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VATICAN CITY-The Vatican tried to reassure Jews on Friday that a new prayer that some see as a call for their conversion, did not indicate a change in the Church's high regard for Jews or its contempt for anti-Semitism.But some Jewish groups said the Vatican did not go far enough to allay their concerns.The Anti-Defamation League said it was still troubling the Vatican did not "specifically say that the Catholic Church is opposed to proselytizing Jews" and accused the Vatican of taking "two steps forward and three steps backward".A statement which Vatican sources said Pope Benedict had approved and partly drafted stressed that the new prayer used in some Good Friday services "in no way intends to indicate a change in the Catholic Church's regard for the Jews."Catholic and Jewish sources said the statement had been delivered to the secretariat of the chief rabbinate of Israel.The Vatican had been keen to try to defuse the controversy with Jews over the Good Friday prayer before Pope Benedict's first trip to the United States as pontiff later this month.The German pope will meet American Jewish leaders and make a brief visit to the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.In February the Vatican revised a contested Latin prayer used by traditionalist Catholics on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ's crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts."To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
