Advertisements ad

March 16, 2008

New Good Friday prayer sparks discussion

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

On Good Friday this year, worshippers in at least one congregation in the Archdiocese of Chicago are expected to hear a Latin prayer that has sparked ongoing discussion among Catholics and Jews about what the church really is praying for.

The text, made available only in Latin with no official translations, begins: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men,” according to a translation from Catholic News Service.

It continues: “Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, as the full number of the Gentiles comes into your church, all Israel may be saved.”

The prayer was reformulated by Pope Benedict XVI from an earlier version in the 1962 Missal and released in a frontpage story in L’Osservatore Romano Feb. 5. The original version called on God to “take the veil” from the hearts of the Jewish people and lift their “blindness.” An earlier reference to “perfidious” Jews was removed in 1959.

Pope Benedict revised the prayer after Jewish leaders protested the use of the 1962 prayer, following the pope’s decision to allow more widespread use of the traditional 1962 liturgy for Sunday and daily Masses. But to many ears, it still calls for Jews to become Christian,

“The significance is the symbolism of it,” said Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. “The concern is that there not be a retreat from ‘Nostra Aetate.’”

“Nostra Aetate” is the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which recognized the ongoing validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people.

“At the Second Vatican Council, there are two elements of the tradition that the bishops wanted to correct,” said Father Thomas Baima, provost of the University of St. Mary of the Lake. “The first was to be clear that the charge of deicide cannot be leveled against the Jewish community. They also wanted to correct the notion that because of deicide, the Jewish community was condemned to perpetual wandering. They did that in the document ‘Nostra Aetate.’”

The document reads in part: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; he does not repent of the gifts he makes or of the calls he issues — such is the witness of the Apostle (Paul). In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder.’”

Pope Benedict’s prayer, read in light of that passage, makes it clear that the pope is affirming Vatican II teaching on the relationship of the Catholic Church to the Jewish community, Baima said.

But, he said, Catholics must be mindful of the history between Christians and Jews to understand why Jewish leaders have reacted strongly.

“Throughout European history, Good Friday was a difficult time for the Jewish community,” Baima said. “People would go to church and they would hear the prayers and the sermons — and it was really more the sermons than the prayers that caused trouble — and occasionally, when they came out of church, there would be attacks on the Jewish communities because of what they saw as charges of deicide. The Good Friday prayers are of concern to the Jewish community because Christians at times did not behave according to the law of charity.”

Christians have largely forgotten that part of their history, Baima said.

Jewish leaders have said they prefer the version of the prayer contained in the 1970 version of the Good Friday liturgy, which acknowledges God’s covenant with the Jews — now known as the “ordinary rite” and the rite which will be celebrated in almost all churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The fact that the prayer was changed following Vatican II was a sign to the Jewish community that the Catholic Church meant what it said in “Nostra Aetate.”

Regardless of the discussion, Chicagoarea Jewish leaders said the controversy will not put a damper on Catholic-Jewish relationships and dialogue here.

“We have open discussion,” Kotzin said. “We express our concerns, and our concerns are understood.”

Emily Soloff, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s Chicago Chapter, said that Jewish scholars engaged in interfaith dialogue understand the theological underpinnings of the prayer, but Jews “in the pew” who heard about it in the media did not.

“I’m not sure the media is the best place to be wrestling with theology,” she said.