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Letter to Pope Benedict on Good Friday Prayer
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His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican City, Italy
Your Holiness:
We write you urgently to express our profound concern over news reports regarding the imminent announcement of a revised Good Friday prayer for the Conversion of Jews that would replace the 1962 Roman Missal text.
While these media reports state that the offensive language of veils and blindness are to be discarded in the supposed new formulation of this Good Friday prayer, they report that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord will remain.
Alterations of language without change to the 1962 prayer's conversionary intent would result in cosmetic revisions while leaving intact the most troubling aspect for Jews, namely the desire to end the distinctive Jewish way of life. We do not understand how such an action could be consistent with the teachings and actions of the Catholic Church that began with Nostra Aetate and developed in numerous authoritative Catholic documents ever since. It is also hard to understand how a Good Friday prayer that for centuries was universally accepted as expressing the hope for Jewish absorption into Christianity could now be understood as being related to Catholic prayers for their own internal change of heart or teshuvah, as some news reports imply.
We wholeheartedly agree with your message delivered at the Roonstrasse Synagogue of Cologne on August 19, 2005 when you said: “We must come to know one another much more and much better. Consequently I would encourage sincere and trustful dialogue between Jews and Christians, for only in this way will it be possible to arrive at a shared interpretation of disputed historical questions, and, above all, to make progress towards a theological evaluation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. This dialogue, if it is to be sincere, must not gloss over or underestimate the existing differences: in those areas in which, due to our profound convictions in faith, we diverge, and indeed precisely in those areas, we need to show respect for one another.”
However we think that a revised Good Friday prayer that Jews abandon their own religious identity, as being reported in the news media, would be highly devastating to the deepening relationship and dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. That is why we hope these news reports have totally mischaracterized the nature of the expected revised prayer. We hope the reports are wrong and that any revised Good Friday prayer will instead show the same respect for the integrity and the continuity of Jewish religious life that has prevailed in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council.
Your Holiness, before any revisions to the Good Friday prayer are promulgated, we respectfully ask you, in the spirit of dialogue, for the opportunity to consult with the appropriate Vatican authorities to learn what it is the church is teaching by these changes and create a common understanding.
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Sincerely,
Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
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