Sul fondamento teologico dell’antigiudaismo delle preghiere del venerdì santo. Una riflessione in margine a un libro recente

Abstract

Daniele Menozzi deals with the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews, from the Jacobin period until the actual Paul VI’s liturgical reform and Benedict XVI’s further interventions. In the first period we can see the beginning of a laicization process, conflicting with the same idea of Christianity the Ancient Régime society was based on. The idea of equality among all citizens seems inconsistent with the terminology which refers to Jews as perfidi. The meaning of the Latin term perfidus is philologically explained as “unfaithful”. Menozzi examines the birth and wording of the decree issued in 1928, after several events. Afterwards the question riped with John XXIII, who removed from the Good Friday liturgy the perfidia lemma. He opened the doors to the counciliar decree Nostra aetate and to Paul VI’s reform whose new formulation stressed the “fulfilment” of Judaism, removing any discrimination from the Good Friday texts. The Good Friday Prayers originate from the Asian Easter homilies, which found their attitude towards the Jews on the Theology of substitution, based on typology. However, Substitution is an undue development of temporal Succession, because it contradicts the nature of typology consisting in inclusion rather than exclusion.