The Prayer for the Jews - Re. their Lordships' belief that it needs to be "reviewed" (yet again!); the telling contradictory views, beyond the grave, of one of C20th England's staunchest Catholic liberals

“Pope John gave us an indication of his own frame of mind on the subject when he had the formula praying for the 'perfidious Jews' removed from the Easter liturgy. Since then the Jews have been prayed for in the same manner as everybody else and without any insulting adjectives.”
– Norman St John-Stevas

We offer a different – probably unique – though very illuminating and contemporaneous perspective on the petty nonsense peddled by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales late last month, who effectively called for the abolition of the already thrice revised Prayer for the Jews (last re-written in 2008 by Pope Benedict XVI), as currently used in the Extraordinary Form (EF) of the Solemn Good Friday liturgy (per the 1962 Missal of Pope St John XXIII), and presumably for it to be replaced by that currently used in the Ordinary Form (OF) liturgy (per the 1970 Missal of Blessed Pope Paul VI).




When we say “contemporaneous”, however, we refer to that of a contemporaneity existing in 1963, i.e. just three years after the Prayer for the Jews underwent its first alteration and just 12 months after the promulgation of the aforesaid Johannine EF Missal.

We believe that it is all the more insightful to present a sourced viewpoint from 52-years-ago, to add to the canon of reasoned responses that their Lordships’ tedious call has already received over the last 10 days or so, in order to further underscore the sheer folly of this latest episcopal footling.

However, to be pedantically accurate at this stage, it is true to say that their Lordships, in releasing the official text of their eight Plenary Resolutions for 2015 (of which this head-shaking matter was No. 3) have only called on the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (PCED – the Holy See organ which oversees all matters related to the EF liturgy and sacraments) to “review” the prayer. You can already hear these soft backtracking "...but that's all we've done..." type noises if you listen keenly enough. Moreover, and to maintain our probably unnecessary precision (n.b. whilst we've admittedly only been blogging for less than a year, some of us have been involved in Catholic communications for over a quarter of a century and well know the pettifogging terrain), they didn’t specifically call for the 1970 version of the Good Friday petition to replace that of the 2008 Prayer for the Conversion of Jews.

Not formally, anyway.

However, in issuing their desperately-straining-to-be-understood later “Note of Clarification” (the only one of the eight resolutions to require such mop-up treatment) it would seem, from the very first line of the bishops’ additional communique, that the 1970 version of the prayer is indeed being held up as the OF exemplar that the EF should follow. Especially insofar as “it removed offensive references to the Jews and did not pray for the conversion of the Jews.”

Of course.

Maybe the PCED will be as swift with the results of its "review" as their Lordships have been with the results of their "six months of reflection" undertaken from May 2011 regarding the potential restoration of the Holy Day feasts of The Epiphany and The Ascension back to their traditional dates? By our reckoning that "six months" has taken 54 lunar loops and counting...

In any case, their Lordships’ implicit, and Christ foreshortening, claim that “offensive references” are still contained in the 2008 version of the prayer – which replaced the 1960 revision (as then used in the 1962 Missal) when St Pope John XXIII deleted the apparently derogatory reference to the “Perfidious Jews” that had existed for centuries – has already been expertly dissected, deconstructed, disproven and utterly demolished, and in pretty short order, by an army of eminently qualified commentators and bloggers (their unsaid sub-text surely being: the Church is in a mess, the world is in a bigger one, haven’t the bishops anything better to do with their time than raise this well-dried-out chestnut?).

Links to the best of the dispatches we’ve seen:

Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce - Press Release (via Rorate Caeli) 
Joseph Shaw - Latin Mass Society 1
Joseph Shaw - Latin Mass Society 2
Joseph Shaw - Latin Mass Society 3
Joseph Shaw - Latin Mass Society 4
Fr John Hunwicke
Fr John Zuhlsdorf

Therefore, by way of, we hope, an interesting but related diversion, we thought we’d train a different – and fittingly local – torch on this endlessly tiresome matter to hopefully play a little part in ensuring that “Resolution 3” is eventually stored in the special episcopal file at 39 Eccleston Square: that round shaped one under the desk. In so doing, though, we also make an important and timely call back to one of our posts last week: about the rampant liberal and rainbow-friendly Catholic culture that has quietly but surely permeated and influenced this archdiocese for decades.

Two birds, one stone and all that.

–

As highlighted above, we call to mind the memory of the late baptised Catholic, Norman St John-Stevas (b. 1929). The well-decorated British Conservative Party MP, government minister, barrister and author – who in his later years was known as Baron St John of Fawsley – died in 2012 (requiescat in pace) after an especially distinguished three-decade career in public life which saw him serve spells as (chronologically): Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Leader of the House of Commons and finally Minister of State for the Arts. A graduate of Oxford, Cambridge and Yale, his intellect was immense.

So, an establishment figure of great influence in late C20th British society, to say the least.

For the purposes of this exercise, and certainly not to wantonly exceed the limits of necessary context and unduly detract from the posthumous reputation of the late Baron, we do believe we must provide some very pertinent extra detail, all of which is well within the public domain in any case.

Lord Fawsley, as was provably widely known in British culture, was involved in a homosexual “partnership” (his phrase) for over half-a-century, one which finally saw him enter into a “civil partnership” in 2009 with the man with whom he had lived since 1956. We present that fact bluntly and without any further comment. He was also an avowed supporter from at least 1966 of the eventual (1968) British legislation decriminalising homosexual acts and indeed was a keen proponent in the mid-1960s for the Catholic Church to change its teaching on contraception; he was a master not only of the sophistic, softly-softly, stealth-influence tactic on this subject, but also very adept at divorcing dogma from pastoral "presentation" (where have we heard that lately?) (1). His infamous 1961 book "Life, Death and the Law: Law and Christian Morals in England and the United States" – which really catapulted him to the front and centre of the world of Catholic commentary in the 1960s, and especially in Britain – was a Modernist manifesto on the subjects of contraception, artificial insemination, so-called homosexuality, suicide, sterilisation and euthanasia – indeed frighteningly so on the latter subject – (wherein he conspicuously ommitted the subject of abortion, for reasons which will become obvious further in this post) which at once acknowledged the existence of the Natural Law and paid due tribute to the entire Thomistic system only to then issue a huge "but..." concerning every category of liberal agitation (of the many favourable secular reviews it received: American Bar Association Journal, February 1962, Pg 164; and Eugenics Review, 1961).

It is surprising that many a convenient Catholic blind eye and deaf ear was turned from his considered and deeply casuistic views which stealthily caused much damage to the simple understandings of the Truth in Catholic pews in that nightmare decade of the 1960s, presumably because he was an astonishingly erudite and learned man and undoubtedly first class company, with a ready wit that few could better – a rapier trained skill which undoubtedly saw him eventually fall foul of Margaret Thatcher.

The reverse of the dust jacket of later reprints of Norman
St-John Stevas' 1961 book  "Life, Death and the Law"

Additionally, he was a huge supporter of the broad sweep of liturgical changes ushered in during the 1960s, and especially advocated for the abandonment of Latin – with his views on that subject (2) seemingly lifted from Pg 1 of the Identikit Guide to Council Spirit Speak. Every inch the archetypal “Vatican II man” – he also publicly and campishly lampooned  Evelyn Waugh (3) who was then famously starting to endure his “bitter trial” as he struggled to accept the realities of the early post-conciliar Church.

For those who know of his background, then, it is about as revealing as stating that fish swim to report that St John-Stevas was a Catholic liberal.

Against all this, however, it must be said, and thankfully so, that he was a vehement opponent of the 1967 UK Abortion Act and also divorce legislation.

Some may suggest that a staunchly orthodox stance on the matters of abortion and divorce should lessen the charge of branding St John-Stevas as a true liberal. Well, er, no. Not here. For being reliable on the matters of abortion and divorce should come as naturally to a Catholic as breathing. Regarding the other matters, we say that being pro-same-sex relationships and same-sex activity, combined with being pro-contraception and pro-radical liturgical reform, as well as being downright flaky on artificial insemination, suicide and euthanasia = Liberal. Capital.

Frustratingly, for those alongside him in the 1960s Catholic battle-lines fighting against abortion and divorce law reforms, his sincerely-held orthodoxy on such matters was always inevitably compromised by his actively flamboyant camp life, which he seemed to revel in, which, of course, was logically at odds with the unwavering stances he strove to convey on those key moral issues. It has to be accepted that Lord Fawsley really never helped himself regarding the rumours about the truth or otherwise of his lifestyle, nor did he seek to spare the scandalised perceptions of his fellow Catholics. It's hard to dance around that reality. Indeed, so much did his overtly effeminate lifestyle lessen the impact of those positions of his which were thankfully orthodox, that it gave rise to one of the most infamous exchanges ever in British parliamentary history, as recorded in Hansard; a verbal attack, during the evil House of Commons debate on the legalisation of abortion, was gleefully levelled against him by a pro-abort opponent who suggested that St John-Stevas should not even have a say in “[this] necessary social measure” given that he “lacked the capacity to put a bun in anyone's oven” .

Different times, as they say.

Anyway, despite his highly alternative lifestyle which was one of those “open secrets” that Britain the Ambiguous always does so well, he was nevertheless held up as a leading Catholic for many decades.

This, for example, from the obituary for the late Law Lord in the highly liberal and quite anti-Catholic British newspaper The Independent was risible but just about summed up how, for years, the Baron’s views on same-sex activities were seen, societally, to be compatible with the Church’s teaching:

“…he was also a co-sponsor of Leo Abse's Private Member's bill to reform the law to permit homosexual acts between consenting adults. But as a devout Catholic, Stevas opposed Abse's divorce bill and David Steele's abortion bill…”

Quite.

One final note about the Baron's pronounced effeminacy and the extent to which it was openly discussed and known, we note that the Catholic Herald, for which Baron Fawsley was a one time columnist, honourably erred (we think, anyway) as much as plausibly possible on the side of the maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum by deftly avoiding certain aspects of his life in a very kindly obituary tribute ... only for the readers' comments thread (as shown in the above link) to then immediately address the matter head on.

Such was the knowingness concerning Singe's life and times.

–

Anyway, with that (we believe necessary) context set, what wasn’t so well-known, beyond the 1960s anyway, was that St John-Stevas was also a weekly columnist – and a flagship one – for the Liverpool Catholic Pictorial tabloid weekly newspaper (est. 1962) which, by 1964, astonishingly (by today’s standards) commanded a circulation of 60,000-plus copies every Sunday across the Archdiocese of Liverpool, then estimated to have had a Catholic population of over 500,000.

Undoubtedly, St John-Stevas’ standing was such that he was high among the “go to” group of “media-Catholics” for many years in Britain, and was certainly among the biggest Council cheerleaders throughout the conciliar years 1962-65. Thus, the Tory Catholic was a natural fit for a Liverpool Catholic paper – when he joined it in 1962 – that was published in what was still an overwhelmingly politically-conservative city (six of its nine seats had returned a Tory member in the most recent General Election, of 1959, a pattern that had long since been established). The title itself was a curious mix of mawkish sentiment, agitation, orthodoxy, tradition, papolatry and open dissent masking itself as legitimate query. It was every inch a Spirit of the Council propaganda vehicle but that's a very easy hindsight conclusion to reach from the vantage point of 2015. There was certainly nothing sinister about its pages – although St John-Stevas' progressive, pro-same-sex, pro-pill and anti-Tridentine views clearly bore the signature of the "Council of the Media" agenda that undoubtedly wielded huge influence in those early 1960s years. All that said, he was silently removed from the Catholic Pictorial pages later in 1964 following an open, intra-title published spat with an orthodox priest who was also a popular columnist. The details are beyond the scope of this piece but perhaps we shall return to the matter in a future post; in summary, though, the final result was Right-Thinking Catholic Priest 1, Wrong-Headed Catholic Politician 0 … sadly it was but a minor battle won amid the shattering defeat of the conciliar media war onslaught).

So, given his ultra-liberal leaning, you would think, then, that St John-Stevas would have been a nailed-on cert to be among those willing Catholic de-triumphalists wringing their hands in self-hate at the so-called offensiveness of the Prayer for the Jews. And you’d be right. For the future Baron Fawsley most certainly was among those who warmly welcomed, and then some, Pope John’s completely unnecessary (in our unreconstructed view) concession on the “perfidious” matter. But there’s the 1964 point. Because St John-Stevas clearly believed that enough had been done already in 1960. Any – spuriously claimed – insult had been duly removed and struck from the record at a papal pen-wielding stroke by Papa Roncalli. Dealt with. Dutifully done. And diplomatically dusted.

It was quite clear from this arch-liberal of his day that enough sackcloth had torn enough Catholic skin and it was time to de-ash and drive on.

We present here, then, the whole of his column for the Liverpool Catholic Pictorial edition of August 25th, 1963. You will effortlessly detect his liberal embroidery seamed right though the piece, of course. However, not only is it easy to read St John-Stevas’ belief that enough Catholic humility had been extended on the matter but there are also enough residual echoes of the type of right-thinking, but so recently discarded, Catholicism still writ-medium throughout his piece. In fact, by today’s crawling standards, it should be noted that certain declared viewpoints and turns of phrase would probably see him hauled to stand charge in the high courts of Anti-Semitism alongside Mel Gibson and Nicholas Anelka.

Anyway, a rampant 60s-libber writes:  

The Week by Norman St John-Stevas

THE JEWS ALONE DID NOT KILL 

CHRIST...THE FACT IS, WE ALL DID

One of the things that has often distressed me in Catholic circles is the amount of anti-semitism one finds, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

In part, this has a social foundation similar to that on which anti-semitism in the community as a whole is based. Jews tend to keep themselves apart from other people; they have their own friends and social circle; they participate in the mysteries of the synagogue into which few Christians have ever penetrated.


Since the middle ages, when Christians were barred from usury, Jews have engaged in finance, and this frequently makes them monied people, a fact which arouses jealously in their poorer neighbours.

But when all this has been taken into account, the phenomenon is still not adequately explained. I believe it to have a theological foundation. By the large, Catholics believe that the Jews have a special responsibility for the death of Our Lord. As a people they are guilty of Deicide - the killing of God - and for this crime they have become an accursed people forced to wander the world until the end of time, without any permanent home of their own.

However widely accepted this doctrine is, it is fundamentally erroneous. It is a matter of history that the Jews put our Lord to death; that they did in fact cry “his blood is upon ourselves and upon our children” but the responsibility for the suffering and death of Our Lord rests not upon the Jews alone but upon sin and sinners everywhere in all ages.

This truth needs to be vigorously restated in order to clear away deep rooted prejudice. When the Ecumenical Council reconvenes in September, the question of the relationship between Christians and Jews will be high on the agenda.

Pope John gave us an indication of his own frame of mind on the subject when he had the formula praying for the “Perfidious Jews” removed from the Easter liturgy. 

Since then the Jews have been prayed for in the same manner as everybody else and without any insulting adjectives. 

The World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee have both sent memoranda to the Vatican outlining their views. A week ago, the European Presidium of the World Jewish Congress met at Montreux to discuss the whole question. Delegates from the congress have already been engaged in talks on the subject with Cardinal Augustin Bea’s commission for the promotion of Christian unity. As a result of these talks, a schema on the subject has been drawn up by Cardinal Bea for discussion at the Council. It was stated recently in the Observer [British newspaper] that the Holy Office has stirred up the Arab states to make representation to the Pope to stop the schema from being discussed. No evidence was given for this extremely grave statement but I had come across it earlier in Robert Kaiser’s book “Inside the Council”. In many ways, this is an excellent book but a number of controversial statements such as the one concerning the Jews are made in it without any attempt to produce justifying evidence.

That the Holy Office should so act seems extremely doubtful. The subject of World Jewry is quite distinct from that of the State of Israel which is the only matter on which the Arab states would have any right to make representation to the Vatican. At present there is no papal nuncio to the state of Israel and had it been proposed to establish diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See, the Arab states would have had some ground for their intervention.

As it is, the whole Observer story seems to lack any adequate foundation. The simple reason why the Council did not discuss the questions of the Jews in the first session was that it did not have the time to get around to it. What, then, could the Council do? It could publicly lift the charge of Deicide against the whole Jewish people.

–

Norman St John-Stevas, then? A Catholic liberal? Oh, undoubtedly. But was he also one who believed that enough Catholic liturgical concessions had been made to the Jews already by 1960? Absolutely! So that's at least one count of 1960s liberal Catholic opinion – and a heavyweight of his time at that, combined with the assiduous (whether necessary or not) efforts of two Popes in recent decades (St John XXIII, in 1960, and Benedict XVI in 2008) who all surely hold that enough has been done, and so much more, on the matter of the Prayer to the Jews these last 50 or so years. Add into the mix the scholarly research of those linked to above – wherein even a Rabbi suggests there's no case to answer if indeed ever their was – and it would seem that this is one sponge that has been completely wrung dry of vinegar.

Dear Bishops of England and Wales, just let it rest.

– –

   

(1)"Intense discussion is going on in Catholic circles, both theological and scientific, about the Pill. Some theologians condemn it, others think that its use in certain circumstances would be justified. Most agree that if it is used to regulate a woman's menstrual cycle it would be unobjectionable on moral grounds. We shall be hearing more about this debate in the future." - Liverpool Catholic Pictorial, May 10th, 1964

"There will, of course, be no change in the Church's basic teaching on either matter (the subjects of marriage and contraception) but the presentation of the Church's views may well be modified to take into account the thought of leading theologians and the facts of the contemporary world." – Liverpool Catholic Pictorial, June 14th, 1964

(2) "The use of the vernacular would enable the laity to take an active part in the Mass, to understand it much more fully and abandon the passive attitude which alas is so common in our churches. It would enable the Dialogue Mass to make progress. It would bring down one of the great barriers between the Catholic and other churches. On the one hand it would facilitate reunion with the Eastern Churches, on the other it would help bring Catholics closer to Anglicans and Protestants in this country." - Liverpool Catholic Pictorial, November 17th, 1963

(3) "Mr Evelyn Waugh has been treating us – in letters to The Times and elsewhere – to his view on the  use of our native language in the liturgy. In the field of worship, the future, apparently, is none too happy for one of our leading novelists. Church-going will become "irksome" when the vernacular is introduced but a "duty" he will have to perform. And he trusts that the bishops will "mitigate the annoyance and distress" that Mr Waugh will be obliged to suffer. For three decades he has skilfully and lovingly depicted an England largely (and happily?) unfamiliar to post-war generations. It was an England of which the average man – even in the twenties  – had little knowledge. And for which, perhaps, he had little time, too. An England of the privileged and few. Is it not time for Mr Waugh to abandon his good-old-days nostalgia, and give more thought to the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of his co-religionists – and the Church in general? He can't still expect people to attend Church (with the best possible advantage) without making the smallest effort to go out to meet them and attract them inside." – Liverpool Catholic Pictorial, August 16th, 1964

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Norman St John-Stevas, speaking at Christmas 1983, on, among other things: God as Judge, forgiveness, Pope John Paul II's trip to Poland, and Mother Teresa's meeting with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

Norman St John-Stevas, 1929-2012

Eternal rest, grant unto him, O Lord,

And let perpetual light shine upon him,

May he rest in peace,

Amen