Pope Benedict XVI (whose given name is also Joseph) took an arrogant step backward last week with a decree encouraging the use of the pre-Vatican II Latin mass, which includes a prayer that not only longs for the conversion of the Jews but labels Jews a people blind to Christian truth. As Pontius Pilate memorably asked, "What is truth?" That we are even discussing this subject in 2007 is an indicator of the retrograde nature of this pope and his papacy.

The Latin mass, also known as the Tridentine mass, is only a symbol. But what a powerful symbol it is! Benedict's lifting of restrictions on celebration of the old mass tells the world that he values the concerns of a tiny minority of theological right-wingers (of whom he happens to be one) within his church over the sensibilities of the vast majority of western Catholics and Jews.

For those not well versed in the subtleties of mass appeal, the Second Vatican Council (known as Vatican II) largely replaced the Latin mass with the vernacular. Biblical texts particularly offensive to Jews--texts that blamed Jews for the "crime" of deicide--were stricken from standard missals.

At the time, the chief effect of the vernacular was to interrupt the Sunday-morning naps of Catholics who has grown accustomed to not understanding a word of what the priest was saying. When the priest (who used to face the altar while he mumbled in Latin) suddenly turned to the congregation and spoke in an understandable language, the faithful actually had to listen.
My father, who did understand Latin, used to snore through the Tridentine mass anyway, because he said it reminded him of high school Latin classes. The vernacular kept him irritably awake.

In Benedict's decree, which authorized parish priests to celebrate the old Tridentine mass if requested by a "stable group of [the] faithful," the pontiff wrote: "What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too."

Of course, what is wrong with all religions--but particularly with a religion that claims to have an infallible leader--is the idea that what was once held sacred must remain sacred today. The "sacred" words of the old mass were part of what led the good folks of European Christendom to conduct pogroms against Jews during Holy Week. Perhaps the pope will wish to reconsider reviving the earth-centered theory of the solar system as church doctrine? Sacred then, sacred now.

The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League called Benedict's move "a body blow to
Catholic-Jewish relations," and the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Benedict to publicly point out that such phrases are now contrary to the teaching of the church.

Benedict certainly could have ordered the excision of those anti-Jewish prayers in his decree, but he did not. Indeed, there were many regrettable aesthetic consequences accompanying the end of the Latin mass--chief among them the substitution of bad folk songs for Gregorian chant at High Mass. Why didn't the pope bring back Gregorian chant without bringing back theological slurs against Jews?

Perhaps Benedict did not anticipate the intensity of Jewish reaction, or perhaps he knows that many of the right-wing Catholics who care deeply about the language in which the mass is celebrated are also people who continue to hold the Jews responsible for killing Christ (though they dare not say it openly).

Within the Catholic Church, the groups that have gone to the mat with previous popes over restoration of the Tridentine mass represent the faction that has always wished to reverse all of the liberalizing and democratizing trends set in motion by Pope John and Vatican II. And Benedict is reaching out to those right-wingers. My guess is that the current pope, a canny politician, will have some mollifying words for Jews as well. It will be quite a balancing act. He is not, after all, Pope of the Jews.

Frankly, I think there is something undignified about Jewish leaders pleading with a pope to say, once again, that there is no such thing as collective Jewish guilt. But I would not be quite so cavalier, I suppose, if I were the head of a Jewish organization and part of my job required me to deal with the fallout from anti-Semitism rooted in centuries of Christian theology.

But what can you expect from a pope who believes that women cannot become priests because the twelve apostles were all men? By that logic, only Jews should become priests because all of the original apostles (and Jesus himself, of course) were Jews.

After all, what was sacred in the past remains sacred and great today. It must be so, because an infallible man has said so.

POSTSCRIPT: Here's a piece of breaking news that further underlines the retrograde nature of this pope and his papacy. In a document released Tuesday, he reaffirms that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church and that other Christian denominations do not have the "means of salvation" because they cannot trace their origins back to the twelve apostles. Because of this so-called defect, Protestant churches "cannot be called `churches' in the proper sense," the document asserts.

If this is what Benedict thinks about other Christians, one can only imagine how he views people who do not accept the divinity of Christ. Now Protestant leaders are just as mad at Benedict as Jewish leaders. Apparently, Benedict wishes to add to the dissension that religion is already sowing in the world. No one should pay the slightest attention to any pronouncements from this pathetic representative of a credulous, conformist past that preceded the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state in the West.