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  'Insulting to Jews': Leading German Rabbi Condemns Pope's Good Friday Prayer

'Insulting to Jews' Leading German Rabbi Condemns Pope's Good Friday Prayer

Part 2: 'Good Friday This Year Is a Black Day in Jewish-Catholic Relations'

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Very few German parishes will use the Latin version of the prayer. Isn't your protest exaggerated?

Homolka: The issue is not where this extraordinary form of the prayer will be used. The pope, by choosing the wording himself, has made an important, precedent-setting change and has given it his personal seal of approval. In doing so, he deprives the acceptable 1970 form of the prayer of its credibility. The pope could simply have used that text for the Tridentine Mass: "Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant."

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Christianity is a missionary religion. Isn't it logical that it would also seek to convert Jews?

Homolka: No, because the controversial Good Friday Prayer completely ignores the unique status of the Jews as God's chosen people. God called us Jews to be a "light for the nations," so we certainly do not require illumination by the Catholic Church. The younger sister has clearly struck the wrong chord here.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Jesus himself was of course a Jew and he proselytized among the Jews.

Homolka: Jesus put forward his arguments within the context of an internal Jewish dialogue. What the Church turned this into was something completely different. It made Jesus the rabbi into a deity. On top of that, it claims that the crucifixion of this rabbi is relevant to my personal salvation. Such teachings would have been news to Jesus.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You see the new Good Friday Prayer as an offence to many Jews. With his speech in Regensburg, Benedict also hurt the feelings of many Muslims. What's behind all this?

Homolka: I cannot imagine that these were simple slips. What we have here is a captain on the bridge of his supertanker. A new course was set with the Second Vatican Council. Now the captain wants to turn around and set another new course within a short period of time. And one or two explosive devices are needed to get the ship into its new position. For the pope, the Church of the Second Vatican Council has lost too much of its power to retain the faithful, and university theology has become too feeble. This is why we are seeing these massive changes in the Catholic Church.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But there have also been positive developments in the Catholic-Jewish relationship: the Catholic Church's admission of guilt, Benedict's visit to the Cologne synagogue and his meeting with Vienna's chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg. And he also visited Auschwitz.

Homolka: In Auschwitz, he put forward a view (of the Holocaust) which made it sound as if neo-pagan forces had descended upon the German people and seduced them. After the Holocaust, Rabbi Leo Baeck drew a very different conclusion: What is the value of a church that could not assert God's fundamental teachings during the Third Reich? This makes the claim to absolute truth exhibited by Christianity seem rather absurd.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, after World War II the Catholic Church sought to develop a good relationship to the Jewish people. Rome acknowledged that Christianity comes from Judaism, that Judaism possesses a promise of salvation from God, and that Jesus was a Jew.

Homolka: Yes, but there are also contradictory signals. During the canonization of Edith Stein, who was murdered (by the Nazis) because she was a Jew and was then elevated to martyrdom by Christians, part of the Catholic Church's aim was to make a Catholic out of a Jew. And now we have this affront with the Good Friday liturgy. I accept it when someone makes a personal decision to change faiths -- and this applies to both sides. The Christian-Jewish dialogue has come to terms with that. But a collective expectation of Judaism to acknowledge Jesus as savior is a heavy imposition.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the point of a dialogue in the first place, if it is clear from the beginning that the two sides will ultimately be irreconcilable?

Homolka: The purpose of the dialogue is not unification or incorporation. We want to learn to understand each other. That includes avoiding insults like the one we have received in the form of the pope's Good Friday Prayer. I am afraid that, on the Jewish side, Jews will begin voting with their feet, and people will withdraw from the dialogue.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How can things continue?

Homolka: Good Friday this year will be a black day in relations between Jews and Catholics. We are still waiting for a promised explanation from the Vatican. Four Jewish speakers have already cancelled their participation in the German Catholic Convention. Nerves are raw on the Jewish side. A few months ago, (Jewish intellectual) Micha Brumlik warned of an "ice age" and now it has arrived. Relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community suddenly face a crucial test of the sort that hasn't been seen in decades.

Interview conducted by Alexander Schwabe. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

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