12-9. Meetings of the Sessions shall be opened and closed with prayer.

DIGEST: Deletion of the word "ordinarily" occurred in 1974.

BACKGROUND & COMPARISON:
1. PCA 1973, 13-10, Adopted text, as printed in the Minutes of General Assembly, p. 133
2. Continuing Presbyterian Church 1973, Proposed text, p. 14
3. PCUS, 1933, XIV, § 69
and
4. PCUS 1925, XIV, § 69
Meetings of the Session shall ordinarily be opened and closed with prayer.

PCUS 1879, V-3-9
Meetings of the Session should ordinarily be opened and closed with prayer.

PCUS 1869 draft, V-3
[no comparable text]

PCUS 1867 draft
[no comparable text in V-3; see V-1, "Of the Courts in General," paragraph 3 : " The courts of the church shall always be opened and closed with prayer."

CONTRAST:
[Editor: We note with regret the following:]
PCUSA 1899, p. 108 [as cited in Digest of the Acts and Deliverances of the General Assembly of the PCUSA (1938), p. 138]
1. Opening and closing prayer not mandatory.
Overture No. 12, from the Presbytery of Cincinnati, asks that the opening and closing of meetings of church Session with prayer be made mandatory. The Assembly answered the Overture in the negative.

COMMENTARY:
F.P. Ramsay, Exposition of the Book of Church Order (1898, p. 89), on V-3-9 :
71. IX. Meetings of the Session shall ordinarily be opened and closed with prayer.
It would seem reasonable that when prayer is omitted, it be omitted by action of the Session, and not by the single decision of the Moderator ; and then the reason for the omission might be stated in the action.