A very critical mass

Editorial

In a move Jewish groups fear will fuel anti-Semitism, the Vatican has reinstated a mass calling or the conversion of Jews.

From the time Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, in the fourth century, until the 1960s, the Catholic dogma that ruled Europe defined Jews as a race set apart for misery.

As the late Catholic theologian Edward H. Flannery wrote in his compendious and brilliant 1965 volume The Anguish of the Jews, the adoption of explicitly anti-Jewish Catholic theology resulted in a millennium-and-a-half of prejudice,

violence and vilification. At Christianity's birth, "the Jew" was set apart theologically in order to differentiate between the new converts and the old believers. For the first couple of centuries, Christian theology presumed that Jews, who remained insistently indifferent to the concept of the divinity of Jesus, would lead lives of misery caused by their perceived rejection of the Christian interpretation of the divine. But a couple of centuries into the millennium, Christians began taking it into their own hands to ensure that Jews were miserable.

Throughout Europe, for century after century, Jews were attacked mercilessly. Incitement – a phenomenon we see as vividly today as ever – ranged from incendiary Easter sermons that drove throngs of medieval Christians from the churches to the streets to destroy all things Jewish, to the arts and crafts of kindergartens, where children would create toy mallets to hammer in effigy the detested Hebrew people.

At the core of the anti-Jewish violence was a theological justification. Almost from its inception, until the profound modernization and liberalization of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, Catholic theology singled out "the Jew" for scorn, vilification and conversion.

Until the 1960s, the traditional Catholic liturgy included a prayer for Jews, which may seem sympathetic but, in reality, reflected a bigoted, disrespectful rejection of Judaism: "Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, you do not refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."

This month, Pope Benedict XVI announced his intention to remove a ban on the traditional Latin Mass, also known as the Tridentine Mass, which has many traditional aspects, including its view of Jews.

The harshest edges of the ancient anti-Jewish theology have been worn soft, with a kinder variation on the above prayer, crediting the Jews as "the first to hear the word of God," but nonetheless concluding that "they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption." The "fullness of redemption," we can assume, has something to do with Jesus.

Pope Benedict has set a three-year review period, after which it would be determined whether the reintroduction of the liturgy had any significant negative implications.

The barely understood nuance of Catholic liturgy – especially that conducted in Latin – may seem like an arcane subject to arouse Jewish concern. But given the historic implication of this very same theology in the catastrophic history of the Jews in Europe, it is a case where the internal liturgical concerns of another faith group deserve very close scrutiny by other communities.

More urgently, the issue has raised the matter of whether this pope will continue the historic rapprochement begun by his predecessor, John Paul II, who, while not without his miscues, made tremendous strides to bridge the ancient chasm and pain between these two faith groups.

This question was among those most frequently asked when Benedict ascended to the papacy in 2005. A former German infantryman who deserted the Nazi army as the Allies approached, Joseph Ratzinger, as he was then known, was also enrolled in the Hitler Youth movement in his teen years, as was required by law. The current pope's past raised particular concern over whether he would continue in John Paul's path and the first utterances from Benedict's Vatican suggested that he would. Yet, on what is arguably the most substantive matter of Jewish concern yet to face the new pope, he has opted for the most injurious course imaginable.

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