A Point of View: The Pope and the Jews

By most accounts, Pope Benedict XVI's historic first trip to America was a resounding success. While his visits to Washington, D.C. and New York City were primarily an opportunity for him to interact with American Catholics, the media attention brought him as up close and personal as most people will ever get to a Pope.

Despite the brevity of the visit, the pontiff made time to reach out to the Jewish community in symbolic ways. In Washington, he met with Jewish representatives following a larger interfaith gathering at which I was present. In New York City on erev Shabbat, as well as the eve of Passover, he visited an Orthodox synagogue. It was the first time a Pope visited an American synagogue and only the third time in history for any pope to visit a Jewish house of worship (the first being Pope John Paul II's visit to the Rome synagogue, and the second, Benedict XVI's visit to a synagogue in Cologne, Germany).

Pope Benedict has picked up the mantle left by John Paul II, who set the standard for reconciling the Church with the Jewish people, showing the world that Judaism is viable and has not been superceded by Christianity.

Yet, there are still issues that find the Church and the Jewish people at odds. One that hung over Benedict's visit, but was not discussed, was our concern with the revived Good Friday Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews in the Latin rite. Such problematic liturgy has been a significant factor in the church's tragic history with the Jewish people. We would have liked the Pope to make an unequivocal statement barring the proselytizing and missionizing of Jews, and clarifying that the Good Friday prayer refers only to the End Times.

So I took special note of comments made recently by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone about the Good Friday prayer. Bertone, second in line to Pope Benedict XVI, voiced the idea that there should be "reciprocity" between Catholics and Jews in dealing with prayers that might be offensive to the other community. The thinking apparently goes like this: If the Vatican can be asked to modify offensive aspects of the Latin conversion prayer, then Jews should be willing to reciprocate and change Hebrew prayers that are offensive to Christians. 

This is not the first time we have dealt with this notion of "reciprocity." In October 2007, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, one of the most respected Catholic thinkers in America, also proposed reciprocity. Speaking about the need for the Vatican to fix the Good Friday prayer, Cardinal George suggested in a newspaper interview that Jews should also seek to change passages that some believe refer negatively to Jesus of Nazareth in the Talmud - Rabbinic Judaism's compilation of commentaries and law. 

We were troubled with equating a living Catholic prayer for the conversion of Jews, newly endorsed by the Pope, with several obscure references from the Talmud that have no practical role in Jewish life today. We shared our concerns with Cardinal George and pointed out that his comments were being used on anti-Semitic Web sites to validate racist views and ancient canards about the Talmud, views which are sadly alive and well in Europe and around the globe.

After much dialogue, this issue was resolved last month when I received a letter from Cardinal William Keeler, a good friend of the Jewish community and moderator of the Jewish-Catholic dialogue for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Speaking on behalf of Cardinal George, who was recently elected president of the USCCB, Keeler wrote that:

"Cardinal George respects the fact that there can be no comparison between passages in the Talmud which some have read to be anti-Christian in character and which do not now play any significant role in Jewish life or worship with some texts from the rites of 1962 which were reformed in the wake of the Second Vatican Council to express positively our understanding of God’s Chosen People."
 
But Cardinal Bertone's recent comments have renewed our concerns. On its face, reciprocity may seem like a reasonable proposal. But those familiar with Jewish history and liturgy will understand how deeply troubling his proposal really is.

Let me be clear: Because of the Catholic Church's forced conversions, upon threat of death, of untold numbers of Jews at various points in history, especially during the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, "reciprocity" is not possible in this situation. There is no legitimate way to equate a new prayer, sanctioned in 2008 by the head of the Roman Catholic Church, with ancient Jewish prayers that have had no practical effect on the well being of the Christian world.

Cardinal Bertone's proposal fails to take into account that there is no central body of world Jewry that oversees liturgy. His proposal also implies that the conversion prayer issue is only a "Jews versus Vatican" problem. It is not. It is as much a Catholic issue, as evidenced by the many Catholic scholars concerned about its implications for Catholic-Jewish relations.

While observers are now studying Pope Benedict's US speeches in the aftermath of his visit, Jews and Catholics are hoping for clarification from Cardinal Bertone about whether the Latin Good Friday prayer endorses conversionary efforts toward Jews. In this, I recall the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who, in 1964, wrote on this very topic to Pope Paul VI: "A message that regards the Jews as candidates for conversion and proclaims that the destiny of Judaism is to disappear will be abhorred by Jews all over the world."

Our outreach to Cardinal Bertone and other Church officials at the Vatican and here in the US on the issue of the Latin conversion prayer will continue.