3/19/08

Bad Friday for the Jews. My Angst Over Catholic Good Friday Prayers

I've posted 22 posts about the pope (linked here) and many of them about his restoration of the bitterly antisemitic Catholic Good Friday prayers.

I'm not suggesting that the pope is bringing back the medieval physical violence that Jews faced on Good Friday in Europe. But he is fostering the church's plan to convert the Jews. Not the hope for some messianic age. The plan is for now, or if not now, for very soon.

"That's who they are" and "that's integral to the definition of the church" and "that's what they believe" - all those statements are no excuse for the head on attacks and insults that Catholics will be reciting in some Churches this Friday.

The Pope and Mel Gibson think that all is fine and dandy in the traditional forms of the Catholic liturgy including this repugnant Good Friday Tridentine Mass.

I disagree. I'm hurt if even one Catholic goes to recite sacred words that proclaim to beseech we Jews to, “remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.” And I cringe that after congregants kneel and pray silently, the priest calls to God, “who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness.”

And if you water that down, so what. That's not progress. That's perpetuation of insult. The claim to fame of the present pope is that he has condescended to insult us less bluntly. Woo.

And then if the Catholics say, as they have with straight-faced chutzpah, "We will continue our prayer because you do it too," that is adding another affront to insult. We are powerless and less than 16 million in the world. Our prayers are in fact eschatological and not programmatic.

But you are 2 billion in the world and your prayers are part of your practical project plans for conversion of the Jews in the here and now.

Please. Leave us alone this Friday. Let us be. Remove your wanton and evil prayers from your churches.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your candidate for President is hopelessly Christian in a way it would seem you should be more than offended, even threatened. He supports Black Liberation theology in the form of someone much more malignant than the Pope-Jeremiah Wright. James Cone informs their theology with a pro-Palestinian perspective that does not allow for Israel to exist within any borders at all. You should be feeling the angst over this modern threat, one that unlike your medieval one, is physical.Jimmy Carter is a far more dangerous Christian than the Pope and I can picture him present on the grandstand with Obama should he be nominated. The Clintons always kept him away.

Rabbi Boruch (Borat) Sagdievsky said...

B"H
Ah, common man , live Tzvee alone!
All the dude is doing is his part in selling Edom down the river to the children of Sheba
(see: Yoel (Joel) 4) for they are dividing G-d's land , causing bloodshed to continue there and pressured the exiling of His people
and as a punishment G-d placed them in the hands of children of Judah (the election is close and depends on Jewish vote) who are selling them to the children of Sheba.
And Obama's father is from Kenya which is part of Sheba's domain thus he is truly fitting to rule this land at this time see here:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/16172/showrashi/true/jewish/Chapter-4.htm
:-)