[Question:]{.underline} Ought traditional Catholics to employ the Vatican’s new Good Friday prayer for the Jews?
[Answer:]{.underline} It was thanks to Ecumenism that some of the most vociferous objections to Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu proprio of July 7, 2007 once again allowing the traditional Mass, were from the Jews, represented by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. He complained that the Motu proprio declaring the non-abrogation of the traditional Mass and allowing all priests to celebrate it, meant the bringing back of an anti-ecumenical spirit, in the form of the traditional Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews.
It was in response to this objection that the Vatican, on February 5, 2008, published a new Good Friday prayer for the Jews for the celebration of the “traditional” Good Friday rite according to the Motu proprio. This is certainly a radical and revolutionary novelty, namely that the sensitivities of those who know about Christ, the Son of God, and explicitly refuse to believe in Him, might determine the prayers of the Catholic Church.
COMPARISON OF PRAYERS
Here is a comparison between the two prayers, the traditional prayer for the Jews, maintained in the 1955 Restoration of the Holy Week ceremonies, and the new prayer proposed by the Vatican, with the approval of Benedict XVI, to be incorporated into the traditional Missal:
[Traditional Prayer]{.underline}
Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Our God and Lord would withdraw the veil from their hearts: that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Let us kneel.
Arise.
Almighty and eternal God, who drivest not away from Thy mercy even the faithless Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people: that acknowledging the light of Thy truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Our Lord. Amen.
[New Prayer]{.underline}
Let us pray also for the Jews.
May Our God and Lord enlighten their hearts, so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, Savior of all men.
Let us pray.
Let us kneel.
Arise.
Almighty and everlasting God, who desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, mercifully grant that, as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into Thy Church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
This abbreviated and impoverished prayer is a very clever compromise, but one which will satisfy no-one; neither the Jews, nor modernist Catholics, nor certainly the traditional Catholics for which it was written.
REACTION OF THE JEWS
It does not satisfy the Jews, for it maintains that Jews also must receive the light of Christ, who must be their Savior also if He is the Savior of all men. Mr. Ferrara, Remnant columnist, quotes the reaction of the Anti-defamation League, that considers this change as but a “cosmetic revision,” for “while we appreciate that some of the deprecatory language has been removed from a new version of the Good Friday prayer for the Conversion of Jews in the 1962 Roman Missal, we are deeply troubled and disappointed that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord was kept intact.”
REACTION OF VATICAN II CATHOLICS
Secondly, it cannot possibly satisfy modern Catholics, used to the far more politically and ecumenically correct version of Pope Paul VI’s Missal, that only asks that Jews “continue to grow in the love of His name and in faithfulness to His covenant … [and] arrive at the fullness of redemption,” and consequently not daring to insult the Jews with any requirement that they believe in Christ. The new prayer’s call that Jews be enlightened and that they acknowledge Christ as Savior does not have the same ecumenical sensitivity, and is apparently incompatible with the duty to “acknowledge, preserve, and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians” promoted by Vatican II (Nostra Aetate, §2), and consequently with the whole ecumenical movement.
TRADITIONAL REACTION
Traditional Catholics can certainly see in this prayer a great improvement on the Novus Ordo prayer, and one which taken out of context seems to be orthodox, maintaining the duty of Jews to believe in Christ (not, however, to convert to the Catholic Church). However, this compromise cannot possibly satisfy them either, being a radical departure from and weakening of the traditional prayer, and a huge concession to the pressures of ecumenical relationships with Jews.
The context that shows the grave deficiencies of this new prayer is quite simply the comparison with the traditional prayer, prayed from time immemorial, that had already been, alas, modified by Pope John XXIII in 1959 in the interests of ecumenism.
The words the “faithless” Jews and Jewish “infidelity” (in Latin, perfidia) were removed by John XXIII. This was supposedly on account of the pejorative meaning by the modern vernacular word “perfidious”, which is not in any case an accurate translation of the Latin. Nevertheless the result is an unfortunate covering up of the reality. By refusing belief in the divinity of Christ, as revealed, Jews refuse the supernatural Faith. They are theologically without faith, that is, in the state of infidelity. In addition to this change of John XXIII, the new prayer removes any other expression that could be understood in a pejorative way: namely, the “veil” which covers their hearts, and the “blindness” of their refusal to accept the “light of Thy truth, which is Christ”, and the “darkness” in which they are immersed and from which we pray that they may be delivered.
The removal of all these expressions takes away from the new prayer the traditional prayer’s condemnation of Judaism as a false religion. There is no mention of any need for Jews to abandon their infidelity, to rip away the veil, blindness, and darkness of Judaism. Moreover, the expression of the traditional prayer “withdraw the veil from their hearts” is one consecrated by sacred Scripture, and inspired by God Himself, as you can read in II Cor. 3:14 - 16: “Until this present day, the selfsame veil, in the reading of the old testament, remained not taken away (because in Christ it is made void). But even until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. But when they shall be converted to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.” Likewise is consecrated by sacred Scripture the expression “blindness” as referred to the Jews: “blindness in part has happened in Israel” (Rm. 11:25), namely for those who refuse to believe in the Gospel and who are its enemies (Rm. 11:28).
Furthermore, the new prayer states that the Gentiles are to enter into the Church, but no mention is made of the Jews having to do the same, that “all Israel may be saved.” It is true that the traditional prayer does not explicitly mention conversion to the Catholic Church either. However, the difference is that the new prayer introduces the expression “as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into Thy Church,” taken from Romans 11:25, thereby professing the necessity of non-Jews becoming a part of the Church of Christ (but is it the Catholic Church that is indicated thereby?). But at the same time it deliberately omits any mention of the need for Jews to do likewise. This deliberate omission is an unacceptable compromise, especially given the hope for all Israel to be saved. How is this to take place, if it is not through conversion?
The expression “all Israel may be saved” is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which he speaks of the conversion of the Jews at the end of the world (11:26,27). Consequently, it seems to take away from the importance of prayer for the present conversion of Jews and simply to transfer it to something to happen at the end of the world. At least this is the interpretation of Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as quoted by John Vennari on Catholic Family News website: “When the Pope speaks of the conversion of the Jews, one must understand this correctly. He quotes verbatim the eleventh chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. There the Apostle says that we as Christians hope that when the fullness of the Gentiles enter the Church, that then will all of Israel be converted. That is an eschatological end-time hope, and thus does not mean that we have the intention of pursuing the conversion of the Jews as one pursues the conversion of the Gentiles.”
Furthermore, in a letter dated February 13, 2008, on the official letterhead of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Cardinal Kasper had this to say to Chief Rabbi David Rosen of New York: “If one reads exactly what is said in the reformulated prayer one sees that nothing is withdrawn from Nostra Aetate*; indeed, this text remains totally valid and fundamental for our Jewish-Christian relations. It is absolutely not the intention of anyone in the Roman Curia to step back and interrupt our fruitful dialogue, which for us is irreversible… The reformulated text no longer speaks about the conversion of the Jews, as some Jewish critics wrongly affirm. The text is a prayer inspired by Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 11, which is the very text that speaks also of the unbroken covenant. It takes up Paul’s eschatological hope that at the end of times all Israel shall be saved. As a prayer the text lays all in the hands of God and not in ours. It says nothing about how and when. Therefore there is nothing about missionary activities, by which we may take Israel’s salvation in our hands…”* (cf. sidic.org website). There could hardly be a more explicit statement that this prayer is entirely compatible with the modernist idea that the New Testament is not a separate covenant from the Old; that Jews are consequently our older brothers in the faith; that Jews need not convert here and now; that the conciliar church has no program to proselytize them but that rather they will acknowledge Christ in some way, together with the fullness of the Gentiles, in the joint salvation that will take place at the end of the world. Hence the text favors ecumenism, rather than the contrary, as some have affirmed, limiting themselves to superficial appearances.
This interpretation was confirmed on February 15, 2008, by the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi. Defending the new Good Friday prayer for the Jews, he pointed out that that there was “no missionary strategy” towards the Jews but that, to the contrary, “At the heart of the Christian hope is Jesus, and that’s why the church prays, at the end of time, if they are to share Jesus, ‘the faithful of Israel’ will be found at their side.” This is, he says, “the Christian vision” rather than a “program” for the “conversion” of the Jews (Cathcom website).
ORTHODOXY
It is true that the new prayer, separated from its context, appears not in itself to be unorthodox. Hence the approval of some authors, such as Mr. Ferrara, who calls it “a papal masterstroke,” “a perfectly clear prayer for Jewish conversion … theologically perfectly sound.” He consequently requires traditional Catholics to accept uncritically the opinion of Foxman, spokesman of the ADL: “I hope traditionalists everywhere will be at least as perceptive as Foxman in assessing what has happened.” However, the comparison with the traditional prayer shows that it fails to clearly express the absolute need of the Jews to join the one, true Church for eternal salvation, but rather focuses on the modernist teaching on God’s universal salvific will, by the use of the expression “who desires that all men be saved,” as a consequence eliminating every negative expression that would indicate falsehood in Judaism. This is confirmed by the refusal to pray for the same present day entry of Jews into the Church as for the Gentiles.
The prayer, when compared with the traditional prayer, consequently favors ecumenism, although much less so than the prayer of the new rite. Traditional Catholics will not accept that the traditional Missal be tampered with, and that Benedict XVI succeed in his plan of bringing about an influence of the “ordinary” form (= the New Mass), over the “extraordinary form” of the Roman rite, as he calls the traditional Mass. This is but a first step of what he stated to be his intention in his Motu proprio of July 7, 2007, namely that “the two forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching.”
For Catholics to accept this would be to accept the principle of the destruction of traditional liturgy and doctrine in order to bring about a re-assimilation into the post-conciliar church.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.