Thursday, January 15, 2009

Huh?

In Jesuit magazine, Chief-Rabbi of Venice:
Pope has cancelled 50 years of Church History

The Jesuit (!) monthly Popoli (January 2009 issue) opened its pages for Elia Enrico Richetti, Chief-Rabbi of Venice, who severely criticizes the Holy Father and blames him (especially his liberalization of the Latin Mass and his reformed Prayer for the Jews on Good Friday) for the suspension of dialogue between Italian rabbis and the Church. The suspension was unilaterally declared by the rabbis.

The Assembly of Rabbis of Italy has made known that, at least for this year, there will be no collaboration between the Jewish Communities of Italy and the Catholic institutions for the celebration of the Day of Judaism (January 17). It is the logical consequence of a particular moment which the inter-Confessional dialogue is living today, a moment in which the signs began to appear when the Pope, by liberalizing the Latin Mass, indicated in the Tridentine Mass the norm to follow. In that formulation, in the prayers of Good Friday, there is a prayer which asks for the conversion of the Jews to the "truth" of the Church and to faith in the salvific role of Jesus. In truth, that prayer, which, in its first wording defined the Jews as "perfidious", that is "outside the faith" and blind, had already been "changed" (but never abolished) by John XXIII. Benedict XVI expunged from it the most offensive terms, and reintroduced it.

...
It is not, therefore, a matter of hypersensitivity: it is in the most banal sense about the respect owed to the other as a creature of God. If to that we add the most recent positions taken by the Pope regarding the worthiness of dialogue, defined as useless because in every case the superiority of the Christian faith is clear, it is evident that we march towards the cancellation of the past fifty years of the history of the Church. From this point of view, the interruption of the collaboration between Italian Jewry and the Church is the logical consequence of the ecclesiastical mindset expressed by its supreme authority.

Thank you New Catholic at Rorate Caeli (here)

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