ROME (EJP)---Ahead of a papal trip to the United States, the Vatican has expressed its respect and esteem for Jews despite tension over a Good Friday prayer revived by Pope Benedict XVI.
In a statement, the Holy See tried to reassure Jews on Friday that a new prayer that some saw as a call for their conversion did not indicate a change in the Church's high regard for Jews or its condemnation of anti-Semitism.
"The Holy See wishes to reassure that the new formulation of the prayer, which modifies certain expressions of the 1962 Missal, in no way intends to indicate a change in the Catholic Church's regard for the Jews, which has evolved from the basis of the Second Vatican Council," the statement said.
The Vatican issued the document shortly before the German pope begins a landmark visit to the United States that includes a visit to Park East synagogue in New York and a meeting with the American Jewish community.
Some Jewish groups had said they were disappointed over the prayer revived from the old Latin rite that had historically been used as an excuse for violence and discrimination against Jews.
Catholic and Jewish sources said the Vatican statement had been delivered to Israel’s chief rabbinate.
The Vatican said that ‘Nostra Aetate’, a landmark document of the 1965 Second Vatican Council continues to sustain bonds of esteem, love and cooperation between Catholics and Jews and repudiates any form of anti-Semitism. The statement repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Christ's death and began dialogue. Continued...
The pope will visit the US April 15-20.
In February the Vatican revised the contested Latin prayer used by traditionalist Catholics on Good Friday, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts."
Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that "all Israel may be saved" and Jews said it kept an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.
The Church "rejects every attitude of contempt or discrimination against Jews, firmly repudiating any kind of anti-Semitism," it added.
A major Jewish group, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), welcomed the Vatican statement.
"We welcome this reaffirmation of Nostra Aetate's binding authority and its requirement of esteem for and solidarity with the Jewish people," said Rabbi David Rosen, the AJC's International director of Interreligious Affairs.
He said however however that he had hoped for an explicit reference to proselytism.
Last month, Cardinal Walter Kasper, in charge of the Vatican’s relations with Judaïsm, announced that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican’s secretary of state and the pope’s closest aide, would make a statement to clarify the issue.
Friday’s statement doesn’t bear Bertone’s signature but was just published by the Vatican’s press office.
