Friday, January 18, 2008

More on the Good Friday Prayer; Two conflicting stories

Recently the question of the Good Friday prayer in the usus antiquior arose.

The Italian site, Petrus, had an interview with Msgr. Camille Perl, the Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, where he suggested this was not deemed "an urgent problem".

Today, however, Andrea Tornielli has suggested that Benedict has made a determination to revise the prayer himself in at least some fashion -- for example, the suggestion has been made that words such as "blindness" may be removed from the text of the prayer, but -- more importantly -- the prayer for conversion would remain in tact (and let us note; that is the primary substance of the prayer, and therefore the most important part of it).

Tornielli suggests that this revision will be released within a few days and will come into effect for Good Friday this coming March 2008.

From what he describes, it sounds as though the purported changes would occur in a spirit similar to those made by John XXIII which also maintained the substance of the prayer (prayer for conversion) while removing the descriptor "faithless" that could be understood as a simple polemic.

We shall just have to wait and see what develops.

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