Vatican City – Pope Benedict has ordered changes to a Latin prayer for the Jews in the 1962 Latin Roman Missal at Good Friday services, deleting references to their “blindness” on Christ and the request to “remove the veil from their hearts.” The Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano published the new version of the prayer in Latin on Feb. 6, saying it is for use starting this Good Friday, March 21.

Jewish groups protested the old prayer and asked the Pope to change it, when Benedict restored the old Latin Mass to a more prominent position in the summer of 2007. According to an unofficial translation from Latin, it now reads in part:

“Let us also pray for the Jews. So that God our Lord enlightens their hearts so that they recognize Jesus Christ saviour of all men.” It further asks God that “all Israel be saved.”

The Roman Missal, updated in 1970 and now used mostly in local languages, has had the following prayer for the Jews for the last three and a half decades:

“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.”

The second phrase adds, “Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption.”

Abe Foxman of the U.S. Anti-Defamation League said of the new text for the 1962 Missal, “It is less offensive in its language but it still is in contradiction to changes that the late Pope John (XXIII) brought about.” Foxman is mistaken.

The idea that the new texts of Good Friday – either that of the 1970 revision or of the new 2008 revision in the old Latin edition – are in contradiction to what John XXIII wanted is incorrect. It is based on a position maintained, for example, by Rabbi David Rosen of the Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations that the Vatican no longer expects Jews to convert to the Catholic faith. As noted, this view is incorrect.

 A few days before the new version was issued, on Jan. 31, Pope Benedict XVI called on Catholics to enter into the Mission of evangelizing all peoples, religions and cultures of the world. He noted that the CDF last year published two important documents. They offered precise teachings on certain essential aspects of the Catholic Church’s doctrines on evangelisation. (Editor: For text, see C.I., Sept. ’07, pp. 23-25)

This precision was necessary, he said, for correct ecumenical dialogue with different Christian Churches and for dialogue with religions and cultures of the world.

The first document is based on the teachings of Vatican Council II and Catholic Tradition. It affirms that the one and unique Church of Christ has its subsistence, permanence and stability in only the Catholic Church. This unity, indivisibility and indestructibility of the Church of Christ cannot be separated and divided among Christians, the Holy Father said.

The affirmation of Vatican Council II, that the true Church of Christ subsisted in the Catholic Church (Lumen gentium 8,) referred not only to the rapport between the Churches and the ecclesiastical and Christian communities, but also extends to religions and cultures of the world, Pope Benedict said. This was addressed in Dignitatis humanae, the Vatican Council’s 1965 document on religious liberty.

The second document issued in December 2007, he said, emphasised the necessity of Catholic evangelization and mission to all peoples.