Oy Vey! Shut Up Already!

Vatican To Complaining Jews: Oy Vey! Shut Up Already!

Well alright, it is a colloquial paraphrasing of what they said, but that certainly is the intent.

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican says Jewish complaints about Pope Benedict XVI’s commitment to dialogue with Jews are “excessive.”

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, highlighted Benedict’s record in meeting with Jews and visiting synagogues in response to the criticism.

Earlier this week, the Assembly of Italian Rabbis said it was pulling out of the Italian Catholic Church’s annual celebration of Judaism, saying the pope’s recent decisions were “canceling” 50 years of interfaith progress.

The chief rabbi of Venice cited the decision to restore a prayer for the conversion of Jews in Easter Week services of the old Latin Mass.

L’Osservatore said Benedict’s contribution to interfaith dialogue was irrevocable.

Once again, the ostensibly derogatory perfidious has been removed from the prayer. The assembly of Italian Rabbis (bigger than a breadbox?) is complaining about being prayed for, period. Too bad, we can pray for whoever we want. Truth is so can they and they do. But let’s not go down this road again.

Damian Thompson reminds that in order to be Christians, we pray for conversion. It is what we do.

But if you ban all prayers for the conversion of the chosen people, then you end up misrepresenting the founder of Christianity. It’s an inconvenient fact that Jesus of Nazareth called loudly for the conversion of the Jews. Indeed, according to many biblical scholars, his message was primarily directed at his own people.

Leaving all that aside, the interesting thing for me is put this way. How annoying do you have to be to have the Vatican ask you to shut up already?

The delightfully undiplomatic Mr. Thompson extends the Vatican request for tied tongues to the left leaning Catholics who usually try to make hay of such pretense of offense.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the Catholic liberals, who are absolutely loving this controversy, because they’ll use any tactic, however cheap, to discredit Summorum Pontificum and the 1962 Missal. When it comes to this particular argument, they suddenly become terribly anxious about Jewish sensibilities. Call me a cynic, but I find that a bit suspicious, given that as soon as Israel comes under threat they start whining about “Zionist aggression”.

I second that. Shut up already. I don’t want to write about this story ever again.