On March 30, 1959, Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) published an article titled:
Jews in Italy Hail Pope’s Elimination of Slur from “Good Friday” Prayer
The “slur” in question refers to the prayer, Oremus pro Judaeis perfidis (“Let us pray for the perfidious Jews”).
The wording of this ancient prayer predates the 1570 Roman Missal by nearly a thousand years. In 1946, however, an Italian Jewish activist by the name of Lamberto Vitali began lobbying the Vatican to remove the word “perfidious” from the rite. According to JTA:
On 41 different occasions, since 1946, he [Vitali] petitioned the Vatican Secretariat on this subject, and a number of times he followed through with personal interventions with Pope Pius XII.
Vitali submitted forty-one appeals over the course of a dozen years, an average of one every three or four months. Talk about a noodge (Yiddish for pain in the tuchus)!
Then came John XXIII, who ordered its removal in 1959, a change that was incorporated into the 1962 Missal along with the addition of St. Joseph’s name in the Communicantes.
As reported by JTA:
Jewish circles here point to this order by Pope John XXIII as “an illustration of his sense of justice in promptly correcting an old error which could instill hatred in new generations.”
Give ‘em an inch…
Less than a decade later, at the behest of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a theological consultant of the American Jewish Congress, Vatican Council II would declare:
Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. (Nostra Aetate 4)
This would be news to St. Paul who wrote of the Jews: “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.” (Gal. 3:10)
St. Paul was referring, of course, to the Jews of his time who had not faith in Christ, but who continued to believe and behave as if one could be justified in the eyes of God if only he performs the works of the Old Law.
With this in mind, how much more accursed is the typical self-identified Jew of our time (Nostra Aetate in Latin) who not only rejects Jesus Christ but has little interest in matters of faith more generally?
Jewish influence at Vatican II didn’t end there. As I wrote in a May 2026 post:
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was the point man representing the Jewish agenda at Vatican II. To that end, he worked very closely with his friend Cardinal Augustin Bea, Secretariat for Christian Unity, the body that was responsible for drafting the text of both Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio, the Decree on Ecumenism.
I would argue that Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio are like brother and sister, offspring of the same Jewish influence.
… they’ll take a foot…
In 2007, in response to the motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, Jewish leaders swiftly initiated yet another kvetching campaign, this one aimed at the revised Good Friday prayer insofar as it referred to the “blindness” of the Jews and the “darkness” in which they dwell.
Not to be outdone by Roncalli in deference to the Jews, in 2008, Benedict XVI further softened the language of the Good Friday prayer according to their wishes such that the current version asks God to “enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, Savior of all men…”
Thirteen years later, after Francis experienced a rare Catholic slip of the tongue saying that the Old Law “does not give life,” the perpetually offended Jews (aka the Conciliar Church Board of Directors) once again wailed and gnashed their teeth in protest.
In response, Cardinal Kurt Koch swiftly responded by issuing a letter reassuring the Jews:
This does not mean that the Torah is diminished or no longer recognized as the way of salvation for Jews.
… and eventually they’ll take over your entire enterprise.
None of what has been stated thus far is news to most readers, nor is the fact that the conciliar church’s desire to placate the Jews is matched only by its herculean effort to ingratiate itself to the heretics, e.g., the Novus Ordo, whereby the heretics were given not just an inch, but an entire liturgy.
Ecumenism, however, hasn’t directly impacted the so-called “Extraordinary Form,” at least not yet. Even so, the following commentary found in the Baronius Press 1962 Missal for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul looks like a noteworthy, albeit informal, step in that direction:
The Apostles Peter and Paul are the two Princes of the Apostles, the foundations of the Church, on which she is firmly established as on a rock.
Based on this, if one didn’t know better, it would seem that this is what Jesus really meant to say as recorded in Matthew 16:18:
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter and Paul; and upon the two of you I will build my church as on a rock…
Although laughable, this reflects the view of Martin Luther and many of his contemporary heretical offspring:
Peter and Paul are to be considered equal … the claims and proceedings of the Pope must be false and this text is a powerful enemy of popedom. (cf Matin Luther, Sermon on Corinthians)
Pope St. Pius X explicitly condemned this proposition in 1910:
…first of all an error, long since condemned by Our predecessor, Innocent X, is being renewed, in which it is argued that St. Paul is held as a brother entirely equal to St. Peter;-then, with no less falsity, one is invited to believe that the Catholic Church was not in the earliest days a sovereignty of one person, that is a monarchy… (Denzinger 2147a)
And yet commentary in one of the most popular “full communion” Latin Mass Missals subtly suggests otherwise.
Bottom Line: One must ever be aware that the conciliar poison is ubiquitous in the counterfeit church, its tentacles are inescapable, even in allegedly “traditional” places.
