Is this what the Catholic church has come to? Allowing other religions to dictate the prayers we for for the souls in need.
Its one reason I left the church. Top cardinals and others don’t seem to beleive themselves. Why should anyone else?
Good point. How many statements have come from various cardinals (like Martino and Kasper) that aren’t very close to reflecting the mind of the Church? The notion that the prayer for the conversion of the Jews may be eliminated strikes me as just such a notion.
My way or highway? Did not CHRIST say “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man comes to the Father except through Me?” Did He not say that we walk the narrow road, not the wide road through which many travel?
IRRC the Holy See ordered the US bishops to correct the mistaken impression they gave with the wording of that document. To say that the Church does not seek the conversion of the Jews to Catholicism is dead wrong.
Source?
I agree. I’m increasingly concerned at the hard-nosed militism I read in this forum putting liturgical and canonical “purity” ahead of the fundamentals of Christian love.
What nonsense. SOME Christians were passive in the face of Nazi persecution. Some were extremely active against it including Pope Pius XII and many other Catholics who prayed for the conversion of the Jews. There is nothing 'archaic" about that. Generally the more devout the Christian a person was, the more active they were against the persecution of the Jews. The slaughter of the Jews had nothing to do with their religious beliefs, it was because of the Nazi perception of them as a race. Those of Jewish descent who were atheists, protestants and Catholics were slaughtered exactly the same as religious Jews.
That people can still defensively ignore 500 years of virulent and overt Christian anti-semitism is appalling. Singling out “the Jews” in prayer, though rationalized as a charity, effectively put them in the same category to average people as pagans, heretics, and the plague.
That’s not the issue. No one opposes prayers for the converion of non-Catholics. The issue here is the formal singling out of Jews among all non-Catholics, in the liturgy of Mass.
Neither I nor anybody else here has attempted to ignore or defend the disgraceful history of anti-semitism by Christians in previous centuries.(and by some even today). So I would appreciate if you would withdraw this unfounded accusation.
What nonsense. You would have to be schizophrenic to simultaneously hate somebody, AND pray for him. And as I keep saying and everybody keeps ignoring, the prayer for the Jews is only one of a series of prayers for various non-Catholic groups; the Jews are not “singled out”; and to say that the p;rayer encourages anti-semitism is as absurd as saying that the other parts of the prayer encourage hatred and persecution of athiests, protestants, etc. For some reason no-one makes this accusation.
The issue here is the condemning language of the 1962 Missal’s Good Friday prayers for the conversion of “the Jews” vs. the language NO Liturgy which is essentially positive. Though its technically irrelevant because the MP prohibits the 1962 liturgy in the triduum, its meaninglful in revealing the insensitivity of those who would so easily slip back into categorically hurtful old language. And if you don’t think that 1962 language is hurtful, ask a Jew. In fact the 1962 Missal just barely missed including using the adjective “perfidious” to decribe “the Jews”. That word was only dropped from the text a few years earlier.
