When Pope Benedict XVI lifted restrictions on the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass in 2007 he was probably unaware of the row he was about to provoke. Almost immediately his motu proprio drew condemnation from Jewish leaders unhappy about the wording of the Good Friday prayer for the Jews in the Extraordinary Form. So, a few months later, he rewrote the prayer – and the row quickly died down.
Since then little mention has been made of the prayer. That is why, when the Bishops of England and Wales released the resolutions they agreed at their plenary meeting last month, journalists were rather flummoxed. Beside the call to respond to the refugee crisis was a request to Rome to rewrite the Good Friday prayer once again.
The resolution was such a surprise that it went unquestioned at the press conference presenting the results of the bishops’ plenary meeting. Yet, in the following weeks, criticism of the move has grown. For not only have the bishops risked creating a controversy where none existed, they have also unearthed a thorny question that cuts to the heart of Christianity.
The prayer, authored by the Pope Emeritus, reads: “Let us also pray for the Jews: that our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all men.”
The Novus Ordo version is slightly different. “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,” it says.
According to Archbishop Kevin McDonald, chairman of the bishops’ Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations, the latest version of the Extraordinary Form prayer has “reverted to being a prayer for the conversion of Jews”. He said the prayer had caused “great confusion and upset in the Jewish community”.
In contrast, he said, the 1970 prayer “is basically a prayer that the Jewish people would continue to grow in the love of God’s name and in faithfulness of his Covenant, a Covenant which – as St John Paul II made clear in 1980 – has not been revoked.”
But Felipe Alanís Suárez, president of the traditionalist group Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce (FIUV), said in a statement last week that Benedict XVI’s re-write was “clearly based on what is essential to Christianity: the acceptance of Christ as the saviour of the whole world, and the desire that all persons be saved.”
Mr Suárez explained: “The prayer looks forward to the incorporation of the Jewish people, of which Our Lord Jesus Christ and His first disciples were all members, in the salvation won for the human race by Christ on the Cross, a reconciliation which, as St Paul teaches, will be fulfilled only towards the end of history.”
Interestingly, it was not the bishops of England and Wales who first raised the issue. It all started during a panel discussion at a conference in Germany on the 50th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, organised by the German bishops.
At the event Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews, called for the 2008 prayer to be revised. To the surprise of many, Bishop Heinrich Mussinghoff of Aachen agreed with him, describing the prayer as a “burden” for Christian-Jewish relations which could easily be solved. That exchange led to German bishops making their own appeal to Rome.
Do rabbis in Britain think similarly to their counterparts in Germany? According to Rabbi Jonathan Romain, the prayer in question is a problem because “the core condition of interfaith dialogue is acceptance of the other’s right to be as they are and to remain as they are, so calls for their conversion undermines attempts at dialogue and implies that it is not serious after all”.
Rabbi Romain added: “One of the wonderful developments in the world of faith over the last 50 years have been the growth of interfaith relations, much of which was pioneered by Catholic-Jewish relations. This Good Friday prayer has not been in accord with the new spirit of religious rapproachement. There is a strong feeling that changing it would be a beneficial part of that process.”
Yet, according to the FIUV, in their daily prayers “Jews also pray for the conversion of ‘all of the impious of the earth’”. But Catholics are not asking Jews to drop this particular prayer.
The questions remains: will the Vatican listen to the English and Welsh bishops? One source close to the Congregation for the Divine Worship said the prayer was unlikely to change in Benedict XVI’s lifetime, given that he wrote the prayer. The source also pointed out that Fr Joseph Ratzinger was actually present 50 years ago at the drafting of Nostra Aetate and so was hardly ignorant about what is and is not acceptable regarding the Church’s approach to Judaism.
In the meantime, the FIUV has insisted “that to ask of our Lord for the grace of sharing with all our brothers the joy of salvation in Jesus Christ, is an act of humility and selfless love” and also “a spiritual work of mercy”.
If this is the case, however controversial the prayer might be, now would be an especially odd year for the Vatican to call time on it.
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