Posted on 03/21/2008 11:11:16 AM PDT by Nachum
BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Jewish community said on Friday she was surprised Pope Benedict could have allowed a new version of a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews.
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Reuters Television she could not fathom Pope Benedict putting forward the new decree because he experienced discrimination against Jews in Germany as a young man.
"I would have assumed that this German pope, of all people, had got to know first hand the ostracizing of Jewry," she said. "I could not have imagined that this same German pope could now impose such phrases upon his church."
Jewish groups complained last year when the Pope issued a decree allowing wider use of the old-style Latin Mass and a missal, or prayer book, that was phased out after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962 to 1965.
They protested against the re-introduction of the old prayer for conversion of the Jews and asked the Pope to change it.
The Vatican last month revised the contested Latin prayer used by a traditionalist minority on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ's crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts".
Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that "all Israel may be saved" and Jews say it keeps an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.
Knobloch said that she could not envision a continuation of the inter-religious dialogue as long as the old prayer stands.
"The inter-religious dialogue has suffered an enormous setback because of this version and I assume that one will find a way very soon to continue the dialogue, but at the moment I don't see it happening," she said.
"As long as the Catholic Church, that is to say Pope Benedict, does not return to the previous wording, I assume that there will not be any further dialogue in the form that we were able to have in the past," Knobloch said.
ZZZZzzzzzzzz.....
And you wonder why people are turned off by “religion”.
I hear ya.
I wonder how people can live without it.
This story comes up once a year like clockwork.
Is it a surprise to anyone that Christians seek inclusion and conversion?
If Jews do not like the prayers of catholics, so what? Do Jews care about catholics as far as conversion to Judaism is concerned? Is Judaism the only way according to Jews?
As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I ask God to open the hearts of all others, of faith or not; for there is only one way a man can be saved-by the acceptance of the once-for-all sacrifice made by Jesus, the Christ, the person of God in human form, as a payment for all sin. I do not discriminate nor does God; for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Jesus is the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by Him.
Like it or not, that is what the Gospel of Christ is. You may not believe, that is fine, many people don't. I still love in spite of their rejection of Christ, as does He!
God Bless and pass the ammunition.
The Great Commission directs Christians to go out and make disciples in all nations of the world. Christians praying for the conversion of others is part of the process. To demand that Christians not pray for the conversion of others is to demand that Christians not obey God.
The Buddha would have no problem with this.
Jews in Germany are a bit sensitive about this stuff, and I can understand why. I don't feel as they do, but then my grandmother is alive and well, not having been offed in a gas chamber.
It doesn't have to have a real connection. The German Jewish sensitivity isn't entirely rational, but then when something that bad has happened the results aren't expected to be rational. They see a German heading a lot of followers (one third of the German population) saying Jews aren't one of them and should convert, are outsiders.
Not at all. I am a Jew, and it does not bother me a single bit that you pray for my conversion.
But that is only because I read this story, as you do, on the American soil. America and Turkey are the only countries where Jews have not been subjected to pogroms. True, there was persecution. Just as in the case of Catholics, it was almost impossible for a Jew to get certain jobs up until WWII. Also as Catholics, Jews were accused of divided loyalty, etc.
Nobody got killed, however --- ever in the history of this blessed country.
Europe is very different, however. Forced conversions and expulsions were commnplace. It is true, of course, that Holocaust was perpetrated by the pagan Nazis, but the vierw of Jews as Christ-killers was cultivated for millennia. Some pogroms and expulsions of Jews were instigated by church officials, and I am unable to locate any document were Vatican objected to killings, expulsions and other persecutions. In fact, the Isabella, who expelled the Jews and Roma from Spain, has been accorded the title Catholic --- as in Isabelle the Catholic, still in use.
The context in which the same prayers are pronounced in Europe and the reaction of some Jews to those prayers are very different in Europe.
Wonderful. Then why be divisive and single out any specific group?
Which is why the prayer should never have been changed at all. It has given some of the pressure groups the false impression that they have a say in Catholic church services. And what did changing the prayer accomplish? The people complaining are still complaining.
No. No it's not.
This is easy to understand, but difficult to accept. Judaism is an exclusionary faith. Those not “Chosen†are somehow a lower form of theological life. The practitioners would be called bigots or racists if they were the members of any other group. I was once publicly scolded by an Orthodox Jew for saying “bless you†when he sneezed because a blessing invocation from a gentile was an insult to him and to God.....go figure. As usual the Pope is right. If anyone needs to accept Christ and his message it is him and those like him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.