The Pope and the Good Friday Prayer Controversy Updated.

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 fulness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
The 2008 Revision to the 1962 Missal.(Know as the Latin mass to most)

Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. (Prayer in silence. Then the priest says:) Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Current Good Friday Prayer for the Regular form of the Mass(the one most Catholics pray)


With the the revival of the older Liturgy(Latin mass), there was still the controversy over the good Friday prayers. Certain Jewish groups were still going beserk. I thought that criticism was baseless my self. Well the the Holy Father will be changing the prayers that were deemed offensive. This USA Today News Story gives a little bit of a overview. In part:

For centuries, Catholic prayed for the "faithless Jews" (often mistranslated as perfidious or treacherous) to have "the veil" removed from their hearts, to acknowledge Christ and "be delivered from their darkness." It was part of the ancient Latin liturgy for Good Friday, the day Christians believe Christ was crucified.
"Faithless" was dropped in 1960. It was not until the reforms of Vatican II, which included outreach to the Jews and a radical shift away from the old Latin to prayers in modern languages, that this particular prayer was completely rewritten.
Jewish leaders were alarmed in July when Benedict, in a nod to traditionalists who longed for the beauty and power of the Latin Mass used before Vatican II, made it more widely accessible. At the time, he stipulated that the Good Friday liturgy, including the controversial original prayer, not be used.
But on Tuesday, the Vatican released the edited prayer for the traditional Latin Good Friday services. While it omits mention of faithlessness and blindness, it asks God to "enlighten (Jews') hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men," and expresses the hope that "all Israel may be saved.

Now it seems that still Jewish leaders are upset.

Here is just something from the European Jewish Press:
The new Latin text reads: "May the Lord enlighten them (the Jews) so that they recognise Jesus Christ as the Saviour of all men".

According to Rome’s chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, who leads Italy’s largest Jewish community, the new prayer represents "a grave step backwards that sets a major obstacle to the continuation of the Christians-Jews relations as it explicitly shows the aim of converting the interlocutor, thus bringing up for discussion again decades of progresses".

"I am really disappointed", the rabbi told the Italian daily La Repubblica.

"I will put off judging until I have read the text that L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican official journal, divulged, but my feeling is that the new wording is even worse than the one dated 1962," the rabbi said.

Di Segni words were echoed by those of Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, the Milan-based chairman of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly and former chief rabbi of the second largest Italian Jewish community: "By re-proposing the theme of conversion," he said, “the prayer will eventually strengthen the positions of those Jewish environments that oppose the dialogue with the Catholic Church".

Good Grief we are Christians. We pray for the conversion of all people and Jews are not exempt. On Good Friday we pray for seperated breathen(Protestants!!) to become one(which manss Catholics). I don't hear them screaming. Again from the USA Today piece linked above:

But the Rev. James Massa, executive director for interreligious affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Wednesday that the prayer should be understood in the essential Catholic view that "all people come to salvation through Jesus Christ. This is not going to go away."

The wilki article on this gives a good overview of the whole controversy.

Now as a side note I was very worried that the Catholic Traditionalists would go nuts and create a lot of problems over this. I have been pleasantly surprised. They are handling this very well.

Father Z had a excellent posts on this today. I very much liked the comments I was reading also in his post The more I think about this…. He makes a important point:

the new prayer for the Jews for Good Friday is important, but not for the reasons most people will focus on. I don’t think this is important for ecumenical dialogue.It is, hwoever, very important for the liturgical life of the Church because the 1962 Missale Romanum is now demonstrably a living liturgical book of the Church again. It is not a museum piece or a fly in amber.

And that is very important. That is what is perhaps the significant point that will be lost . A point that bodes well for the the Older influencing the new.