No need to revise the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, says leading traditionalist

[ProVobis]

I’ve no doubt whatsoever that Pope E. Benedict is totally on board with further development of the prayer.

…of which 99.9999% will never hear in their lifetime.

(unless it’s one of the silent prayers, then it would be 100%)

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Have you studied Talmud? How wonderful! It’s a hard discipline. Where? Mine were in Jerusalem and was very, very VERY basic. It takes a lifetime of prayer and learning.

The Talmud is one of the most official religious documents of Judaism. It is a book, containing written words. Words have meaning, a particular sense. The examples I cited are clear enough unless I used a faulty translation, in which case feel free to give a more precise rendering of the original text.

I’m in favour of a public apology by the most prominent representatives of Judaism for these and other examples of hate speech in the Talmud (of course I know I’m never going to get it - just like I know that nobody else is going to ask for it either )

 

[gracepoole]

…of which 99.9999% will never hear in their lifetime.

(unless it’s one of the silent prayers, then it would be 100%)

Why does the number exposed to this prayer determine its value?

I’m still confused as to why the language for the EF prayer was revised in 2008.

 

[gracepoole]

I’m in favour of a public apology by the most prominent representatives of Judaism for these and other examples of hate speech in the Talmud (of course I know I’m never going to get it - just like I know that nobody else is going to ask for it either )

Perhaps when Jews are the primary perpetrators of a genocide against Christians you’ll get your wish.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Perhaps when Jews are the primary perpetrators of a genocide against Christians you’ll get your wish.

Ah, the Holocaust! I recently looked up the figures for military and civilian casualties in World War 2. Here are the total military deaths and military-related civilian deaths for the principal nations that fought Nazi Germany:

France: 500 000
USSR: about 18 000 000
Poland: nearly 6 000 000
United KIngdom: 450 000
United States; 420 000

These are the nations - all non-jewish, all ‘gentile’, all ‘goyim’ - that brought down Nazism and saved even more Jews (and others) from extermination. Isn’t that a good enough reason for Judaism to officially renounce its religious hostility towards non-jews?

 

[Sarcelle]

But it’s not even close to being a level playing field. The Catholic Church has been horrendous to Jews. We have slaughtered them for centuries. Why else do you think they call the Church such names? Christians have much to repent over concerning how we have treated the Jews. WE need to level the playing field by being more respectful of our ‘Older Brothers’ in God.

The Catholic Church is composed of people not only in Europe but in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is more than the Vatican.

The Catholics in these lands have not persecuted Jews, nor have they conducted genocide or progroms against them. The more accurate statement would be Europeans, Catholic and non-Catholics, have persecuted Jews.

Why should all Catholics take the collective blame?

I do not see anything offensive with this prayer. If as a Christian you truly believe that Jesus is the narrow gate to God, why shouldn’t we pray for Jews or any other non-Christian?

 

[Justin_Swanton]

But it’s not even close to being a level playing field. The Catholic Church has been horrendous to Jews. We have slaughtered them for centuries. Why else do you think they call the Church such names? Christians have much to repent over concerning how we have treated the Jews. WE need to level the playing field by being more respectful of our ‘Older Brothers’ in God.

A closer look at history would show that the Church has not ‘slaughtered them for centuries’. There have been anti-jewish progroms but they were not initiated by the Church. A St Bernard, for example, protected Jews from hostility.

As regards ‘slaughtering’, we need to keep in mind that it was only with the advent of state secularism that the mass killing of innocent people became possible. When the Church’s influence extended to a country’s government and legal system things like the Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, the Gulag, the massacre of the Kulaks, etc. would have been simply inconceivable.

 

[Brendan]

I would like to quote an excellent piece in Commonweal that gives an overview of Msgr John Oesterreicher, one of the key drafters of Nostra Aetate. The point being that NA was able to articulate for the first time that the covenant with the Jews was valid in and of itself and that it did not require Christian supercessionism. There is no need whatsoever to convert the Jews in order for them to achieve salvation.

Can you quote where N.A. made that statement?

What I read in N.A. was the following

It is, therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows

Where were the Jews exempted from that?

And how does praying for them violate that instruction?

Once again, here is the prayer in English

Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen

 

[gracepoole]

Ah, the Holocaust! I recently looked up the figures for military and civilian casualties in World War 2. Here are the total military deaths and military-related civilian deaths for the principal nations that fought Nazi Germany:

France: 500 000
USSR: about 18 000 000
Poland: nearly 6 000 000
United KIngdom: 450 000
United States; 420 000

These are the nations - all non-jewish, all ‘gentile’, all ‘goyim’ - that brought down Nazism and saved even more Jews (and others) from extermination. Isn’t that a good enough reason for Judaism to officially renounce its religious hostility towards non-jews?

Might want to do just a wee bit more research into the Holocaust – specifically collaboration of civilians and the motivations of Allied powers during WWII. Thinking that Jews should be grateful to Christians post-Holocaust is…novel. I’ll give you that.

 

[zz912]

Are many Catholics now embarrassed by their own faith?

Are they embarrassed by Jesus’ command and desire that all should convert to the Catholic Church?

Do they not believe the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ?

Do they not believe that Jews are equally worthy persons who deserve the hear the Gospel message and receive our prayers?

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Handy thing, the internet. One can track down useful facts in very little time.

Here is the background on Arnaud Amalric. Nothing to do with Jews or pogroms.

Before going any further with the iniquities of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages (I see the Inquisition hovering in the wings) it would be useful to point out one aspect of pre-revolutionary society that does not exist today and which is difficult for contemporary minds to grasp:

Before 1789 there was no such thing as separation of Church and State, i.e. there was no such thing as a secular state. It was understood by everyone that if the majority of the population of a region followed a particular religion, the authorities and lawmakers of that region would be obliged to publicly uphold that religion. It was inconceivable for the civil authorities to be religiously indifferent. That meant that religious minorities might be tolerated but were necessarily excluded from public affairs. Proselytizing was viewed with the greatest hostility for the simple reason that once the proponents of a religion had gained sufficient followers everyone knew they would take up arms and depose the local authorities.

There is a parallel with Marxist guerrillas. They were not satisfied with just preaching Marxism. Their aim was to seize power and install their ideology as a political and social way of life. That meant civil war, and exactly the same thing happened when a new religious movement sprang up in the Middle Ages - religious civil war with all its concomitant horrors. Hence the Church’s dim view of the Cathars - and hence the Inquisition, which was not founded to slaughter non-catholics, but prevent heterodox zealots from spreading mayhem.

Today, when political power is not tied to religion, there is no reason nor justification for something like the Inquisition. We live in a very different world, but that does not mean we need condemn the Catholics of the past for taking measures to protect their very survival.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Might want to do just a wee bit more research into the Holocaust – specifically collaboration of civilians and the motivations of Allied powers during WWII. Thinking that Jews should be grateful to Christians post-Holocaust is…novel. I’ll give you that.

What is so novel about it? The Holocaust was performed exclusively by the Nazis, and the Nazis were viewed with revulsion by free societies even before the outbreak of the Second World War. Is there any reason why we should feel a collaborative guilt for what happened in Germany and Poland in the 1940’s?

If Germany had won World War II how many Jews would be left now? The Jews should indeed thank the Allied Powers for their survival and I can think of no better way of expressing their gratitude than by ripping out those offensive passages from the Talmud.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

One needs to put the whole thing in perspective. Not every Allied soldier was fired with religious zeal for the freeing of the Jews, sure. But the mentality of the Western nations at that time categorically repudiated what the Nazis were doing. Not everyone in the Middle Ages was a saint either, but the political systems at that time simply precluded mass slaughter of any kind.

Truth to tell, what really got me involved in this thread was my irritation with selective indignation: we all have to be so shocked that a Good Friday prayer calls for the conversion of the Jews whilst those repulsive passages from the Talmud - never revoked, never apologised for - are passed over in silence. Media morality. It sucks.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Mmmh…I see ***you ***are a Forum Elder…

What are your ***real ***motives for being here? :ehh:

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Just kidding.

 

[Brendan_64]

Why should we no pray for the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic Faith? Should we not indeed by regularly praying for the conversion of all people to the Catholic Faith? Did Christ not tell us to go and make disciples of all nations?

 

[gracepoole]

Truth to tell, what really got me involved in this thread was my irritation with selective indignation: we all have to be so shocked that a Good Friday prayer calls for the conversion of the Jews whilst those repulsive passages from the Talmud - never revoked, never apologised for - are passed over in silence. Media morality. It sucks.

It’s a group of bishops who asked that a change be made. Are they now acting on “media morality”? To whose “selective indignation” are you referring?

 

[gracepoole]

Are many Catholics now embarrassed by their own faith?

Are they embarrassed by Jesus’ command and desire that all should convert to the Catholic Church?

Do they not believe the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ?

Do they not believe that Jews are equally worthy persons who deserve the hear the Gospel message and receive our prayers?

Were the bishops and popes involved in previous revisions of this prayer embarrassed by their own faith, then?

 

[gracepoole]

Why should we no pray for the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic Faith? Should we not indeed by regularly praying for the conversion of all people to the Catholic Faith? Did Christ not tell us to go and make disciples of all nations?

Right, but I still don’t get why the 2008 revision occurred. What was the reason for/point of it?

 

[TCEL]

I want us all to be one. This controversy always strikes me as odd. It almost seems to align with the millennialist and rapture views that the church was almost an afterthought, and that God has something different in mind for the Jews.

I have so much respect for Judaism. Best class I took in college; it almost felt homey. I remember looking around thinking that the professor and some of the students would make better Christians than I, and if people find that offensive, then there’s nothing I can do about that.