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Feb 22, 2008 11:23 pm US/Eastern
Pope's Prayer Causes Rift Between Catholics, Jews
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Pope Benedict XVI (File).
Franco Origlia/Getty Images
John Paul II prayed with Jews and for Jews, but a new prayer from the new Pope seeks to convert them. Controversy awaits Pope Benedict the XVI when he visits the United States this spring. It's about a prayer, and the growing rift it is creating between Catholics and Jews, as CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago reports.
Nearly 13 years ago, at Israel's Holocaust memorial, a Chicago Rabbi said a prayer, and a Chicago archbishop offered an apology.
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin said in 1995: "We must not minimize the extent of Christian collaboration with Hitler and his associates."
It was a dramatic gesture, soon repeated by Pope John Paul II, who also became the first Pope to visit a Jewish synagogue.
"He was the Pope Jews talked about as "our Pope," said Emily Solloff of the American Jewish Committee.
But now, some believe, a revised version of a Latin prayer is a giant step backward.
The 1962 version of the "Prayer for Conversion of Jews" referred to:"...the blindness of that people....take away the veil from their hearts, that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ to be our Lord."
In 1970, Vatican 2 reforms changed it to simply a "Prayer for the Jews: "...pray for the Jews and their covenant with God..."
It was used almost exclusively, until now, when Pope Benedict urged wider use of this modified 1962 version:"...illuminate their hearts so that they may recognize Jesus Christ as savior of all men."
Some consider the prayer a renewed call to convert Jews.
"The prayer is specific, it's specific to Jews," Solloff said. "That makes me squirm a little bit."
"If there could be some assurance from the Vatican that this prayer is not gonna be combined with a concrete program of proselytizing and missionizing the Jews…that could take a lot of the edge off this situation," said Fr. John Pawlikowski of the Catholic Theological Union.
It's a prayer that will only be recited in Latin as part of the Good Friday liturgy in five or six sites in Chicago. Jewish leaders in the area are concerned, but careful.
"I don't want Catholics to tell me how to pray to God and I shouldn't be telling Catholics how to pray to God," Solloff said.
But there have been other issues raised by Pope Benedict's public statements in his nearly three year papacy.
"John Paul was willing to acknowledge more directly the responsibility of the Christian community during the Holocaust, and the history of Christian anti-Semitism," Fr. Pawlikowski said.
Pawlikowski said Benedict hasn't -- not nearly the same way as John Paul and in doing so, he has in some way denied or downgraded the involvement."
"I don't think Pope Benedict the XVI, set out to make Catholic Jewish relations worse, but it is quite clear that a number of things have raised concerns about this relationship," said John Allen, of National Catholic Reporter.
Allen expects Jewish leaders to confront Pope Benedict with those concerns when he visits Washington in April -- unlike the past, when they might have boycotted in protest. Their experience with John Paul II, changed all that.
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