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| By Israel Insider staff July 7, 2007 |
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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called the Vatican's inclusion of a prayer for the conversion of Jews in the Latin Mass "a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations, after 40 years of progress between the Church and the Jewish people."
A papal order allowing the use of the 16th Century Tridentine Mass (Latin Mass) includes the prayer used in the Good Friday liturgy from the 1962 Missal, "For the conversion of the Jews. Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.?
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, in Rome for meetings with Vatican officials, issued the following statement: "We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday Mass, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted. This is a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations. It is the wrong decision at the wrong time."
"It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the Church that rejects change and reconciliation."
ADL noted that in 1959, Pope John XXIII removed the term "perfidious Jews" from the controversial Good Friday Latin Mass. In the 1970 Missal of Paul VI, which is currently used, the prayer for the conversion of Jews was replaced by a positive prayer recognizing the Jews' eternal covenant with God, a principle to which Pope John Paul II was deeply committed.
The prayer used in the New Mass according to the Pope Paul VI missal reads: "Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption." |
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