Prayers for Jews might be removed from 1962 Missal

Jan 18, 2008 / 15:45 pm

According to Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican expert of the Italian daily "Il Giornale", Pope Benedict could soon approve a change in the Good Friday liturgy of the 1962 Missal to eliminate any possible offense to the Jewish people.

The change only affects the Missal of 1962, which was used prior to the liturgical reform and liberalized by Pope Benedict in his Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum”.

Tornielli writes that "the publication of the new text, completely reformulated, should be published in a few days," so that it can be used in the liturgy of this year's Holy Week. The change will eliminate the prayer in Latin that asks God to "liberate that (the Jewish) People from their darkness," as well as a reference to their "blindness."

Tornielli says that the change to be introduced by Pope Benedict is in line with the tendency "started already by Pope Pius XII, who made the then Congregation of Ritual clarify that the Latin formula  ‘pro perfidis judaei’ meant ‘for the Jews who don't have the faith’," instead of "the perfidious Jews."

Later, Pope John XXIII in 1959, eliminated the term “perfidis” altogether.

According to Tornielli, several bishops involved in dialogues with the Jews requested a modification of the text –which only exists in the "old" Missal— and that the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, expressed the Vatican's openness to the possibility last July.

"Benedict XVI has prepared a draft for the new prayer which should be published in the coming days by the Congregation for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments," Tornielli writes.

Nevertheless, he says that "even if the paragraphs regarded offensive by the Hebrews have been removed, the bottom line of the prayer would still remain, which is conversion."