Text of Letter from the International Council of Christians and Jews to Cardinal Kasper

29 March 2007

Dear Cardinal Kasper,

I write in the name of the ICCJ Executive concerning the current discussion within the Vatican of expanding use of the 1962 Catholic Missal. The Executive has very serious concerns about the impact of such an expansion firstly on Catholic-Jewish relations but also on Catholic- Muslim relations. Likewise we feel it would also cause harm to inter- Christian relations. As an organization with an ecumenical Christian membership inter-Christian tensions would negatively impact our work.

Though the 1962 Missal is devoid of the old "perfidious" language with respect to the Jews its prayers for the Jews, Muslims and other Christians are profoundly demeaning.

The expanded validation of such prayers will rightly challenge Catholic integrity in terms of the proclamations of the past four decades. Non- Catholics can rightly ask which is the normative view when two conflicting visions are supposedly legitimized. Saying that the missal of Pope Paul VI remains the normative text, while true, does not solve the problem in our judgment.

We urge your office to raise these concerns with the respective persons within the Vatican who will make the final decision on this matter.

Our warmest personal regards and prayers for Holy Week/Easter.

Sincerely,
Rev. Prof. Dr John T. Pawlikowski, OSM
President
Copies to:
Cardinal Arinze, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, Cardinal Levada,
Cardinal Lehmann, Bishop Van Luyn

Chapel altar

discovered inside bar:

"A wooden altar that graced the first Roman Catholic church in Derry Township has been discovered in the basement of a Hershey business.
Hershey-area historian Millie Landis-Coyle has been on the trail of the altar, as well as other artifacts, from St. Lucy’s Chapel for several years. "

Syncretism is a syn

according to Dominus Jesus. But they haven't heard yet in the Church of the Beguins in Brussels, where they offer up in a "Meeting of Spirit and Music" a blend of klezmer, Buddhism, humanistic texts, Sufi and Byzantine chant.

Tridentine Mass for Dummies

in the Royal Church of Brussels

Symbolic of the lamentable attitude of the Belgian ecclesiastical authorities to the Mass, it has been set up in a museum at the back of the Church.

The banner reads my house shall be a house of prayer

Close-up of the Mass, complete with altar

Veneration of the Blessed Sacrament is also a museum memory.

in the Royal Church of Brussels.