Good Friday prayer for the Jews

The **Good Friday prayer for the Jews** has been a yearly prayer in some Christian churches on Easter Friday since ancient times. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is known as the *Solemn Intercessions*.

## Background
### Classical antiquity
Christianity originated as a persecuted sect of Judaism in Roman Judea. Early Christians were mostly Jewish before non-Jewish converts became the majority and split with Judaism over theological differences. Several conflicts happened between Jews and Christians. was still valid and whether circumcision was needed for non-Jewish converts. Paul used "Judaizers" to refer to Jews who demanded non-Jewish converts to have circumcision, as Paul believed that faith in Christ alone was enough for someone to be saved by God. including John Chrysostom who wrote the homily series *Adversus Judaeos* to condemn the Jews, which is seen by many historians as having inspired antisemites to justify pogroms, expulsions and discrimination against Jews in the following 1,600 years, which peaked in the Holocaust (1933‒45), killing at least 6,000,000 Jews across Europe.

### Middle Ages
A prayer for Jews was known in the daily Mass.

The fact that the Roman soldiers playfully bent their knees (genuflection) to mock Jesus when crucifying Him was left out of the prayer. Antisemitism is said to be the motive for the distortion to make Jews look like the ones who did it. which often happened during Passion plays,

### Modern reforms
#### Interwar period
In January 1928, the chairman of *Benedikt Gariador* wrote to Pope Pius XI to request that the words perfidis/perfidia be changed:

* Christians have prayed very early for the conversion of the Jews to Christ, not for their conversion to Christianity
* The word *perfidis* was originally only related to concrete violations of the law of certain Jews, only later understood as "complete corruption" and was thus reinterpreted as the unchangeable character of all Jews
* The alleged mocking Jewish kneeling before Jesus is unrecovened in the New Testament and a fiction added later
* The Prayer is now being abused as an argument for antisemitism, which the Catholic Church itself even propagates in its services
* As such *perfidiam Judaicam* should be replaced by *plebem Judaicam* ("Jewish people"), as stated in a manuscript of the *Manuale Ambrosianum* from the 11th century

Pope Pius XI reportedly asked the Sacred Congregation of Rites to review it. French historian Jules Isaac also did so in 1949 when he met the Pope, who argued that *perfidis* meaned "unbelieving" rather than "perfidious", Meanwhile, defenders of the word appealed to its origin, claiming that the word's meaning had changed when classical Latin became medieval Latin. The 1959 version of the prayer became:

On the Good Friday in 1963, the canon recited the prayer that included *perfidis*, John XXIII signaled for it to be stopped and repeated without the word.

The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) was followed by changes to the prayer. The changes were strongly opposed by Arab states, The 1965 version of the prayer became:

In this prayer, the Old Covenant between God and the Jews was recognized for the blessing of all peoples (Genesis 12:3). As per the *Nostra aetate*, further changes happened in 1970:

On July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI made policy changes regarding the prayer, allowing Catholic priests to use pre-1962 versions of the prayer privately. This sparked a controversy over the Catholic Church's commitment to the Vatican II.

 

Despite this, the private use of the prayer's older versions continued among some Catholic communities, which caused Abraham Foxman, the national director of the American civil rights group Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to say:

Monsignor Dennis Mikulanis, vicar for inter-religious and ecumenical affairs for the Roman Catholic diocese of San Diego, instead of acknowledging the concerns, accused the ADL of "jumping the gun": Mikulanis also accused media outlets of "erroneously contend[ing] that the letter could in effect reinstate a prayer offensive to Jews from the Good Friday liturgy of the Tridentine Mass, which dates back to 1570". In response, Abraham Foxman repeated his position:

Mikulanis' view aligned with some traditionalist Catholic groups, including the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP), which argued for the necessity of converting Jews to Christianity, and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which accused the Catholic Church of making "superfluous and regrettable concession to representatives of Judaism". Notably, the SSPX has a track record of promoting Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about Jews.

## Anglican Communion
The third of the *Solemn Collects* in the 1662 *Book of Common Prayer* of the Church of England states:

As early as in 1928, the American Episcopal Church changed "all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics" in the prayer to "all who know thee not as thou art revealed in the Gospel of thy Son". In the 1979 version of the *Book of Common Prayer*, confirmed the changes to the prayer as such:

## Eastern Orthodoxy
In 2007, twelve Eastern Orthodox priests representing five different national churches, some resisting their leadership, called for removing all liturgical passages they considered antisemitic.

## Related pages
* Protestant Reformation
* Antisemitic stereotypes
* Secondary antisemitism
* Anti-Judaism and antisemitism
* Accusations of Jewish anti-Christianity 

## References