Some Not-So-Solemn Good Friday Prayers

Fr Hunwicke has some choice words for those who keep harping on the Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews in the Good Friday Liturgical Action.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

In the First English Prayer Book of 1549, two faint shadows remained of the traditional Latin Solemn Prayers from the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified. One was Cranmer's graceful rendering of the old prayer Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, cuius Spiritu....

The second was an amalgamation of the intercession for Jews, Unbelievers, and heretics. This is how it went:

Mercyfull God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothyng that thou hast made, nor wouldest the deathe of a synner, but rather that he should be conuerted and liue; haue mercy upon *all Jewes, Turkes, Infidels, and hereticks, and take from them all ignoraunce, hardnes of heart, and contempt of thy word: and so fetche them home, blessed Lorde, to thy flocke, that they maye be saued among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one folde under one shepeherde, Jesu Christ our Lord; who lyveth and reigneth, &c.

 The abortive Prayer Book of 1928 which was widely drawn upon for modernising alternatives, emended the prayer from my red asterisk onwards:

*thine ancient people the Jews, and upon all who have not known thee, or who deny the faith of Christ crucified; take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy fold, that they may be made one flock under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Alternative Service Book of 1980 incorporated this form of the prayer, in 'modernised' English. (Around the turn of the millennium, the prayer finally disppeared from general Church of England Good Friday worship.)

I think I prefer Cranmer's version, with its OT and NT 'Remnant' theology.

So, in 1980 and the decades after, it was still non-outrageous for Anglicans to pray for the Conversion of the Jews.

Really diligent readers may remember a series of mine, a few years ago, which demonstrated that the Liturgia Horarum, published in 1972, contained prayer for the Conversion of the Jews on Easter Sunday Evening Prayer, repeated on the Sunday evenings of Easter 3 and Easter 5. As far as I know, it still does.

Even more readers may recall, because I snarl about this every few months, that the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, meekly obeying the commands of the German bishops, attacked the Prayer for the Jews which had been composed less than a decade previously by Pope Benedict XVI himself, propria manu, for use in the Authentic Use  of the Roman Rite.

So why do some people make such a hysterical fuss and bother about the Old Roman Rite praying for the Conversion of the Jews, when such prayer

(1) is done in the legal form of worship prescribed by Act of Parliament for the Established Church (Common Worship being only an authorised optional alternative) ... and never a word said;

(2) is prescribed for all those who say the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo Divine Office of the Latin Church ... and never a word said.

I will tell you why. It is because there are unbalanced, hysterical folk who have an uncontrolled gut detestation of the Authentic Form of the Roman Rite. So they run around tearing their hair out and screaming on and on about the Traddies praying for the Conversion of Jews (as, indeed, they do and should do). 

Yet the Old Form affects only a tiny handful of worshippers on one day of the year which is not a Day of Obligation. While the "New" post-Conciliar forms of worship affect every cleric who uses them for the Divine Office.

So, while they rant, the angries simultaneously ignore the enormous plank in their own eyes.

Hypocrites. Raving Rabid Roaring Hypocrites.

They should be sent for counselling or locked up in a small dark windowless cell with Blaise Cupich.