Vatican City – Italy’s rabbis said Tuesday they were pulling out of the Italian Catholic Church’s annual celebration of Judaism, saying recent decisions by Pope Benedict XVI were negating 50 years of interfaith progress.
The chief rabbi of Venice, Elia Enrico Richetti, cited the pope’s decision to restore a prayer for the conversion of Jews deemed offensive to Jews in Easter Week services of the old Latin Mass.
In an article published Tuesday in the Italian Jesuit magazine Popoli, Richetti said the Assembly of Italian rabbis felt the prayer, and subsequent comments by church officials about the controversy, showed a lack of respect that was necessary for dialogue to continue.
“If we add to this the recent positions taken by the pope about dialogue, said to be useless because the superiority of the Christian faith is proven anyway, then it’s evident that we’re heading toward the cancellation of the last 50 years of church history,” he wrote.
Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, who heads the Italian bishops’ commission on interreligious dialogue, said the history of Jewish-Catholic relations cannot just be “canceled,” the ANSA news agency reported.
“If there are difficulties, which undoubtedly there are in Italy, they should become an occasion to recast the dialogue even more strongly,” ANSA quoted him as saying.
In 2007, Benedict relaxed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, also known as the Tridentine rite, which was celebrated before the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s paved the way for the New Mass used widely today in local languages.
In doing so, Benedict restored to prominence a prayer for the conversion of Jews that is recited during Good Friday services of Easter Week. Jewish groups had long criticized the prayer, and they expressed dismay that the pope’s decree would allow it to be celebrated more broadly.
In a bid to stem the criticism, the Vatican issued a new prayer last year. But Jewish groups said the changes were equally disappointing since the language still suggested that they needed to convert to Christianity to find salvation.
While Jews have no intention of telling Catholics how to pray, “it’s clear that to dialogue means to respect the right of the other to be himself,” Richetti wrote in announcing that Italian rabbis wouldn’t participate in the Italian Catholic Church’s annual celebration of Judaism on Jan. 17.
Benedict, and before him Pope John Paul II, has made improving relations with Jews a priority. But there have been occasional tensions, most recently after a senior Vatican official, Cardinal Renato Martino, said Gaza under the Israeli military offensive resembled a “big concentration camp.”
Associated Press
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posted January 13, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Nate, do you think the Pope, in the privacy of his mind, thinks a Jew who lives a good life can go to heaven or not? And if so, why not write a less offensive prayer?
posted January 14, 2009 at 11:12 am
I wonder if the Pope was hurt by the rabbis’ withdraw from the talks?
posted January 14, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Ratzinger stated his inclusivist views time and time again over the course of his long academic career. Unless you believe he’s a liar who doesn’t believe the Catholic doctrine he’s sworn to protect, then yes, the Pope believes that the salvation of religious Jews is entirely possible.
And he didn’t write the prayer. All he did was make it easier for parishes to use the older Latin mass if they so choose, because many were wanting easier access to it; the prayer is only a very small part of the whole thing isn’t the reason that most Latin mass-goers want the mass. A toned-down version of the prayer has already been released, and yes, it’s still a prayer of salvation for the Jews, but that’s to be expected given that it is Christianity we’re dealing with here. Jesus came, after all, preaching salvation “to the Jews first, and also to the Gentiles.” Incusivism is NOT the same thing that as apathy, and despite the fact that it’s possible to be saved outside explicit Christian faith, the fullness of salvation in this life is still thought to be found only in communion with Christ and the Church. It’s one thing, after all, to be destined for heaven, but it’s quite another thing to attain a greater foretaste of the heaven to come.
posted January 14, 2009 at 4:37 pm
But if he thinks they’re bound for Heaven in any case and given that the original prayer offended them a lot, why not direct that the new prayer choose a different topic? There must be all sorts of things to pray for; I could suggest praying that bigotry stop or that global warming be brought under control or there’s the eternal favorite, world peace.
Why keep praying for the Jews to be converted when they don’t need it and they hate the prayer?
posted January 14, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Well, for one thing, those prayers simply don’t fit into the liturgical context that the prayer for the Jews occupies. But you also seem to be missing something important here, namely that the inclusivism of the Catholic church is NOT the same thing as a kind of religious pluralism that you might see in, say, a liberal Protestant Church. Inclusivism is openness to the possibility of God working outside the institutional church and outside explicit Christian faith to draw people into salvation, but it isn’t the same thing as saying that all good Jews (or Buddhists, or Muslims, etc.) are going to go to heaven just for being good Jews, and it isn’t the same as saying that even if someone in another religion will be saved that their religion makes no difference, because after all, if salvation is defined in terms of fellowship with Christ and with the saints, then you can only start to get a real foretaste of salvation if you know Christ and participate in the life of the church. Those saved outside the church are “anonymous Christians,” people saved by God’s grace who don’t know it yet, but they may still be engaged in religious practices that are contrary to the truth of the Gospel. Just like Christians pray for themselves and other Christians to come into a deeper knowledge of God and to forsake our sins and errors, so a Catholic inclusivist is going to pray for the unknown recipients of grace outside the church to grow in knowledge of the One who is saving them.
Besides, there are tons of Jews out there who don’t even really believe or faithfully practice the Jewish faith, and the prayer is equally, if not moreso, directed at them as it is directed at Jews who are striving to live faithfully to their Covenant.
posted January 14, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Once again, Benny comes through…NOT. The Rabbis did the right thing. It was obvious to them that no progress was being made. Also the comment by Martino about the Gaza situation and the Israeli army certainly doesn’t help relations with the Jewish community.
posted January 14, 2009 at 10:59 pm
ps, good to see you! I was afraid you’d gone off some place.
So Nate you aren’t saying (and I presume never said) that the RCC says everyone, or even everyone “good” will be “saved” so my complaint earlier, in another topic, about the church using “original sin” and the fear of hell to get people in the door, is a valid one.
posted January 15, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Catholicism does not teach that everyone who is “good” is going to be saved by being “good,” no. But the second part is a non-sequiter. It does not follow from the first that religious outreach is going to be done by trying to instill the fear of hell into other people.
posted January 15, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Thanks nnmns, it’s good to be back. Vacation in FL to see the “kids”.