Pope removes ‘anti-Semitic’ text from prayer

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:54am GMT 05/02/2008

The Pope is to rewrite the Good Friday prayer in the traditional Latin Missal to remove derogatory references to Jews after protests that they could damage relations between the faiths.

Pope Benedict XVI is to excise references to the “blindness” and “darkness” of the Jews in a prayer that calls for their conversion to Christianity, according to reports in Rome.

The Pope has been under pressure to change the wording of the prayer since he permitted the widespread use of the Tridentine Rite in the 1962 Latin Missal last year.

The prayer in the rite’s Good Friday liturgy reads: “Almightly and everlasting God, you do not refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.”

The German-based International Council for Christians and Jews wrote to the Pope last year complaining that such language was “profoundly demeaning”.

Its British branch, whose presidents include Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, was also critical.

Jane Clements, its director of programmes, said: “The council would uphold the right of any religious group to pray in any way that helps them, but we would hope that the Pope would address the long history of Christian anti-Judaism that some liturgies perpetuate.”

But Jewish organisations this week welcomed the Pope’s decision to modify the prayers.

Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, said it was a sign that Benedict XVI was “deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/wpope105.xml

They should just stick to their guns. How can they pussy out like that? I mean their religion calls for the eternal torture of everyone that isn’t catholic, is calling them blind really that bad comparatively? Shouldn’t they be anti-semitic, just as jews should be anti-catholic. How can they back down from that? Isn’t that like questioning their own faith, by bending to the will of another religion so as not to offend them?