Pope’s Good Friday prayer sparks international furor
Michael J. Matt
Editor, The Remnant
As the whole world knows by now, this week the Vatican released Pope http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=158’s revised version of the traditional Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews. What some feared might entail a dismantling of the traditional prayer has instead served to reinforce it.
The text of the new prayer reads as follows:
“Let us also pray for the Jews: that God our Lord might enlighten their hearts, so that they might acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Savior of all mankind. Let us pray. Let us bend our knees (kneel). Please rise. Almighty and eternal God, whose desire it is that all men might be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, grant in your mercy that as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into your Church, all Israel may be saved, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
In his press release of February 5, 2008, the ADL’s Abe http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1584 from the Novus Ordo “teaching” on conversion:”Alterations of language without change to the 1962 prayer’s conversionary intent amount to cosmetic revisions, while retaining the most troubling aspect for Jews, namely the desire to end the distinctive Jewish way of life. Still named the “Prayer for Conversion of the Jews,” it is a major departure from the teachings and actions of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and numerous authoritative Catholic documents, including Nostra Aetate.”
It seems that Mr. Foxman is concerned that the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2204’s new prayer may signal a papal abandonment of the novel teachings on salvation enshrined at least unofficially in the Novus Ordo’s Good Friday prayer—a prayer that evidently had signaled to Mr. Foxman and others that the Church had set aside her traditional teaching.
It’s difficult to fault Mr. Foxman for arriving at this conclusion given that the 1973 ICEL English translation of the Good Friday prayer insinuates as much:
“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.”
Contrast this with Benedict’s new prayer—”may our God and Lord enlighten their hearts, so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, savior of all men”— and it’s no wonder Abe Foxman is displeased. Far from complying with demands to castrate the traditional Good Friday prayer, the Pope has issued a new prayer which is already being decried as a papal nod to the pre http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1112 teaching, and, by implication, a reversal of the post Conciliar novelties on salvation and conversion.
http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2008-0215-good-friday-prayer.htm