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Pope Benedict waves from the Vatican (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff June 30, 2007 |
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Pope Benedict XVI apparently intends to authorize the return of the controversial Latin Mass, despite its profoundly anti-Semitic elements. The planned moved has provoked a backlash among senior clergy in Britain and threatens to divide the Catholic Church worldwide.
The 16th-century Tridentine Mass -- which includes references to "perfidious" Jews and other anti-Jewish slurs -- was abandoned in 1969 and replaced with liturgy in local languages in a bid to make worship more accessible to most churchgoers. But the Pope announced on Thursday that a long-awaited document liberalising the use of the Mass, which many clergy fear will also harm the Church's relations with Jews, Muslims, and other Christian denominations, will be released next week. The Rev Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit liturgical expert, said: "The real issue here is not limited to liturgy but has wider implications for church life." He added that proponents of the old Mass "tend to oppose the laity's increased role in parish life... collaboration with other Christians and its dialogue with Jews and Muslims".
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, told the Pope that no changes are needed, and there have been months of heated debate about the impending statement within the uppoer echelons of the Church. Cardinals, bishops and Jewish leaders are concerned about passages in the Mass, recited every Good Friday, which say Jews live in "blindness" and "darkness", and pray that "the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ".
In the 1997 book "Salt of the Earth" Benedict said it was "downright indecent" for people who are still attached to the old rite to be denied it.
"I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it," then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said. "It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that."
Pope Benedict's move is widely seen as an attempt to reach out to an ultra- traditionalist and schismatic group, the Society of St Pius X, and bring it back into the Vatican fold. |
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