The Pope has flipped.  He wants us all to go back to the Latin Mass. Those prayers for the Jews on Good Friday were just awful.  It is anti-Semitic if you ask me!  Please comment. 

Mr. D. Pazapudl

I suspect you are the victim of the modern media.  As you know, many television reporters have suffered a loss of brain function due to the toxic chemicals found in hair spray. 

Perhaps the respected Rabbi Phillip Lefkowitz of Congregation Agudas Achim can answer the question better than I. 

Allow me to reprint (see below) an article he recently wrote regarding the document "Nostra Aetate” (which is  Pope Paul VI’s 1965 statement on our relationship to non Catholics), and the actual content of the so called "Tridentine Mass.”   Rabbi Lefkowitz doesn't seem to think it is terribly anti-Semitic. 

By the way, parishes must use the newer prayers for the Good Friday service, unless they have very special permission, so the point is pretty moot.

Yours, 

Rev. Know-It-All
 

NOSTRA AETATE & THE TRIDENTINE MASS
by Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz
 
As an Orthodox Jew I can well relate to the feelings of those Catholics who wish to return to the Tridentine Mass.  It was the Mass used of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, portions of which date back more than 1,500 years.  The Mass was codified by the Council of Trent in the 16th century and was the universal Mass of the Catholic Church until the introduction of the Mass of Pope Paul VI following the Second Vatican Council in 1965. Its language, Latin, its verbiage and in fact every aspect of the Mass are all clearly defined. Catholics across the globe entering Church found the service comforting and familiar much as Orthodox Jews visiting a Synagogue far from their home have the same experience with the Orthodox Siddur (prayer book.).
 
However, the recent announcement by Pope Benedict giving greater latitude to those in the Catholic Church wishing to offer the Tridentine Mass (Latin Mass) has sparked an outcry from Jewish quarters.  I believe it appropriate to review the situation in terms of Nostra Aetate which, in the 60s, was hailed by the Jewish establishment as a new dawn in Catholic Jewish relations.
 
Where does one begin?  Perhaps the best approach is to review actual texts relating to Jews in both Nostra Aetate and the Tridentine Mass.
 
Among the conciliatory references to the Jewish people found in Nostra Aetate we find the following observation and statement.. “True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.  Although the Church is the new People of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
 
Although Nostra Aetate avowed a respect for People of all religions, it nevertheless, as seen in the above quote, restated the involvement of the “Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead” in pressing for the Nazarene’s crucifixion by the Roman authorities.  While not explicitly stated, one hopes this is a reference to the Sadducees and not to the Pharisees, our Rabbinic leaders of the past upon whom all of Judaism is predicated and at whom Christian anti-Semitism was directed.  “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For ye shut up the Kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer yet them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows, houses, and for a pretense make long  prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.” Mathew 23: 13,14. (To understand the attitude of the Pharisees to the birth pangs of Christianity one need but reference the Book of Acts, Chapter 5, where St. Luke recounts the intercession of Rabbi Gamliel, in the words of St. Luke, “a Pharisee called Gamliel, a teacher of the law held in high regard by all the People” in protecting the Apostles from the wrath of the High Priest, Joseph Caiaphus, a Seducee.)
 
In stating “the Church is the new People of God” the Catholic Church reaffirms its long standing conviction that it is Catholic Israel, the spiritual embodiment of the Jewish People generally referred to in theological terms as Replacement Theology.  It is commonly accepted that Replacement Theology has contributed in great measure to the denigration and persecution of the Jew.  The only Christian Faiths that recognize a spiritual role for the Jew in God’s plan for the future of His creation after the crucifixion are those that espouse Dispensationalism; a concept that places the Jew in the center of the future epic of the “second coming.”  This belief is found particularly among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.
 
Yet in spite of the above, the Jewish establishment recognized Nostra Aetate as ushering in a new opportunity for mutual respect between the Catholic Church and the Jewish People.  I suspect, and this is only a supposition on my part, that this positive response was a recognition of the reality that for the vast majority of Christendom, the Catholic Church included, the birth of Christianity in some fashion de facto includes a negation of the Jewish People as following the true message of G-d.  From a traditional Jewish perspective, the birth of Christianity overall was a positive moment in human history as through many of its tenets, there emerged within the heretofore pagan world, an acceptance of the Seven Laws of Noah, which, according to our religion, are a life style mandated by our Torah for the non-Jewish world.
 
The critique of the Tridentine Mass is the inclusion in the Good Friday Mass of a prayer for the conversion of the Jews. “Let us also pray for the faithless Jews, that our God and  Lord may remove the veil from their hearts; that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Almighty and Eternal God, Who dost not exclude from Thy mercy even the faithless Jews: 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.  Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, through all endless ages. Amen.”
 
In these words the Tridentine Mass puts into prayer the extension of Catholic Israel and the rejection of the Nazarene by the Jewish People.  Although I do take exception to the concept of  “faithless Jews” or “perfidious Jews”, I do understand that, in a Christian sense, non acceptance of what a Christian views as the greatest gift God has bestowed upon the world, that of his only begotten son, surely can only be understood by the believer as a faithless act.  To pray that the “faithless Jew” accept that which is central to the concept of Christian salvation is surely understandable.
 
Both our sister Abrahamic Faiths are in part grounded in a redefinition of the true Judaism and the rejection of the Judaism practiced by the Jewish People. This redefinition of our religion and consequently the anointing of their own interpretation as the true Abrahamic Faith is always fraught with dangers for the Jew.  Yet as I have shown Nostra Aetate, embraced by the Jewish establishment, reaffirms this fundamental belief.  The Tridentine Mass gives it expression in prayer.
 
As the famed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli, stated regarding the mind set of the Jewish People, “The Jews are a nervous people.  Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll.”