Priests pray in public.
There are always plenty of people praying in public on Saturday afternoons doing their penance after their interrogation by the priests.
Or don't priests dole out penance any more?
Do people not go to Catholic churches to pray any more?
Jesus wasn't opposed to prayer in public.
Luke 18:9-To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Imagine that. The tax collector who prayed in the temple, in public no doubt since the pharisee saw him, was commended by Jesus. How does that fit in with your misinterpretation of Matthew 6?
Matthew 21:12 & 13 Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," he said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'"
How could Jesus call the temple a house of prayer for all nations if He taught against praying in public?
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They pray in churches. That's not a public place. There is usually a door. Besides, priests pray because that's their job.
There are always plenty of people praying in public on Saturday afternoons doing their penance after their interrogation by the priests.
Confession is not an interrogation. And when they pray they pray in the church, hopefully in a remote part, not showing off. I don't think people are praying on church grounds, publicly shedding tears and crying out loud for everyone to see and hear. Nor are they all outside on the street praying for all passers by to see.
Do people not go to Catholic churches to pray any more?
The major reason they go to church is to receive sacraments. They can pray at home. But since they are in the church to receive =sacraments they can use that time to pray. Protestants don;t receive sacrametns, so they can pray at home. Why are in church?
Jesus wasn't opposed to prayer in public. Luke 18:9-
Temple was like a church, not a public place, not the inside of it. The Jews were there not necessarily to pray but to fofer sacrificies. Once they were they they used that time to also pray.
The Pharisee stood in the front so everytone would see him pray. Jesus was opposed to any type of attention-drawing prayer practice, where people want to appear righteous to others.
How could Jesus call the temple a house of prayer for all nations if He taught against praying in public?
The biblical word for "nations" is tribes, meaning tribes of Israel, not all nations of the world. Jews had no interest in all the tirbes of the world and Jesus ' mission was to the lost tribes of Israel, not the world, by his own admission.