Pastoral Note on the Passion Narratives

The Chairmen of the Committees on Divine Worship and Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs issued a memo to the publishers of worship aids, hymnals, and missals on February 1, 2023. The memo requires the following statement to be printed before the text of the Passion narrative on Good Friday in all future publications beginning in 2024. 

In the 1990s and again in the 2000s the Committees provided guidance on the preparation of homilies and created a similar statement to be included in worship aids alongside the proclamation of the passion during Holy Week to help ensure that the proclamation of the Lord’s Passion is not misused to promote anti-Jewish sentiment. The statement is available in English and Spanish:

The passion narratives are proclaimed in full so that all see vividly the love of Christ for each person. In light of this, the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or catechesis, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture. The Church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish. As the Church has always held, Christ freely suffered his passion and death because of the sins of all, that all might be saved.

Las narraciones de la pasión se proclaman en su totalidad para que todos vean vívidamente el amor de Cristo por cada persona. A la luz de esto, los crímenes durante la Pasión de Cristo no pueden atribuirse, ni en la predicación ni en la catequesis, indiscriminadamente a todos los judíos de ese tiempo, ni a los judíos de hoy. El pueblo judío no debe ser referido como si fuera reprobado de Dios o maldito, como si este punto de vista se dedujera de las Sagradas Escrituras. La Iglesia siempre tiene en mente que Jesús, su madre María y los apóstoles eran todos judíos. Como la Iglesia siempre ha sostenido, Cristo sufrió libremente su pasión y muerte a causa de los pecados de todos, para que todos pudieran ser salvados.