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holdencaulfield
Guest
Why would we do that. Do we ask Jews to change their theology?
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Dauphin
Guest
That’s typically what’s involved in conversion
We ask them to change their beliefs completely, but they request we make small changes that undermine the integrity of our own faith. I think the former approach is vastly preferable.
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holdencaulfield
Guest
That’s typically what’s involved in conversion
My point is that is so stupid of people to try to do that.
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Duke_of_Mantua
Guest
LOL!I am asking this question, because I was wondering (with all the controversy surrounding the prayer) if the thousands of Jewish Brothers/Sisters who attend the good friday liturgy in the extaordinary form, if anyone noticed if they (the Jewish people) seemed mad?
At my Parish, when the prayer for their conversion was read, (in latin) they all seemed very angry! Some even left. (and there was A lot of them there, wearing yarmulkes)
what was the reaction at your Parish?
wearing yarmulkes at TLM!
Classic.
For those who don’t get it, the OP is cleverly and quite comically satirizing the jews who take offense to our Good Friday prayers.
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dbacks5439
Guest
My point is, we don’t lash out to other faiths and tell them how to pray. We certainly would never go to a Jewish Temple and demand them to pray using the Trinitarian formula. We would just like the same courtesy given to us is all.
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palmas85
Guest
Most Jews that I’ve known have been pretty secular in nature. I don’t think many would be concerned in the slightest since their devotion to Judaism is pretty minimal at beast. . And those that would be concerned, the JDL for instance are really not much more than thinly veiled terrorists looking for excuses to stir things up…We had a number of orthodox Jews attend our Good Friday liturgy. When a prayer for their conversion was read, a riot broke out in the pews. Ever since Jews have been attending Good Friday services, we’ve had complaints that the liturgy doesn’t suit them.
It’s a good that the Vatican is moving to enforce the rights of Jews to not be offended during our liturgies!
And to take it step further,most truly orthodox Jews wouldn’t be caught dead at a Catholic Church or probably any faiths gathering place other than their own.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I didn’t find the original post particularly clever. Actually, it is almost shocking in its lack of comprehension.
There have been points in our history when the story of the Passion got certain Christians worked up enough to take it upon themselves to take it out on the local Jewish population. Wouldn’t be caught dead near a Catholic church on Good Friday? Well, that metaphor is a little too close for comfort, I would think. (Never mind that an observant Jew is typically going to be home welcoming the Sabbath on a Friday night.)
You all remember that when the Passion is read on Good Friday, we get the part of “the crowd.” “They”, in other words, were “us.” There have been times when that kind of went over some heads, as it turns out. Oh, and observant or not wasn’t really a issue when Hitler was rounding up the Jews. We do all remember that this wasn’t even a century ago? If Jews had a history of getting worked up at Temple and going on rampages against Christians, we might be touchy about their choice of words, too. Perhaps there was some of that in Matthew’s time, but we know where the score lies on that count by now. I’m not suggesting that anyone outside the Church gets to dictate our liturgies, but let’s have a little compassion, here.
Also, please remember that Jews don’t actively convert people to Judaism, because Jews don’t believe you have to be Jewish to please God. If you go to Israel, you will find the righteous Gentiles honored with public monuments, for instance the ones that risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. Forcible conversions to Christianity, on the other hand, are another big part of their history with us. (Not that this was always a life-saving concession, mind you.) That there are Christians who would risk their lives to make sure there will be Jews remaining in the world does help Jews sleep better, especially on a Good Friday night.
Within the last century, over half of European Jewry was exterminated, because the leader of what had been a Christian nation couldn’t succeed in wiping them all out. We cannot blame Jews if that is a page in our common history that no one is in a hurry to turn back to.
There have been points in our history when the story of the Passion got certain Christians worked up enough to take it upon themselves to take it out on the local Jewish population. Wouldn’t be caught dead near a Catholic church on Good Friday? Well, that metaphor is a little too close for comfort, I would think. (Never mind that an observant Jew is typically going to be home welcoming the Sabbath on a Friday night.)
You all remember that when the Passion is read on Good Friday, we get the part of “the crowd.” “They”, in other words, were “us.” There have been times when that kind of went over some heads, as it turns out. Oh, and observant or not wasn’t really a issue when Hitler was rounding up the Jews. We do all remember that this wasn’t even a century ago? If Jews had a history of getting worked up at Temple and going on rampages against Christians, we might be touchy about their choice of words, too. Perhaps there was some of that in Matthew’s time, but we know where the score lies on that count by now. I’m not suggesting that anyone outside the Church gets to dictate our liturgies, but let’s have a little compassion, here.
Also, please remember that Jews don’t actively convert people to Judaism, because Jews don’t believe you have to be Jewish to please God. If you go to Israel, you will find the righteous Gentiles honored with public monuments, for instance the ones that risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. Forcible conversions to Christianity, on the other hand, are another big part of their history with us. (Not that this was always a life-saving concession, mind you.) That there are Christians who would risk their lives to make sure there will be Jews remaining in the world does help Jews sleep better, especially on a Good Friday night.
Within the last century, over half of European Jewry was exterminated, because the leader of what had been a Christian nation couldn’t succeed in wiping them all out. We cannot blame Jews if that is a page in our common history that no one is in a hurry to turn back to.
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palmas85
Guest
True points but hardly convincing. While true that Hitler slaughtered millions of Jews, he also slaughtered millions of Gypsies, non Jewish Poles, Russians, Greeks, Romanians etc as well as a shockingly high number of Catholic Priests, Nuns and Monks. While true the Jews were used by him to unite the German people behind him they were far from the only group persecuted by him. Far too many people think that they were the only ones set up for extermination by him. They were not.
I think it good to look at the insanity that gripped the world in that same general time period. In Russia, untold millions were slaughtered from the time of the revolutions until the end of the war and beyond. The Japanese killed millions upon millions of Chinese and others in the quest to totally Asianize Asia. In my own country the Philippines, estimates ran from 2-5 million. Yet you never hear about those atrocities.
While Hitler was indeed one of the prime movers of the worldwide carnage at that time he was far from the only one and the Jews were far from the only ones who suffered.
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EasterJoy
Guest
The point is not that the Jews are the only ones who have had atrocities visited upon them, nor that they have been the only targets of genocide, nor that Hitler didn’t hate a lot of people.
The point is that some Christians, and not just in a few isolated cases, let alone during one single war waged by one insane man, have mistakenly seen the Passion accounts as a reason to wage pogroms against the Jews. The point is that Christians have, in the past, sometimes forced Jews to act as if they had been won over to the Gospel in order to escape persecution and death. Many Christians in Germany and across Europe did not defend the Jews, but in fact helped to round them up. Let us face it: many Christians have harbored hatreds against the Jewish people, in the mistaken notion that the Gospels preach that…or at least, they have used that as an excuse for their envious and ignorant hatreds. Not all, that would be a lie, but any is too many.
Does it matter, then, based on our past sins and the scandal we have brought upon our faith by our hatreds, what kind of rhetoric we include in our prayers now with regards to the groups we have wrongly hated, and especially the Jews, from whom our Savior came? Yes, I think it does. I don’t think that ridiculing the concerns that certain Jews have voiced about our intentions in evangelization is productive, let alone charitable.
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palmas85
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I think that view is terribly simplistic and not at all accurate, although popular… From all the research that I have been able to uncover the suspicion and antagonism against the Jews, at least in modern times, did not primarily come from the Passion accounts. It came more from their separitism from the populace at large and their perceived aloofness from the local populace… In Germany for instance, the Jews were predominantly businessmen ,merchants, shop keepers, craftsmen and the like. They kept to themselves to a great degree and were seen as foreign to a large number of the German people. Many Germans considered them to be little more than alien exploiters who stole from the people and kept them down…
Now remember that after World War 1 Germany got hit with pretty tough sanctions and reparations to pay. Inflation shot up, prices went up and who would be seen to profit from this by the average man in the street? I think the answer is obvious. The outsider, the shopkeeper, the ones who charged these prices and who seemed to be profiting from them
You had a pretty good parallel in Los Angeles during the recent, well not so recent riots. Who were the ones that to a great degree got targeted for looting and destruction?. Store owners and shopkeepers who were in large part immigrants, considered to be outsiders exploiting the people. People who kept to themselves by and large.
No, Hitlers actions were well calculated and had little if anything to do with the Passion of Christ, as popular as it may be to believe that. He saw an opportunity to unite the people against a common enemy, the perceived outsiders, exploiters and aliens in their midst who were profiting from the German peoples misery.
It worked against them for that reason. Thats not to say that some may have felt that the policies against the Jews were some sort of divine retribution against them, but the reason behind the persecutions had nothing to do with the Passion and everything to do with the practical need for a popular scapegoat in order for control to be seized.
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Valke2
Guest
- There is no question that Passion plays historically were used to whip up antisemitism.
- You can’t preach that Jews killed God and continue to bear the guilt of deicide and not expect there to devlope a culture of hate against Jews.
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palmas85
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Whether or not the morality plays of the Middle Ages were in fact used to whip up hatred is a matter of some debate. No doubt they could have been. However the plain truth is that if Scripture is to be believed then the Jewish leaders of the time, specifically the Sanhedrin, did indeed want Christ dead, were Instrumental in his death and apparently the majority of the Jewish people in the area either agreed with them or were unconcerned with their actions.
The Jews of the time that were followers of Jesus were few in number and relatively powerless.
Glossing over or outright changing historical facts in the interest of political correctness leads only to a misinterpretation of history. We cannot change what happened at the Crucifixcion nor the events surrounding it.
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EasterJoy
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You know about Krystalnacht, about the Warsaw Ghetto, about the Shoah (Holocaust) and you argue this was just a politically-motivated case of resentment being stirred up against what was seen as an unfeeling “big business” class, and had nothing to do with anti-Semitism? The synagogues were torched and everyone from old women to little children were rounded up for a life of inhuman privations, purely out of economic frustration? You can compare this to a mob looting stores? (Which, I might add, clearly had racial motivations, as well, and not purely economic ones.) Put “Shoah” or “Holocaust” and “photos” into Google, and I think you’ll have to change your tune. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was not merely a political expediency that happened to fall upon the Jews. He hated a lot of people, but he undeniably put the Jews in a class by themselves.
This has nothing to do with the Passion, but everything to do with how a considerable number Christians through the ages have seen fit to twist the message of the Passion against Jews. Look up the history of the passion plays, which the Church has found necessary to ban at times (and we’re talking 1770, not Vatican II). Said a villager and performer from present-day Oberammergau: “Former Passion plays, especially those from the medieval time, treated the conflict of Jews and Christians in a very dangerous way. The idea that the Jews are morally and intellectually inferior to Christians used to be very clear in the play, but that’s not the message that we will give to our audience.”
This is what Hitler had to say to the crowds at the passion plays of Oberammergau in 1934: He said: "his blood be on us and our children… [Matt 27:25], maybe I’m the one who must execute this curse… I do no more than join what has been done for more than 1,500 years already. Maybe I render Christianity the best service ever!”
You can know this and still argue that a Jew is supposed to think no harm can come from an observance surrounding the Passion?
That was an effect that they too often had, and it was sometimes intentional. It is incorrect to say that this was the primary goal for which passion plays were invented.
A person can preach that we were all responsible for the crucifixion, and yet not preach self-hatred. It is the singling out of *someone else *at whose feet to lay responsibility for the Passion that was the root of this evil. A passion play can be done without that, and still be within its original roots, and in fact must be done without that in order to be faithful to the Gospel.
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At any rate, there is a Jewish perception that our observance of the Pascal Mysteries could be used to pose a danger to them again someday. Their reasons, if not currently applicable, are nevertheless not imaginary. I don’t think that the proper response to their concerns is to downplay the evil that has been visited upon them in the past, let alone to ridicule them for being concerned. After all, if those who deny history are doomed to repeat it, who will suffer the broken windows? Whose families will be terrified, or even killed? On top of that, if we so callously deny their concerns, what kind of evangelization is that? We might as well save our breath.
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palmas85
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OK then what do you propose? Re write Scripture so that it shows that the Jewish leaders and the populace at the time were bystanders to an event carried out wholly and completely by the Roman occupiers? That the Jewish leaders had had no influence or bearing on the account? I hope that is not what you are saying.
You just said that those who deny history are doomed to repeat it. Historically those primarily responsible for the death of Christ were the Jewish leaders of the time. So if we ignore that fact what do you think will happen by your own words?
To deny it, to forget it and to minimize it is just plain wrong.
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Valke2
Guest
Throughout nearly 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred and violence against Jews of Europe and America, and various forms of anti-Semitic expression. Historically, Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) was a period when Jews were most vulnerable and when Christians perpetrated some of the worst violence against their Jewish neighbors.
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In its document, Nostra Aetate, the Church officially repudiated both the deicide charge and all forms of anti-Semitism
adl.org/Interfaith/passion_theology.asp
In 1988, the United States (Catholic) Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs issued a pamphlet, “Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion,” which stresses that passion plays must avoid caricatures of Jews and falsely opposing Jews and Jesus.
The Christian Science Monitor, in its article, Capturing the Passion, explains that “historically, productions have reflected negative images of Jews and the long-time church teaching that the Jewish people were collectively responsible for Jesus’ death. Violence against Jews as ‘Christ-killers’ often flared in their wake.”
Lampman, Jane. “Capturing the Passion”, Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 2003.
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In its document, Nostra Aetate, the Church officially repudiated both the deicide charge and all forms of anti-Semitism
adl.org/Interfaith/passion_theology.asp
In 1988, the United States (Catholic) Bishops Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs issued a pamphlet, “Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion,” which stresses that passion plays must avoid caricatures of Jews and falsely opposing Jews and Jesus.
The Christian Science Monitor, in its article, Capturing the Passion, explains that “historically, productions have reflected negative images of Jews and the long-time church teaching that the Jewish people were collectively responsible for Jesus’ death. Violence against Jews as ‘Christ-killers’ often flared in their wake.”
Lampman, Jane. “Capturing the Passion”, Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 2003.
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EasterJoy
Guest
What do I propose? I kind of like what we do, which is that we read the part of “the crowd” when the Passion is remembered on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. When we hear the words, “Crucify him!”, the words come from our own mouths. How is it that so many want to say that we Christians are the “true Jews” until it comes to admitting that the blood of Christ is on our own heads, that it is *we * who are in that respect the spiritual children of those who denied him and crucified Him?
If you use an account of the Passion to scapegoat anybody, you are missing the whole point of the Pascal Mysteries. Christ made Himself that scapegoat. Of those who crucifed Him, he said, “Father, forgive them.” If we hope for those words to apply to us, then surely we cannot put the offense that lead to them upon the Jews, and not upon ourselves.
We, by taking it upon ourselves to put in our two cents worth about what prayers ought to be said on Good Friday, are now the most in the position of those leaders whom we credit with crucifying Jesus. With whom shall we identify? Shall we put the crown of thorns on the Jew, or shall we accept that it belongs on our own brows?
What do you want to do?
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palmas85
Guest
I’ve always felt the way we do it is proper. And in so saying I accept fully that I am responsible for His death and suffering. I always have.
But apparently some here, maybe not you, feel that the Jews should get a pass on it. I don’t. They also need to accept responsibility and accept who Christ is… Then and only then can the re-conciliation of the Jewish faith and Christianity really start to take place in any meaningful fashion
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palmas85
Guest
I wonder exactly what they mean by that?
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EasterJoy
Guest
Correction. Hitler attended the passion plays at Oberammergau in 1934, but these remarks were made in 1942.
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palmas85
Guest
Thanks for the correction. It makes better sense in that context.
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