Vatican cardinal defends Jewish conversion prayer

Earlier this week Catholic News Agency reported: Pope Benedict to reformulate Good Friday prayers for Tridentine Mass

Reuters reports: "The top Vatican cardinal in charge of relations with Jews on Thursday denied a new prayer for their conversion was offensive and said Catholics had the right to pray as they wished . . . The Vatican on Tuesday revised a contested Latin prayer used by a traditionalist minority on Good Friday, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts."

Due to the multi-faceted nature of the different interests (e.g., conservative Catholics, leftist Catholics, Protestants, secularists, Jews etc. . . ) , this story has received very heavy coverage, including some distortions, in many news outlets. See, e.g., Google News and Yahoo News search results.

The USCCB statement is here.  For Catholic criticism of the USCCB statement, see, e.g., this post in "What does the Prayer Really Say" blog.

Not surprisingly, the Anti-Defamation League remains unsatisfied with the changes: Prayer for Conversion of Jews Remains Troubling Despite Vatican Changes.