Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Following the annual Day for Catholic-Jewish Dialogue on 17 January, virulent polemic broke out in Italy and the rest of the world with regard to a new version, in Latin, of the customary Prayer “For the Jews” to be used from this year on during the Good Friday liturgy. The prodromata must be sought in the publication by Pope Benedict XVI last July of a Motu proprio which liberalised the Rite of the Mass dear to Catholic traditionalists. Since then, there has been heated debate among ecclesiastic and rabbinic representatives over the advisability of using the John XXIII edition of the Missal (which updated the older edition of Pius V, also called Tridentine) instead of the more familiar edition promulgated by Paul VI in 1970.
Why this polemic? Here are the principal facts. Whereas in the Missal of John XXIII the prayer for the Jews in question included this phrase “Heed the prayers we offer for the blindness of that people… that they may be delivered from their darkness”, text to which the Jews strongly object since it refers explicitly to what is called “theology of substitution”, or the fact that Israel can only be saved if it converts to the Church of Christ, the Paul VI formula, “Let us pray for the Jewish people the first to hear to word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant”, lays emphasis more positively on the validity of the covenant which God established with the Jewish people.
Benedict XVI, however, besides liberalising the old rite of the Tridentine Missal - which, by the way, was never revoked, not even by the last Council - has altered the original formula: “ Let us also pray for the Jews: that God our Lord might enlighten their hearts, so that they might know Jesus Christ as the Saviour of all mankind. Almighty and eternal God, whose desire it is that all men might be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, grant in your mercy that as the fullness of mankind enters into your Church, all Israel may be saved ".
This new formula is what scandalises Jews all over the world who say that in this way the Church goes back forty years in the exercise of dialogue between the two Abramitic faiths. But is this really the case?
First of all let us take a look at the Catholic position following the protests of rabbis who threatened to suspend dialogue. It is not the Pope who speaks, but Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and therefore the Vatican's person responsible for dialogue with Judaism, who said in a recent interview: “We have reason to think this prayer will not be an obstacle to dialogue since it reflects the faith of the Church and furthermore the Jews also have prayers in their liturgical texts which Catholics find displeasing. We must accept and respect one another in our diversity”. And he immediately added: “This is a text of Paul (Rom 11, 25-26) expressing the eschatological hope that the people of Israel may enter the Church with all the other peoples. I mean that it expresses a final hope, not the intention to start mission among them”. Almost as if to emphasis the method rather than the content of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, the Cardinal concluded: “We will dialogue with all our energy but the goal of our dialogue cannot be to erase constitutive differences”.
On the Jewish side positions are conflicting. Bitter disappointment expressed by the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, and the president of the Italian Assembly of Rabbis Giuseppe Laras, is countered by positions of other Jews, including the authoritative professor Giorgio Israel who said, citing Rabbi David Berger: “Since there is no trace in the new prayer of Pope Benedict XVI of forced conversion or teaching of despise for the Jewish people, the Church has the right in the truth of her faith … the right to say that Judaism is mistaken about central questions such as that of the divinity of Jesus; and the symmetric right is valid”. “They (Catholics) - Israel continues - have the right to aspire that Jews may recognise the divinity of Christ at the end of time and to say that salvation is more difficult for those who are not Christians. According to Berger, the Ratzinger position, since it avoids ‘double standards’, shows more respect for the Jews than many others”. The professor concludes almost repeating the intervention of Cardinal Kasper, replying directly to Italian rabbis, “positions such as that of Laras serve only to supply arguments to those who say that religions are intrinsically intolerant and unable to speak to one another without forcing the interlocutor to bend his point of view, or, in the best of cases, keeping quiet about differences since they are offensive. Laras says: what would happen if the Jews were to treat in a symmetric way the Christian faith? They do. We do. There is no need for me to tell you that Jewish prayers are (inevitably) intrinsic with the conviction of possessing what is true, the true calling”.
One final consideration, in my opinion central and resolutive to whole question, is made at the end of the interview when Israel urges fellow Jews to consider first of all questions on the method of inter-religious dialogue and only later on the contents: “A faith which is solid and free from constriction has no need to castle, just as the great masters of medieval Judaism did not retreat from confrontation even when attempts at conversion were supported with violence. The suspension of dialogue proposed by Rabbi Laras is regressive and dangerous, and would only make sense for a faith which is feeble and drained. Since this is not the case, it is to be hoped that a more reflective and rational attitude will be adopted”. We will see how the matter develops. (4 - to be continued) (Agenzia Fides 29/2/2008; righe 66, parole 962)
