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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi#Youth_and_education

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_prayer_for_the_Jews

The Good Friday prayer for the Jews is an annual prayer in the Christian liturgy. It is one of several petitions, known in the Catholic Church as the Solemn Intercessions and in the Episcopal Church (United States) as the Solemn Collects, that are made in the Good Friday service for various classes and stations of peoples: for the Church; for the pope; for bishops, priests and deacons; for the faithful; for catechumens; for other Christians; for the Jews; for others who do not believe in Christ; for those who do not believe in God; for those in public office; and for those in special need.[1] These prayers are ancient, predating the eighth century at least (as they are found in the Gelasian Sacramentary[2]).

Roman Catholicism Background

In the early 1920s, the Clerical Association of Friends of Israel, a Catholic organization founded in 1926 to foster positive attitudes toward Jews and to pray for their conversion to Christianity, requested that the phrase "perfidious Jews" (Latin: pérfidis Judǽis; Italian: perfidi Giudei) be removed from the liturgy.[3] Pope Pius XI was reportedly strongly in favour of the change and asked the Congregation of Rites to review the matter. Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, who was among the Friends of Israel, was appointed to monitor this issue. The Roman Curia, however, is reported to have reacted very negatively to the proposal on the basis that if one change was made to the old liturgy it would invite other such proposals. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dissolved the association on 25 March 1928.[citation needed]

Changes by Pius XII

After World War II, Eugenio Zolli, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome and a convert to Roman Catholicism, asked Pope Pius XII to excise the adjective "perfidis" from the prayer for the Jews.[4] Professor Jules Isaac, a French scholar of Catholic-Jewish relations, did so as well in an audience with Pius in 1949. Pius responded with a public declaration that the Latin word "perfidus" means "unbelieving", not "perfidious" or "treacherous".[5] Fifteen years later, Pope John XXIII made that change official.[3] "Orémus et pro pérfidis Judǽis..." in Nouveau Paroissien Romain, 1924

The form used before 1955 read as follows:

>Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts;[6] so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ('Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[7]

At that time, the congregants did not kneel during the prayer for the conversion of the Jews (even though moments of kneeling in silent prayer were prescribed for all of the other petitions in the Good Friday rite), because, as the famous liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., said:

>Here [at this prayer] the deacon does not invite the faithful to kneel. The Church has no hesitation in offering up a prayer for the descendants of Jesus' executioners; but in doing so she refrains from genuflecting, because this mark of adoration was turned by the Jews into an insult against our Lord during the Passion. She prays for His scoffers; but she shrinks from repeating the act wherewith they scoffed at Him.[8]

Others disagreed with this explanation; the Russian-Jewish historian Solomon Lurie wrote in his 1922 book on antisemitism in antiquity that this explanation was arbitrary and ad hoc invented: according to the Gospels, it was the Roman soldiers, not the Jews, who mocked Christ. Lurie quotes Kane who wrote that "all authors tried to justify the practice that had existed before them, not to introduce the new one. Apparently this practice (of not kneeling) had been established as a result of the populist antisemitism."[9]

As part of his major revision of the Holy Week liturgy in 1955, Pope Pius XII instituted kneeling for this petition as at the other petitions of the litany, so that the prayer read:

>Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. [pause for silent prayer] Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[10]

Changes by John XXIII

On 21 March 1959, Pope John XXIII ordered that the word "faithless" (Latin: perfidis) be removed from the prayer for the conversion of the Jews,[11] This word had caused much trouble in recent times because of misconceptions that the Latin perfidis was equivalent to "perfidious", giving birth to the view that the prayer accused the Jews of treachery (perfidy), though the Latin word is more correctly translated as "faithless" or "unbelieving".[12] Accordingly, the prayer was revised to read:[13]

>Let us pray also for the Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

John XXIII demonstrated his commitment to the change during the Good Friday service in St. Peter's Basilica in April 1963. When the canon reciting the eight prayers included the word "perfidis" when chanting the Prayer for the Jews, the seventh prayer, the Pope signaled for the liturgy to stop and then had the sequence of prayers repeated from the beginning with the word omitted.[14][15]

Changes after Vatican II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council ( from the summer of 1959 to the autumn of 1962. )

After the Second Vatican Council, the prayer was completely revised for the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal. Because of the possibility of a misinterpretation similar to that of the word "perfidis", the reference to the veil on the hearts of the Jews, which was based on 2 Corinthians 3:14, was removed. The 1973 ICEL English translation of the revised prayer, which was to be retained in the rejected 1998 version, is as follows:[16]: 293 

>Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. (Prayer in silence. Then the priest says:) Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Changes by Benedict XVI

On 7 July 2007, the Vatican released Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio entitled, Summorum Pontificum which permitted more widespread celebration of Mass according to the "Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII in 1962". The universal permission given to priests by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to use the 1962 Roman Missal both privately and, under certain conditions, with a congregation was followed by complaints from Jewish groups and some Catholic leaders over what they perceived as a return to a supersessionist theology that they saw expressed in the 1960 prayer. In response to the complaints, Pope Benedict amended the Good Friday prayer.[17] On 6 February 2008, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published a note[18] of the Secretariat of State announcing that Pope Benedict XVI had amended the Good Friday prayer for the Jews contained in the 1962 Roman Missal, and decreeing that the amended text "be used, beginning from the current year, in all celebrations of the Liturgy of Good Friday according to the aforementioned Missale Romanum".

The new prayer reads as follows:[19]

>Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Even the new formulation met with reservations from groups such as the Anti-Defamation League. They considered the removal of "blindness" and "immersion in darkness" with respect to the Jews an improvement over the original language in the Tridentine Mass, but saw no reason why the prayer in the rite as revised by Paul VI was not used instead.

Renewed debate

Jewish reactions to Benedict's authorization underlined their concern that the traditional formulation, which Jews felt offensive, would be more broadly used.

In the form in which they appear in the 1962 Missal, the set of prayers in which that of the Jews is included are for: the Holy Church, the Supreme Pontiff; all orders and grades of the faithful (clergy and laity); public officials (added in 1955, replacing an older prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor, not used since the abdication of Francis II in 1806 but still printed in the Roman Missal); catechumens; the needs of the faithful; heretics and schismatics; the conversion of the Jews (without the word "perfidis"); the conversion of pagans.

In later editions of the Missal, the prayers are for: the Church; the Pope, the clergy and laity of the Church; those preparing for baptism; the unity of Christians, the Jewish people; those who do not believe in Christ; those who do not believe in God; all in public office; those in special need.[20]

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) complained about the document because the 1962 text for Good Friday includes the request asking God to "lift the veil" from Jewish hearts and to show mercy "to the Jews also."...

[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi#Youth_and_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_prayer_for_the_Jews The Good Friday prayer for the Jews is an annual prayer in the Christian liturgy. It is one of several petitions, known in the Catholic Church as the Solemn Intercessions and in the Episcopal Church (United States) as the Solemn Collects, that are made in the Good Friday service for various classes and stations of peoples: for the Church; for the pope; for bishops, priests and deacons; for the faithful; for catechumens; for other Christians; for the Jews; for others who do not believe in Christ; for those who do not believe in God; for those in public office; and for those in special need.[1] These prayers are ancient, predating the eighth century at least (as they are found in the Gelasian Sacramentary[2]). Roman Catholicism Background In the early 1920s, the Clerical Association of Friends of Israel, a Catholic organization founded in 1926 to foster positive attitudes toward Jews and to pray for their conversion to Christianity, requested that the phrase "perfidious Jews" (Latin: pérfidis Judǽis; Italian: perfidi Giudei) be removed from the liturgy.[3] Pope Pius XI was reportedly strongly in favour of the change and asked the Congregation of Rites to review the matter. Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, who was among the Friends of Israel, was appointed to monitor this issue. The Roman Curia, however, is reported to have reacted very negatively to the proposal on the basis that if one change was made to the old liturgy it would invite other such proposals. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dissolved the association on 25 March 1928.[citation needed] Changes by Pius XII After World War II, Eugenio Zolli, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome and a convert to Roman Catholicism, asked Pope Pius XII to excise the adjective "perfidis" from the prayer for the Jews.[4] Professor Jules Isaac, a French scholar of Catholic-Jewish relations, did so as well in an audience with Pius in 1949. Pius responded with a public declaration that the Latin word "perfidus" means "unbelieving", not "perfidious" or "treacherous".[5] Fifteen years later, Pope John XXIII made that change official.[3] "Orémus et pro pérfidis Judǽis..." in Nouveau Paroissien Romain, 1924 The form used before 1955 read as follows: >>Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts;[6] so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ('Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[7] At that time, the congregants did not kneel during the prayer for the conversion of the Jews (even though moments of kneeling in silent prayer were prescribed for all of the other petitions in the Good Friday rite), because, as the famous liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., said: >>Here [at this prayer] the deacon does not invite the faithful to kneel. The Church has no hesitation in offering up a prayer for the descendants of Jesus' executioners; but in doing so she refrains from genuflecting, because this mark of adoration was turned by the Jews into an insult against our Lord during the Passion. She prays for His scoffers; but she shrinks from repeating the act wherewith they scoffed at Him.[8] Others disagreed with this explanation; the Russian-Jewish historian Solomon Lurie wrote in his 1922 book on antisemitism in antiquity that this explanation was arbitrary and ad hoc invented: according to the Gospels, it was the Roman soldiers, not the Jews, who mocked Christ. Lurie quotes Kane who wrote that "all authors tried to justify the practice that had existed before them, not to introduce the new one. Apparently this practice (of not kneeling) had been established as a result of the populist antisemitism."[9] As part of his major revision of the Holy Week liturgy in 1955, Pope Pius XII instituted kneeling for this petition as at the other petitions of the litany, so that the prayer read: >>Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. [pause for silent prayer] Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[10] Changes by John XXIII On 21 March 1959, Pope John XXIII ordered that the word "faithless" (Latin: perfidis) be removed from the prayer for the conversion of the Jews,[11] This word had caused much trouble in recent times because of misconceptions that the Latin perfidis was equivalent to "perfidious", giving birth to the view that the prayer accused the Jews of treachery (perfidy), though the Latin word is more correctly translated as "faithless" or "unbelieving".[12] Accordingly, the prayer was revised to read:[13] >>Let us pray also for the Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. John XXIII demonstrated his commitment to the change during the Good Friday service in St. Peter's Basilica in April 1963. When the canon reciting the eight prayers included the word "perfidis" when chanting the Prayer for the Jews, the seventh prayer, the Pope signaled for the liturgy to stop and then had the sequence of prayers repeated from the beginning with the word omitted.[14][15] **Changes after Vatican II** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council ( from the summer of 1959 to the autumn of 1962. ) After the Second Vatican Council, the prayer was completely revised for the 1970 edition of the Roman Missal. Because of the possibility of a misinterpretation similar to that of the word "perfidis", the reference to the veil on the hearts of the Jews, which was based on 2 Corinthians 3:14, was removed. The 1973 ICEL English translation of the revised prayer, which was to be retained in the rejected 1998 version, is as follows:[16]: 293  >>Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. (Prayer in silence. Then the priest says:) Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Changes by Benedict XVI On 7 July 2007, the Vatican released Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio entitled, Summorum Pontificum which permitted more widespread celebration of Mass according to the "Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII in 1962". The universal permission given to priests by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to use the 1962 Roman Missal both privately and, under certain conditions, with a congregation was followed by complaints from Jewish groups and some Catholic leaders over what they perceived as a return to a supersessionist theology that they saw expressed in the 1960 prayer. In response to the complaints, Pope Benedict amended the Good Friday prayer.[17] On 6 February 2008, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published a note[18] of the Secretariat of State announcing that Pope Benedict XVI had amended the Good Friday prayer for the Jews contained in the 1962 Roman Missal, and decreeing that the amended text "be used, beginning from the current year, in all celebrations of the Liturgy of Good Friday according to the aforementioned Missale Romanum". The new prayer reads as follows:[19] >>Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen. Even the new formulation met with reservations from groups such as the Anti-Defamation League. They considered the removal of "blindness" and "immersion in darkness" with respect to the Jews an improvement over the original language in the Tridentine Mass, but saw no reason why the prayer in the rite as revised by Paul VI was not used instead. Renewed debate Jewish reactions to Benedict's authorization underlined their concern that the traditional formulation, which Jews felt offensive, would be more broadly used. In the form in which they appear in the 1962 Missal, the set of prayers in which that of the Jews is included are for: the Holy Church, the Supreme Pontiff; all orders and grades of the faithful (clergy and laity); public officials (added in 1955, replacing an older prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor, not used since the abdication of Francis II in 1806 but still printed in the Roman Missal); catechumens; the needs of the faithful; heretics and schismatics; the conversion of the Jews (without the word "perfidis"); the conversion of pagans. In later editions of the Missal, the prayers are for: the Church; the Pope, the clergy and laity of the Church; those preparing for baptism; the unity of Christians, the Jewish people; those who do not believe in Christ; those who do not believe in God; all in public office; those in special need.[20] The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) complained about the document because the 1962 text for Good Friday includes the request asking God to "lift the veil" from Jewish hearts and to show mercy "to the Jews also."... [...]

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