Lord,” “God,” or a similar title. Within weeks, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops instructed publishers to revise or withdraw any hymns that still contained the name, and by the following liturgical year, most hymnals had been altered or replaced.
The Vatican’s stated reasons sounded deliberately mild. Officials spoke of honoring Jewish reverence for the name and of ensuring uniform language in ecumenical prayer. Yet a deeper theological disquiet is unmistakable. By suppressing “Yahweh” in the very place where Catholics address their deity, Rome implicitly acknowledged what it could not say aloud: the Father revealed by Jesus Christ cannot be the same being who calls himself Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible. The ban is a silent confession that this name, when pronounced in Christian worship, jars against the Gospel.
For nearly two millennia, the Marcionite Church has taught that the God proclaimed by the Evangelicon and Apostolicon is the Good Father, wholly distinct from the false deity who supposedly fashioned the world in Genesis and bound Israel under the Mosaic Law. The Hebrew Bible portrays that false deity in stark terms. He orders the slaughter of infants and sucklings (1 Samuel 15:3). He commands Israel to kill every male child among the Midianites (Numbers 31:17). He afflicts his own people with plague so that seventy thousand perish in a single day (2 Samuel 24:15). He proclaims Himself a jealous god who visits the iniquity of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5). These acts cannot belong to the One whom Jesus calls Father.
The Evangelicon offers an entirely different portrait. Christ urges His followers to “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful” and affirms that the Father “…is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” No one, He insists, “…knoweth who the Father is, but the Son, and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whomsoever the Son wishes to reveal him.” The Apostle Paul, in his epistles, greets the assemblies with grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ and reminds them that the Law of Moses was ordained through angels, not by God the Father Himself:
“For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward.”
Alexandrians 3.2
The contrast between the compassionate Father and the vengeful deity of the Hebrew Bible is absolute.
Rome’s directive, therefore, serves, however unintentionally, as corroboration of the Marcionite distinction. If the name “Yahweh” truly designated the Father, no amount of ecumenical courtesy would justify suppressing it. The Church would celebrate this name rather than conceal it. Instead, the hierarchy deemed the Name unfit for proclamation, a tacit admission that its character clashes with Christian adoration.
Why, then, does the Hebrew Bible attribute such power to a being who behaves with cruelty? The answer lies in the realm of lesser spirits. The Apostle Paul warns believers that their true struggle is against principalities and powers in the heavenly places. The figure who answers to Yahweh may be one of those powers, a demon of the present age who masquerades as supreme. If the demons tremble at the name of Jesus yet feel no dread when men invoke Yahweh, the implication is clear: the tetragrammaton belongs not to the Father but to a lesser spirit subject to Christ’s authority, perhaps even to a demon enthroned by Israel’s tradition.
The Catholic Church could not openly embrace such a conclusion without dismantling centuries of doctrine, yet the 2008 decree protects the faithful from addressing a false deity in public prayer. Silence becomes a shield. Rome has taken the first step—removing this name from its liturgy. The Marcionite Church urges every seeker to take the next step and confess what the silence implies. God the Father is first revealed through his Son Jesus Christ. He is not the jealous avenger of Sinai but the loving Father whose mercy endures forever.
For that reason, we, of course, renounce the invocation of the tetragrammaton. Our cry is not “Yahweh” but “Father.” In doing so, we stand where the Gospel places us, in the household of the true God, freed from the dominion of the false deity and restored to the liberty of sons and daughters. Let every tongue that once uttered the false name now glorify the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion forever and ever.
