It’s his lies about me and my posts that upset me.
I think that they should behave as if they just might possibly be wrong in their dealings with outsiders.
If the Pope wants Roman Catholics to pray privately for conversion of non Catholics, OK. But I still think to announce it is condescending.
But of course! 
That’s gonna haunt me here like sheep haunt Hal B, isn’t it, except that Hal was pranked.
Do you think that it is possible to fully understand this practice and yet disagree with it totally, or do you think that all who disagree with it are ignorant of the facts and/or lying?
I wouldn’t worry. If there’s one thing that comes up in thread more than religion, it’s excuses to mock Hal. 
Once more: The pope made no announcement regarding praying for the conversion of Jews.
The pope relaxed the rules regarding the options one group of Catholics have to employ an older mode of prayer. That is the extent of the pope’s “announcement.”
In reaction to that, some people took umbrage at the fact that the older form had an even older form including an insulting message regarding the Jews, even though that particular passage had already been changed over a decade prior to the substitution of a new form 35 years ago. Returning to the old form does not restore the particularly insulting message because it had already been removed. And to get to that discussion, we need to overlook the fact that the pope made no mention of the prayer–old, new, modified, or whatever–in his actual announcement.
Yeah, I got that much. My point is that it’s not particularly impressive to call him a liar, if you’re not willing to show him to be a liar. If he is a liar, then simply telling him he’s a liar isn’t going to do much, because he obviously knows already and doesn’t care. But to the rest of us, we’re seeing one guy making substantial posts with mutliple links, and another guy just going, “Nuh-uh!” If Jackmanii is spreading lies about your faith, it seems it would be in your best interest to show these lies for what they are, else the people watching from the sidelines are more likely to accept his lies as truth.
Which, I assume, you’d want to prevent.
Of course it’s fully possible to understand the practice and disagree with it. That’s not what’s happening in this case, though. Jack is intentionally misrepresenting my posts. As to the LDS proxy baptism issue, I have posted in other threads on that issue. I don’t mind anyone doing a search; however, I’m out of patience for me to do the search for them.
Not in so many words, but the Good Friday prayer remains, as I read the cite.
Maybe I’m still remembering the Pope’s persona as a real hard liner in his previous job. Yes, the job probably calls for a hard line but he seemed to enjoy it enough that it’s not hard to think that is his basic intent.
Oh, he’s still a hard-liner. (I don’t even have a problem with people taking umbrage at the prayer for the conversion of the Jews (along with the ones for the conversions of heretics, pagans, and atheists that are part of the same litany) if they feel sufficiently strongly about it.
What bothers me is the charge of “anti-semitism” linked to this particular papal edict.
The prayers said in the new rite on Good Friday for the past 35 years have the same intent as the prayers said in the old rite as it had already been modified.
The old rite had already had its harshest language removed long before the new rite was adopted and “returning” to the old rite does not get back to the version with the harsh language.
The recent announcement did nothing except to allow people who wished to use the older rite (already modified to use slightly less offensive language) to petition the church to have the older rite used with less red tape.
If anyone wishes to be offended that the RCC prays for anyone’s conversion, they may express their umbrage with no criticism from me.
However, a request to use the older rite does nothing to invoke a prayer that is more insulting and the pope’s easing of restrictions on that use of the older form does nothing to promote anti-semitism.
People who wish to be up in arms about the prayer would be less foolish to complain about the nearly 1.1 billion Catholics who are reciting the current prayer (provided they attend church on Good Friday), than they would being upset that some tiny percentage of a few tens of thousands of people might recite a very similar prayer because the pope made it easier to get permission.
Yes, there might very well be an overreaction. Given Cardinal Ratzinger’s history, the fact that the College of Cardinals chose him, of all people, as Pope and the fact that anti-semitism was official church policy in the not too distant past I suppose some overreaction isn’t strange.
It would be one thing if it was a general prayer for all non-Catholics to have a religious epiphany and join the one true faith. I guess what troubles me is the specificity of the prayer, targeting Jews expressly. Would it be appropriate or prudent to officially endorse a specific prayer for Muslims to convert to Catholicism, just because evangelism is encouraged by the New Testament?
The prayer is offered in verse/response format for the church, the pope, the clergy, the catechumens, all who are ill, the return of heretics and schismatics, the conversion of Jews, and the conversion of pagans, in that order. (In the old days, we apparently missed offending the atheists, although I suspect that that had more to do with a paucity of known atheists in 1570 than with any desire to leave them out.)
ETA: I’m pretty sure that in 1570, the Muslims were grouped with the pagans–not correctly, of course.
Point taken, but hypothetically, would Muslims likely be offended by a prayer that specifically targets them for conversion? And, if so, should the Church consider those sensibilities when making official pronouncements?
What does Pope Benedict’s “history” have to do with a possible overreaction to perceved anti-Semitism? If you’re referring to the “Ratzinger was a Nazi” slander that was floating around a while ago, that’s been shown over and over again to be without merit.
No, that wasn’t what I was talking about. What I’m referring to is his seemingly rigid advocacy of what looked to an outsider like Catholic doctrine before the recent liberalizations.
For the Cardinals to choose him could easily bring on apprehension in an outside group that has undergone unjustified mistreatment as a result of that older doctrine.
It’s always been my contention that any one of us had we been youths in Germany when Hitler came to power would have been attracted to what he promised for Germany.
I don’t want to get caught up in defending Benedict at this point (it’s too soon to assess his record as Pope, and there’s certainly some stuff there that makes me uneasy), but then-Father Ratzinger, as a theological advisor to one of the cardinal/archbishops, one responsible (with Ratzinger’s aid) for the conversion of the Inquisition to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was one of the architects of the “recent liberalizations” (which presumably means Vatican II). At that time, he was seen as a reformer. He certainly got more conservative as the years went on, but in light of his performance so far as Pope, I’ve heard Catholics wonder if that was of his own accord or due to the influence or insistence of John Paul II.
I don’t see it. He’s been a lifelong defender of the VII document Nostra Aetate (rejecting the deicide slander), and has acknowledged and tried to correct anti-Semitic attitudes on the part of the Church in the past.
It might be true for you or me, but I’m not sure that Pope Benedict was “attracted to” anything about what Hitler promised. From Wikipedia:
My point isn’t that Benedict is an evil person and a threat to Jews. It’s only that in view of his current conservatism and regardless of his relative liberalism in 1962 I can see how he might be regardes with suspicion by some after reinstating the Latin Mass which includes the Good Friday prayer.
And his father appears to have had his head screwed on straight.
For anyone who would like to read the actual text of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, here’s a link to an English translation (all three pages or so of it).