Hymn Offensive to Jews Deleted by Episcopal Church from Prayer Book

The American Jewish Committee today hailed the decision of the Episcopal Church to remove from its revised Book of Common Prayer a hymn that has been considered offensive to Jews. The decision to delete the offending passages was finalized Monday by the House of Bishops at the Episcopal Church governing convention, now meeting in Minneapolis.

In a telegram to Bishop John Allin, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, AJCommittee’s national director of interreligious affairs, and Rabbi A. James Rudin, assistant director of the Committee’s department of interreligious affairs, called the deletion an “historic act of respect for Judaism and friendship for the Jewish people.”

The controversial hymn, known as the “Improperia” or “Reproaches,” consisted of two early Medieval poems that accused the Jewish people of ingratitude for their deliverance from Egypt and held them collectively responsible for the crucifixion.

It had appeared as part of the Good Friday liturgy in an experimental version of the book, titled “The Draft Proposed Book of Common Prayer,” of which 50,000 copies were published last February. In May, responding to numerous objections from scholars, liturgists and individuals within the Episcopal Church, as well as from Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders, the Church’s Standing Liturgical Commission withdrew the Reproaches from the recommended text, and set up a committee to suggest alternative material.

Last week, Episcopalian lay and clergy representatives at the governing convention approved the book without the Reproaches, despite the efforts of a small group of delegates who wanted to retain them. Monday’s action by the bishops set the final stamp of approval on the deletion.

CATHOLICS TO DISCUSS SUBJECT OF HYMN

In their telegram, Tanenbaum and Rudin referred to the fact that the AJCommittee had supplied research information, first to Vatican Council II, and later to the Episcopal Church, in an effort to secure the deletion of the Reproaches from both Catholic and Episcopal liturgies.

Archbishop John R. Quinn, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, has stated that the subject of the Reproaches in Catholic liturgy will be discussed by his committee this fall, Tanenbaum reported. In preparation for that meeting, he added, the Archbishop has circulated an AJCommittee study citing negative references to Jews and Judaism in Catholic liturgy.

The study was originally submitted to Vatican Council II by the Committee at the request of the late Augustin Cardinal Bea, and became a basis for the text of the Vatican Declaration on Non-Christian Religions of 1965 and the Vatican Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations of 1975, both of which called for the elimination of anti-Jewish references in Christian teaching, preaching and liturgy.