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From Nostra Aetate to the Notes for Catechists and Preachers - Part I - The evolution of a tradition
Eugene J. Fisher
The twentieth anniversary of the promulgation by the Second Vatican Council of the Church's Declaration on Relations with Non-Christian Religions — Nostra Aetate — was celebrated at Rome 28-30 October, 1985 by the twelfth meeting of the International Liaison Committee which is composed of IJCIC — International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations — and CRRJ — the Church's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. (The history of this Liaison Committee was documented in the SIDIC Review XIX No. 1 (1986), Doc. 2, pp. 22). At this Liaison Committee meeting, which began on the twentieth anniversary itself, Dr. Eugene J. Fisher who is a Consultor of the CRKJ and Executive Secretary of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, U.S.A., delivered a paper in which he both outlined the Church's evolution from the promulgation of Nostra Aetate to the publication of the Notes for Catechists and Preachers and analyzed their content.
Dr. Fisher's paper, presented on behalf of the CRRJ on this commemorative occasion is, with his very kind permission, presented here in its entirety with one small exception — the omission of a section dealing with Jewish historiography which, while important in itself, does not touch the Notes directly in so far as they are addressed to Roman Catholic catechists and preachers. The first part of his presentation — that which appears below covers the documents which have preceded the NOTES; Nostra Aetate and Guidelines and Suggestions for the Implementation of Nostra Aerate. Part II (pp. 20), which in our arrangement follows the -text of the NOTES (pp. 12), is entitled THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TRADITION, and illustrates the progression in thinking in the three texts: Nostra Aetate, the Guidelines for their implementation and the newly-published Notes. Part III of Dr. Fisher's paper (pp. 24): THE': ELABORATION OF A TRADITION, expands on the 'content on the NOTES.
In a remarkable and still most pertinent study paper presented at the sixth meeting of this International Vatican-Jewish Liaison Committee in Venice in March, 1977, Professor Tommaso Federici termed the "profound renewal" of the Catholic Church's attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in our age an "irreversible" movement.' Fr. Thomas Stransky, C.S.P., who was on the staff of the Secretariat which drafted Nostra Aetate for the Second Vatican Council, spoke in similar terms at a recent anniversary colloquium at the Angelicum:
"Only twenty years ago and only with fifteen long Latin sentences, the impossible became possible and the possible became act. 2,221 council fathers, by their approvals, committed the Roman Catholic Church to an irrevocable act, a heshbon ha-nefesh — a reconsideration of the soul. The act began to shift with integrity 1,900 years of relationships between Catholics and Jews."'
Part of the "irreversibility" or "irrevocability" of that act, Federici argued, lies in the fact that the change in the Church's attitude is a flowering of the biblical, ecclesiological, even missiological movements that made the Second Vatican Council possible.' In this sense, the development of Catholic-Jewish relations in the post-Conciliar period can rightly be said to be a "litmus test" for measuring the success of the Council's effort as a whole, since so many of the Council's major themes flow into it.
There is perhaps an even deeper reason for the irreversibility of the changes wrought by the Council through ist "15 long Latin sentences". To understand this deeper reasonone needs an appreciation of the concept of "Catholic Tradition". For the fact is that Nostra Aetate no. 4 for all practical purposes begins the Churches teaching ("Tradition with a capital 'T' as one might say") concerning a theological or, more precisely, doctrinal 'understanding of the relationship between the Church as "People of God" and "God's People, Israel". No previous Ecumenical Council of the Church, in point of fact, had ever directly addressed the issue.
The Council of Jerusalem in the first century of the common era addressed only the issue of gentile acceptance into the Roby of Christ, determining that, given faith, a rough equivalent of the Noahide commandments and ritual immersion was sufficient for gentiles (Acts 15). In the second century, Marcion's gnostic theory of incompatible dualism between the God of the ancient and renewed covenants (and therefore the peoples that witness to those covenants) was condemned. In that condemnation, the Church affirmed the unity of the divine plan but did not spell out how that unity was to be understood. So the matter stood until Vatican U. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), of course, issued its four discriminatory canons against Jews. These, however, were disciplinary laws only, and did not have doctrinal significance,'
Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, in a talk given in honor of his predecessor at the Vatican Secretariat, Cardinal Augustin Bea, was thus able to call Nostra Adair "an absolute unlearn," stating that
“never before has a systematic, positive, comprehensive, careful and daring presentation of Jews and Judaism been made in the Church by a Pope or a Council. This should never be lost sight of."
So too, Pope John Paul Il has reiterated, first in Venezuela and then again earlier this year in Rome, his desire
"to confirm, with utmost conviction, that the teaching of the Church proclaimed during the Second Vatican Council in the Declaration Nostra Aetate... remains always for us, for the Catholic Church, for the Episcopate... and for the Pope, a teaching which must be followed — a teaching which it is necessay to accept not merely as something fitting, but much more as an expression of the faith, an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as a word of the Divine Wisdom."
Such terminology is normally applied to Sacred Scripture.
Considering the centuries in which the "teaching of contempt" against Jews and Judaism held sway; considering the expulsions, he forced baptisms (prohibited by canon law but done anyway), the martyrdom of hundreds of thousands of Jews by the Crusaders and their equally barbarous successors over the ages; and considering the false, but pervasive theological and social theories ("blood libel," "well-poisoning" "purity of blood," the "Protocols," etc.) that arose on the popular level to rationalize such violence by Christians against Jews, one cannot escape the unworthy thought that perhaps it was just as well that the Church did not try to formulate its attitudes toward the Jewish people and Judaism until the present age.
One can only speculate how the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition or the authors of the first passion plays in fourteenth Century Germany might have articulated the Jewish-Christian relationship had they been at a Council willing to debate such a document as Nostra Aetate. But, in fact, they did not have that opportunity, And nu Council took up the questions left unresolved by St. Paul in Romans 9-11 until the Second Vatican Council renewed the entire issue in a
fresh perspective. This is the significance of Nostra Aetate (to paraphrase a famous saying about Maimonides, whose anniversary we also celebrate this week): "From Paul to Paul, there was none to accept the challenge" (i.e., from St. Paul to Paul VI, who signed the Conciliar declaration).
But if there is no extensive official "pre-history" for Nostra Aetate, there is a determinative post-history upon which to build an interpretation and assessment of the text. Again, from the perspective of the Catholic sense of tradition, such a document can only be properly understood in the light of the teachings and statements of the magisterium which are designed to interpret and implement it. This point was made strongly by Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and also of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the declaration in October of 1980:
"We read it (Nostra Aetate) in the light of Guidelines and Suggestions for its implementation, published by the Commission in 1975... [and] of comments and references to our text coming from Popes and various Episcopates over the years... But it is not only a matter of texts, life itself, that is, the progress of the dialogue with Judaism called for by the Council, sets the texts within the context of lived reality. This context absolutely cannot be ignored."'
Nostra Aetate opened many windows in the Church's traditionally negative assessment of Jews and Judaism, flatly denying the deicide charge and stressing the positive aspects of the biblical testimony, especially Romans 9-11 (cited some seven times in the text), without totally defining what the positive appreciation it called for would look like. Given all of the ecclesiastical infighting that surrounded it and the necessary compromises from the earlier drafts of the statement to the final product? it is not surprising that many commentators at the time tended to stress its ambiguities and weaknesses compared with the earlier drafts: its did not mention the rebirth of the State of Israel or the Holocaust, the chief events of contemporary Jewish self-understanding; it did not "comdemn" the deicide charge, but simply eschewed the notion of collective guilt; it did not address the question of proselytism or of the validity of Jewish witness in and to the world; it did not make clear in what sense God's covenant with the Jewish people perdures post Christum (on its own or as "fulfilled" in the Church as the "new people of God"?); it did not mention explicitly the continuing role of the Jewish people as a people after New Testament times (so that it could be read as "supersessionist" though not abrogationist); it expressed no explicit sorrow or regret for the persecution of Jews by Christians over the centuries; it was silent on whether the Jewish people today had a "mission" or role of witness to the world, and in what way that might relate to the Church's own mission in and for the world; it mentioned only glancingly the issue of the treatment of Jews and Judaism in the liturgy, and while mandating clearly a renewal of catechesis and preaching regarding Jews and Judaism, it gave few explicit examples.
A decade later, and based upon dialogues on the local and international levels that were remarkably fruitful, given the shortness of the period when compared to the millenia in which the "teaching of contempt" held sway, the Holy See issued its implementing document for Nostra Aetate no. 4,8 One can trace in these 1975 Guidelines various phrases and insights that had earlier appeared in local or national Church documents, such as the "Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations" put out by the U.S. Bishops' Secretariat in 1967, and the statement of the Bishops of Austria (1968), Holland (1970), Belgium (1973), France (1973) and Switzerland (1974).
As with the Conciliar Declaration itself, an earlier draft of the 1975 Vatican Guidelines was made public some years before the adoption of the official text, with the result that many commentators judged the final version "weakened" and therefore unsatisfactory.
Again a decade of dialogue over the "gray areas" of the 1975 Guidelines, and a growing conviction that progress made in Catholic teaching materials' (so important on the agenda of the International Liaison Committee over the years) needed to he consolidated and furthered on the international level, resulted in the issuance by the Commission of "Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church" on June 24, 19852° Once again, the Holy See's initiative in the dialogue was greeted with some disappointment among Jewish leaders." As before, Jewish concerns were both substantive and procedural, and, as before, not without validity. Jews have, after all, a very real and valid "stake" in how Jews and Jewish traditions are presented to the world's 800 million Roman Catholics, not, certainly, as a matter of doctrine (which is the Church's own self-articulation) but as a matter of history and objective accuracy. So I believe we Catholics need to take these calls for clarification, offered as they arc in the spirit of the dialogue itself, with utmost seriousness, as a most helpful aid to our discernment rather than as any sort of external (and therefore questionable) judgment made upon the integrity of our intentions.
On the other hand, one can, I believe, discern in the cautiousness of each of these steps taken on an official Catholic level, not only the seriousness with which the topic is approached by the magisterium, but above all an indication of the "irreversibility" of the process itself. Each step, indeed each half-step, is measured and secured before the next step is attempted. Each step takes into account and builds upon previous statements. While such a process may appear painfully slow to many of us in the dialogue, the result is increasing security in understanding. From the perspective of the history preceding Vatican II, of course, such progress as has occurred appears breathtakingly rapid.
Notes
1. Tommaso Federici, "Study Outline on the Mission and Witness of the Church," SIDIC (Vol. XI, no. 3, 1978) 25.
2. Thomas Stransky, C.S.P., "Focusing on Jewish-Catholic Relations", Origins (Vol. 15, no. 5, June 20, 1985) 67.
3. Federici, "Study Outline", 25-30.
4. The canonical decrees of the Middle Ages, while crucial to an understanding of Christian-Jewish history, are likewise not of binding doctrinal import for the Church. Cf. Edward A. Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1965).
5. Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, "Vatican II and the Jews: Twenty Years Later", Westminster Cathedral, March 10, 1985, published in Christian-Jewish Relations: A Documentary Survey (Vol. 18, no. 1, March, 1985) 16-17.
6. Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, "Address on the Fifteenth Anniversary of Nostra Aetate", SIDIC (Rome: Vol. XIV, no. 1, 1981) 28-29. For a collection of such documents, Protestant as well as Catholic (in English), see the two volumes edited by Helga Groner for the Stimulus Series: Stepping Stones to Further Jewish-Christian Relations (Vol. 1, 1977); Jewish-Christian Relations (Vol. 1, 1977; Vol. II, 1985, Paulist Press). Cf. also M.T. Hoch and B. Dupuy, Les Eglises devant le Judaisme: Documents °Meets, 1948-1978 (Paris: Cerf, 1980); and L. Sesticri and G. Cereti, Le Chiese Cxistiane e L'Ebraismo, 1947-1982 (Casale Monferrato, Italy: Casa Editrice Marietti, 1983).
7. See John M. Oesterreicher, "The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Introduction and Commentary" in H. Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, (Vol. 3, Herder and Herder, 1969); and R. Laurentin and J. Neuner, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, (Vol. 3, Herder and Herder, 1969); and R. Laurentin and J. Neuner, Commentary on the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions (Paulist, 1966).
8. Holy See Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration, Nostra Aetate, no. 4,' December 1, 1974.
9. Textbook self-studies were initiated by the American Jewish Committee in the late 1950's. The findings of the Jewish study, conducted by Dropsie University, were published by B. Weinryb and D. Garnick, "Jewish School Textbooks and Intergroup Relations" (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1965). The studies of Catholic educational materials took the farm of three doctoral dissertations prepared between 1958 and 1961 under the auspices of Sr. Louis University by Sisters M. Rita Mudd, F.S.C.P.; M. Linus Gleason, C.S.J; and Rose Thering, OP. For a summary of their Its see John T. Pawlikowski, Catechetics and Prejudice (New York: Paulist Press, 1973). Significant updatings and analyses of various language materials can be found in, among others. Francois Houtart et al., Les Juifs dans la catethese, 3 vols. (Louvain: Centre de Recherches Socio-Religieuses, 1969-1972); Otto Klineberg et al., Religion and Prejudice: Content-Analysis of Catholic Religious Textbooks in Italy and Spain (Rome: Sperry Center for Intergroup Cooperation, 1967); Claire Huchet Bishop, How Catholics Look at Jews: Inquiries into Italian, Spanish, and French Teaching Materials (New York: Paulist Press, 1974); Gerald S. Strober, Portrait of the Elder Brother: Pews and Judaism in Protestant Teaching Materials (New York: American Jewish Committee and National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1972); Michael Kane, Minorities in Textbooks (New York: Anti-Defamation League and Quadrangle, 1970); E. Fisher, "A Content Analysis of the Treatment of Jews and Judaism in Current Roman Catholic Textbooks", Ph. D. dissertation, New York University, 1976, (results summarized in E. Fisher, Faith Without Prejudice, New York: Paulist Press, 1977. pp. 124-151); Peter Fiedler, Das Judentum im katholischen Religions-unterricht (Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1980, 1981); Ann Moore, "The Seeds of Prejudice: An Analysis of Religious Textbooks", The Sower (London), January, 1971; A. Bullen, "Catholic Teaching of Judaism," Christian Attitudes on Jews and Judaism (London), no. 39 (December, 1974); Pinchas Lapide, Jews, Israelis, and Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1979); and most recently, Y. Glickman and A. Bardikoff, The Treatment of the Holocaust in Canadian History and Social Science Textbooks (Downsview, Ont.: League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith, Canada, 1982). German studies also include: Walter Renn, "The Holocaust in West German Textbooks", Shoah: A Journal of Resources on ilk Holocaust (Fall/Winter, 1982-83): 26-30; M. Scalar, Das Judentum in Cristlichen Religionsunterricht (Frank-flirt, 1983); IC Kastning-Olmesdahl, Die Juden: and der Tod Jesu (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981).
My own studies have been updated in Eugene Fisher, "Future Agenda for Catholic-Jewish Relations", in N. Thompson and B. Cole, eds., The Future of Jewish. Christian Relations (Schenectady, NY: Character Research Press, 1982); "Christian-Jewish Dialogue: From Theology to the Classroom", Origins 11 (August 27, 1981): and "Research on Christian Teaching concerning Jews and Judaisml", journal of Ecumenical Studies (Vol. 21:3, Summer, 1984) 421.436,
An update of the Jewish studies can be found in Judith Herschlag Muffs, Jewish Textbooks on Jesus and Christianity (New York: Anti-Defamation of B'nai B'rith, 1978). Cf. also Judith H. Banki, "The image of Jews in Christian Teaching", Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Vol. 21:3, Summer 1984, 437-451). The same issue of J.E.S. also has excellent articles by Ruth Kastning-Ohmesdahl, Peter Fiedler, Paul M. van Buren, and John Carmody.
10. L'Osservatore Romano, June 24-25, 1985: English translation in Origins (July 4, 1985; Vol. 15, no. 7) 102-7, and USCC Publications, September, 1985,
11. Excerpts from the press release of the International Jewish Commission for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) are to be found in Origins (July 4, 1985) 102-104.
