Religion & Beliefs
Bad Friday: The Pope Still Wants to Convert Jews
By Roi Ben-Yehuda / February 8, 2008
A few years ago he pissed off Muslims around the world when he suggested that Islam was a religion of the sword. Today, Pope Benedict XVI has enraged the rest of the monotheistic family.
In a move that must have given both Ann Coulter and Mel Gibson hard-ons, the Pope has re-sanctioned an ancient Good Friday prayer which calls on God to illuminate the hearts of the Jews that they might recognize their savior Jesus Christ. To his credit, the Pope did choose to remove passages from the ancient Latin rite which referred to Jewish "blindness" and the need to "remove the veil from their hearts."
To the surprise of nobody, Jewish groups have got their knickers in a twist. The Italian Rabbinical Assembly has suspended its decades-long dialogue with the Church. And the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement which read:
"While we appreciate that some of the deprecatory language has been removed … we are deeply troubled and disappointed that the framework and intention to petition God for Jews to accept Jesus as Lord was kept intact."
Walter Kasper, the Cardinal in charge of the Catholic Church's relations with Jews, has vigorously defended the Pope's decision. Kasper (who happens to be German) is perplexed by Jewish touchiness:
"I must say that I don't understand why Jews cannot accept that we can make use of our freedom to formulate our prayers. We think that reasonably this prayer cannot be an obstacle to dialogue because it reflects the faith of the Church and, furthermore, Jews have prayers in their liturgical texts that we Catholics don't like."
To those of us less naive about Jewish sensitivities, it is obvious that reintroducing this prayer into the liturgy would reopen old wounds. It harkens us back to a time when Christians looked at Jews the way Tom Cruise looks at a car accident.
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Good response Terry!
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." – Jonathan Swift
I really don't know if there's any way to make sense of the statements/actions of religious leaders when they adhere to beliefs that make little sense to begin with.
Devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all convinced that their specific doctrine is the right one. So, this type of thing doesn't surprise me. The important thing is to speak out against these kinds of actions/statements so that we don't end up with religious doctrines in the world which are moving backward rather than forward.
I mean the botton line is without Judaism they would be no Christianity/Catholicism. Theologically speaking, Jews are the “elders” of Christians. What’s that old saying about showing your “elders” respect.:-)
Where to begin. First, gematria doesn't really count as a substantive proof of anything unless it's combined with some more substantial teachings about the meaning of the Alienu. Second, the last line in Aleinu refers to a time when people recognize the Gd who is alive as opposed to creating an illusion of a god. How they will do this, each man under his own fig tree. So the interpretation is not that they will wear tzitzits and observe Shabbos as we do, but that they can simply see what's right out there to be seen.
That said, both the Catholics and the Muslims feel the same way about their respective religions. That's why they are Catholic and Muslim. You can't be Catholic if Jesus kind of might be part of what maybe could might be the Trinity, and you can't be a Muslim if possibly on a good day it kind of seems like maybe Mohammed is a prophet.
Heck, our own prophets keep telling us our hearts need to be illuminated. Anyone glance at the Haftarah last week. Does anyone associate Jeremiah with good cheer and optimism? Yes, overall, he has those qualities. But he had other things to say higher up on his 'what to tell the Jews today' list.
We can talk about multiculturalism, but me, I'm a Tikkun Olam kind of guy, and there isn't a shortage of things that need tikkuning.
The only way to truly open old wounds is to bring back the rack. Other than that, let folks pray. Does any Jew really think that Gd will say–'yeah great idea, I'll force the Jews to accept Jesus'– after all these years of highly cultivated stiff-neckedness.
No disrespect intended to the Pope, but–like hell that's going to happen. So let the Pope be pope. I hear the fringe benefits and health insurance alone make it a pretty good gig.
Nothing serious, but a very cool lesson on how the limits of our paradigms changes the definition of words. You have a paradigm that stops at the existence of Gd. So, therefore certain words, given your limitations, can't have meaning. For instance, the word prayer really can't have meaning. You know that people pray, you know there is a word for prayer, you know the topic comes up–but you ended up changing the definition of the word to fit your paradigm. You changed it from a spiritual word into a social and political word. Just something to note.
Do you have any idea how many prayers (now I believe in Gd, so my definition of prayer describes, well, the thing you say while praying) have been said hoping that the Jews give it up? They don't work all that well. Gd pretty much tells us from the beginning, if we don't do our job properly, then we're going to be screwed. What's our job? We still haven't gotten that one completely figured out. But if you read this site, there isn't a shortage of effort trying to figure it out.
But the limitations of your paradigm make it almost impossible (and I can say this from experience, since I used to be an atheist my own self) to actually understand the meaning of so many words in the Jewish liturgy, that you really can't get the meaning of almost any of it. That's just the nature of paradigms. The limits keep certain words from being properly defined.
That's why once a year, with the aid of much alcohol, Jews are supposed to erase the board, metaphorically speaking, and begin again, starting a new paradigm from scratch. We do this once a year, or at least we are supposed to.
And I also have a question for Mr or Ms Anonymous. What exactly are we supposed to be listening to? That's not a statement disguised as a question. It's a question.
You have my permission to go on a “Kristalnacht” like rampage and vandalize any catholic church you like!LMAO
I think this was a good discussion of the issues, but I have one critique and one additional comment: My comment is that because this Pope is particularly theologically minded (I know that seems redundant, but other Popes have been less obsessed wth theology) he is undoubtedly aware of the theological implications of such wording. Thus, beyond the issue of including the prayer, there is the possibility that this indicates that the Vatican has taken a theological step backwards from seeing the Jews as having equal value to Christians. My critique is that while I certainly don't like many of the more racist or ethnocentric aspects of the Jewish liturgy, Christianity has a much more serious trend towards conversion than Judaism, and that because they are clearly in the majority with, I believe, about 1 billion Catholics in the world, their prayers likely carry much greater political and social influence. Because Catholics are in the majority, it is not an equal playing field, and their insensitivity, in my mind, has the possibility of causing more damage in the world. That being said, the reality is that the Latin prayer, if left untranslated, likely to be understood by few Catholics.
There's a little thing in the Amidah called "Minim." No one's clamoring for us to remove it from the sidur (Reform litrugical inventiveness aside).
"We respect the identity of the Jews; they should respect ours, which we cannot hide."
In other words, we respect your right to be heathens if you respect our right to pray for your ignorance — it's a two way street.
Jews and Muslims must unite and behead the Pope.
Papa Ratzi doesn't exactly have the credibility necessary to address Jews, penitential prayers at Auschwitz or not.
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