POPE'S GOOD FRIDAY PRAYER "INSULTING TO JEWS"

‘Insulting to Jews’: Leading German Rabbi Condemns Pope’s Good Friday Prayer (Der Speigel)
Around the world, millions of Catholics are celebrating Good Friday, when they commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But for many Jews, this year’s ceremonies leave a bitter aftertaste, due to a controversial new version of a prayer that many claim is anti-Semitic.

Last month, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI had revised the so-called “Good Friday Prayer for the Jews” which forms part of the Tridentine Mass, often referred to as the Latin Mass. The new version, translated from the Latin, reads: “Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men.”

Several leading Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the International Jewish Committee on Inter-Religious Consultations, have strongly criticized the new wording of the prayer. However only the very small minority of Catholics who celebrate the Good Friday mass in Latin will actually hear the allegedly anti-Semitic version of the prayer.

The new wording is similar to the original version of the prayer, which read: “Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.”

This original version was toned down at the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council which introduced many far-reaching reforms of the Catholic Church, including replacing the Tridentine Mass with vernacular liturgies. The Good Friday Prayer then became: “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.”

POPE REWRITES OFFENSIVE PRAYER

Pope Rewrites Prayer Following Jewish Protest - George Conger (Jerusalem Post)
Jewish leaders have welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to reformulate the Catholic Church's traditional Good Friday prayers.  In July, Benedict issued an edict permitting the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal during prayers, which contains references to the "darkness" and "blindness" of the Jews for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah.  The new text will drop all reference to the "blindness" of the Jews, Milan's Il Giornale newspaper reported on Jan. 18.

CATHOLIC LEADER REJECTS ISRAEL'S JEWISH IDENTITY

Catholic leader rejects Israel's Jewish identity (YNet) (Hat tip: Geoff Berg)
Israel's identity as a Jewish state discriminates against non-Jews, its top Roman Catholic clergyman said in a pre-Christmas address on Wednesday in Jerusalem.

''If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against,'' Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah told reporters at the annual press conference he holds in Jerusalem before Christmas. In his address, which he read in Arabic and English, Sabbah said Israel should abandon its Jewish character in favor of a ''political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews.''

Sabbah denounced Israel's demand to be recognized as a Jewish state by the Palestinians and said "God made this land for all three of us, so a suitable state is one who can adapt itself to the vocation of this land.

''This land cannot be exclusive for anyone,'' he said, adding that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had unleashed "forces of evil" across the Middle East and that it was Israel's obligation, as to end the warring. "The one who will decide is Israel. If Israel decides for peace, there will be peace… Until now, there has been no peace, simply because there has been no willingness to make it."

Sabbah expressed hope for peace in the Holy Land and urged both sides to shun violence, whether "carried out by the state or by extremists".

Arye Mekel, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, said Israel provides full religious freedom to people of all faiths. ''We reject his claim that other religions are not enjoying equal rights in Israel,'' Mekel said.

Israel has long pointed out that other countries call themselves Islamic republics and are not criticized.

Sabbah, who has been the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 1987, is the first Palestinian to hold the post and is frequently critical of Israel.

He also lashed out at Israel for visa restrictions he said were unfair to Christian clergy.

Geoff's commentary:

I love this story. The Palestinian Catholic who leads the church in Jerusalem says that for Israel to be an officially Jewish state is discriminatory against Christians and Muslims. Again, this is the representative of the Vatican, which is a state and has, if I am not mistaken, an official religion.

Interesting also that he doesn't criticize Saudi Arabia where he would be executed if he practiced Catholicism.

Why can't the Arabs just go back to being honest? It's not having and official religion that bothers them, it's that the official religion is Judaism. They don't want Israel to exist at all. They have no problem with Turkey, Jordan or Morocco's official religions. Hypocrites.

SEE ALSO: Vatican's Envoy Threatens to Boycott Shoah Ceremony

POPE CRITICIZES IRAN'S ANTI-SEMITISM

Pope Seeks to Counter Anti-Semitic Hatred of Iranian Leadership - Ruth Gledhill
The Pope hit out at Iran as he pledged to help world Jewish leaders in their fight against anti-Semitism. Pope Benedict XVI told leaders of the World Jewish Congress that Iran was "an issue of big concern" to him. At a meeting at the Vatican, the Pope spoke of his concern about rising anti-Semitism and described how he wanted to use educational tools to counter the hatred of the Iranian leadership towards the Jewish people and Israel. Ronald Lauder, new president of the WJC, who headed the delegation, said that the Pope had agreed to host a joint event with his organization when Benedict XVI visits New York next year. (Times-UK)

PRIEST'S WORK REVEALS UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST

A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate (NYT)
PARIS, Oct. 5 — His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi killing machine — as diggers of mass graves, cooks who fed Nazi soldiers and seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution.

They live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked common graves. He knows that they are an unparalleled source to document the murder of the 1.5 million Jews of Ukraine, shot dead and buried throughout the country.

He is neither a historian nor an archaeologist, but a French Roman Catholic priest. And his most powerful tools are his matter-of-fact style — and his clerical collar.

The Nazis killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history has gone untold.

Knocking on doors, unannounced, Father Desbois, 52, seeks to unlock the memories of Ukrainian villagers the way he might take confessions one by one in church.

“At first, sometimes, people don’t believe I’m a priest,” said Father Desbois in an interview this week. “I have to use simple words and listen to these horrors — without any judgment. I cannot react to the horrors that pour out. If I react, the stories will stop.”

Over four years, Father Desbois has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders and has identified more than 600 common graves of Jews, most of them previously unknown. He also has gathered material evidence of the execution of Jews from 1941 to 1944, the “Holocaust of bullets” as it is called.

Often his subjects ask Father Desbois to stay for a meal and to pray, as if to somehow bless their acts of remembrance. He does not judge those who were assigned to carry out tasks for the Nazis, and Holocaust scholars say that is one reason he is so effective.

“If a Jewish taker-of-testimony comes, what would people think — that this is someone coming to accuse,” said Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “When a priest comes, people open up. He brings to the subject a kind of legitimacy, a sense that it’s O.K. to talk about the past. There’s absolution through confession.”

Unlike in Poland and Germany, where the Holocaust remains visible through the searing symbols of the extermination camps, the horror in Ukraine was hidden away, first by the Nazis, then by the Soviets.

POLES DECRY PRIEST'S ANTI-SEMITIC REMARKS

Poles decry priest's remarks on Jews (JPost)
More than 700 people in Poland, including a former prime minister and foreign minister, signed an open letter condemning statements about Jews by a right-wing Roman Catholic priest who runs a controversial radio station.

A magazine had reported that Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk, during a lecture earlier this year at a journalism school, described Jews as greedy and criticized President Lech Kaczynski for donating land in Warsaw for a Jewish museum.

Hundreds of people - including former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and former Auschwitz inmate and Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski - signed the letter, saying Rydzyk's comments "revealed his contempt" for Jews and fellow Christians.

"As Polish Catholics, laymen and clergy, we express our moral protest against the worsening statements of the director of Radio Maryja," the letter says. "It hurts us that the contemptible and anti-Semitic statements come from a representative of our church."

The letter, posted on the Web site of the Krakow-based Center for Culture and Dialogue, calls on Roman Catholic Church leaders to bring him in line with church teaching that anti-Semitism is a sin.

Rydzyk is founder and director of Nasz Dziennik newspaper and ultra-Catholic Radio Maryja, which has been granted interviews with members the conservative government, including Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother. Its television partner, Trwam, received exclusive access to the signing of a preliminary coalition agreement that launched the current government in 2005.

Rydzyk provided a forum for members of Kaczynski's Law and Justice party in parliamentary and presidential elections in late 2005.

The Polish weekly Wprost published excerpts from a lecture Rydzyk allegedly delivered at a journalism school he established in the central Polish city of Torun, where Radio Maryja is headquartered.

In the lecture, Rydzyk was quoted as criticizing Kaczynski, the president, for bowing to pressure to compensate people - many of them Jews - for property nationalized by the postwar communist government, and for donating land for a future Jewish museum when Kaczynski was Warsaw's mayor.

"You know that it's about Poland giving $65 billion dollars" to the Jews, Rydzyk reportedly said. "They will come to you and say: give me your coat. Take off your pants. Give me your shoes."

POLISH PRIEST SLAMMED FOR ANTI-SEMITISM

Polish priest slammed for anti-Semitsm (JPost)
Two major American Jewish organizations are urging the Polish government and the Vatican to publicly condemn the latest anti-Semitic remarks made by a powerful Polish priest who heads a right-wing Catholic radio station that has a long history of anti-Semitic diatribes, the groups announced Thursday.

The priest, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who heads the controversial Radio Marjya, reportedly accused the Jews of greed in a potential government compensation deal on confiscated property, and denounced Polish President Lech Kaczynski as a "fraudster who is in the pockets of the Jewish lobby."

The comments, which were made in a private meeting in April that was taped and leaked to the Polish press last week, were certain to renew Jewish concerns over lingering anti-Semitism in Poland.

The separate calls urging public repudiation and punishment for the priest were made by the New York-based Anti Defamation League and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

"This is far from the first time Father Rydzyk or other broadcasters on Radio Maryja have made incendiary and hateful remarks about Jews," said ADL leaders Glen S. Lewy and Abraham H. Foxman. "Anti-Semitic content broadcast on Radio Maryja continues to include ugly stereotyping, conspiracy theories, claims that Jews were responsible for communist-era repression and accusations that Jews are using the Holocaust to leverage compensation payments from Poland."

"He is sort of a Goebbels with a collar," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Hier has written to the head of the Warsaw bishops' conference and to the head of Rydzyk's religious order at the Vatican, demanding that the priest be punished.

"Father Tadeusz Rydzyk is not merely an individual - as a priest he speaks for the Catholic church and it is the church that must discipline him," Hier said.

[President] Kaczynski and his twin brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, are political allies of Rydzyk. Both have appeared on the radio station, which strongly supports the government.

Earlier his month, Radio Maryja held a large Mass celebrating its 15th anniversary attended by the Polish prime minister and deputy prime ministers.

"You know what this is about: Poland giving $65 billion to Jews," Rydzyk said on the tape, according to the Polish news magazine Wprost, which published excerpts of the comments. "They will come to you and say, 'Give me your coat! Take off your trousers! Give me your shoes!'"

POPE EXPANDS USE OF PRAYER FOR CONVERSION OF JEWS

Vatican Expands Use of Prayer for Conversion of the Jews (INN)
Jewish groups demanding explanations from Vatican for its edict expanding use of an old prayer asking help for Jews to overcome their blindness.

SEE: WILL POPE REINTRODUCE ANTI-SEMITIC MASS?

WILL POPE REINTRODUCE ANTI-SEMITIC MASS?

Will pope reintroduce anti-Semitic mass? (YNet) (Hat tip: Uncle Sticky)
Turmoil in Catholic Church: Pope Benedict XVI plans to publish new version of 400-year-old prayer which calls Jews 'perfidious'. Church officials fear reintroduction of prayer could harm church's relations with Jews, Muslims

Pope Benedict XVI's intention to reintroduce a controversial Latin Mass with anti-Semitic references has launched turmoil in the Catholic church, according to a report in the Independent.

The 16th-century Tridentine Mass, which refers to Jews as "perfidious", was replaced in 1969. In the words of the original, penned in 1570, Jews live in "blindness" and "darkness"; it pleads that "the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ".

High-ranking bishops and cardinals in the Catholic Church have expressed severe opposition to the reintroduction of the prayer, out of concern that it will harm the church's relations with Jews and Muslims.

Leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, sent the pope a letter to voice his opposition to the changes to the mass.

However, Pope Benedict announced Thursday that he intended to publish next week an amended version of the prayer.

A spokesman for the Church in Britain said Friday, "It is standard practice to follow Rome, but we don't know yet what the (statement) will say. When we have the document, bishops and cardinals will consider it."

DUTCH GOVT. SUBSIDIZES ANTI-ISRAEL NGO

Dutch Government Subsidizes Anti-Israel NGO - Manfred Gerstenfeld (Jerusalem Post)
In 2001 the Dutch Roman Catholic NGO Cordaid, which is subsidized by the Dutch government, was indirectly involved in financing the largest anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate campaign of the 21st century, the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Recently it undertook another anti-Israel campaign jointly with Pax Christi, another pro-Palestinian Roman Catholic group.

HITLER'S POPE ON ROAD TO SAINTHOOD

Pius XII heads to sainthood (JTA)
Pope Pius XII, who was criticized for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust as wartime leader of the Catholic Church, was placed on the path to sainthood.

A group of 15 bishops and cardinals known as the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted Tuesday to approve the beatification of Pius. The current pope, Benedict XVI, must approve, and two miracles must be attributed to the wartime pope.

Pius XII's wartime record was the source of a recent dispute between the Vatican and Yad Vashem. The Vatican ambassador to Jerusalem threatened to boycott the memorial's Yom Hashoah ceremony unless a passage saying that Pius "abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews" and "maintained his neutral position throughout the war" was removed from an exhibit.

The Vatican says it has evidence that Pius quietly intervened on behalf of Jews, but still blocks access to Vatican archives from that period

VATICAN TO SKIP HOLOCAUST CEREMONY

Vatican to skip Yad Vashem ceremony (JPost)
The Vatican ambassador to the Holy Land said Thursday that he would not attend the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day state ceremony at Yad Vashem because of a caption at the Holocaust Museum that referred to Pope Pius XII's controversial role during World War Two.

"I will attend any ceremony on the victims of WWII, but I do not feel at ease at Yad Vashem when the Pope is presented in this way," Monsignor Antonio Franco said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post. He added that if nothing were done to change the caption he would "not feel comfortable" attending the ceremony.

The Vatican ambassador called his unprecedented decision not to attend the Sunday evening official state ceremony at Yad Vashem a "personal" one, and said that it had been made after museum officials failed to respond to a request last year to change the caption.

The caption, which first appeared when the new Holocaust Museum was inaugurated at Yad Vashem in 2005, states that the Pope's reaction to the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust was controversial.

In a statement, Yad Vashem voiced "shock and disappointment" that the Vatican's delegate to Israel chose not to respect the memory of the Holocaust by refusing to participate in the official ceremony in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people commemorate the victims, saying that the move contradicted the current pope's statement during his visit to Yad Vashem about the importance of remembering the Holocaust and its victims. "It is inconceivable to use diplomatic pressures on an issue of historical research," the statement read. ....

The role of the Holocaust-era Pope has long been controversial.

"In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to preserve the Church's rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing the Nazi racist regime," the controversial caption reads.

"When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing. In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene.

"The Pope maintained his neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia towards its end. His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react."

GERMAN BISHOPS: ISRAEL = NAZIS

YOU SEE, IF THE JEWS ARE NAZIS AND ARE PERPETRATING A HOLOCAUST, THEN THE GERMANS WEREN'T SO BAD AFTER ALL AND DON'T NEED TO FEEL GUILTY.

Bishops equate Israel’s actions to Holocaust (YNet)
BERLIN - “This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto.” Several hours earlier on Sunday you probably would not have heard German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke choose such a divisive analogy. But then on Sunday morning he was still in Israel and the rhetoric was considerably different than the one elected by the German Bishops’ Conference once they crossed over in to the Palestinian Authority on Sunday evening.

During their time in Israel the bishops uniformly made moderate and balanced statements, but once in the PA they provided German reporters accompanying them with a plethora of harsh proclamations against Israel. Their criticism received widespread coverage in the German media on Monday.

While crossing one of the checkpoints into East Jerusalem the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, told reporters: “This is something that is done to animals, not people.” Meisner, a resident of eastern Germany, said that the fence reminded him of the Berlin Wall and that in his lifetime he did not believe he would see such a thing again. “As the Berlin Wall was brought down so will this wall be brought down,” he said, adding that the fence served no purpose.

IRISH BISHOPS TARGET ISRAEL

Irish bishops target Israel (JTA)
A group of Irish bishops questioned the country’s ties with Israel, whose policies they said have turned the Gaza Strip into a “large prison.”

The Associated Press reported that the Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs, which advises Ireland’s top Catholic clerics on social issues, cited restrictions Israel imposes on Palestinian travel and family reunification.

“Where there is evidence of systematic abuse of human rights on a large scale, as in the occupied territories, there are questions that must be asked concerning the appropriateness of maintaining close business, cultural and commercial links with Israel,” said commission chairman Raymond Field, the bishop of Dublin.