Manifest Faithlessness

Well, one step forward,

two steps...

"Jewish leaders have welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to reformulate the Catholic Church's traditional Good Friday prayers.

The removal of references to the "darkness" and "blindness" of the Jews for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah was a sign the pope was "deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community," Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, told The Jerusalem Post."

because of course, the one thing the Catholics must not be allowed, under any circumstances, even in their own churches at their own holiest three days of the year, is to actually state that we believe what we believe.

~ * ~ * ~

The form used before 1955:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts [2 Corinthians 3:13-16]; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.

Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: 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 thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

then in 1955, Pope Pius XII gave us:

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. Let us pray. Let us kneel.

[Levate] Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: 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 thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

In 1960, Pope John XXIII removed the word "faithless" (Latin: perfidis):

Let us pray also for the Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord.

[Flectamus genua. Levate.] Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the 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 thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Two thoughts:

First, the word does not mean in the liturgy of the Church what people seem to think it means now in an English translation and the demand that the Church change it to something nicer-sounding is a result of the modern pig-ignorance that parades itself as moral righteousness in our times. The illiterates who govern us cannot tell the difference between a Latin word in its original meaning and a post-modern corruption of its English derivative and so demand that the Church cater to their ignorance.

Second: Has anyone met modern Jews? For the most part, there is not a bigger group of utterly godless people on earth. With the exception of a tiny minority of believers [for whom I have all the time in the world] the Jews of our time have radically rejected the belief that defines them. They have, in the greater majority, rejected the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who called them out of Egypt.

Can you think of a word that better fits them than "faithless"?