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A Jewish View
Michael de SAINT CHERON

Extracts from "Les limites du dialogue: A propos du nouveau catechisme" in Tibune Juive, 17.12.92

...Those who expect an evolution in the doctrine of the Church relating to the Law, the question of the Messiah and the vocation of Israel, will be disappointed. If it is true that on moral questions as such the Catholic positions are often close to the Rabbinic positions, it is necessary, inasmuch as one is a Jew, to reject the claim of the Church to possess the prerogative of revelation and of theological truth. Franz Rosenzweig, who influenced so many Jewish thinkers until Levinas, said following Maimonides and the Gaon of Vilna "Of God we know nothing". It is perhaps this which separates us most radically from Christian theologians.

This new catechism strives to deepen the links between Jesus and the Jews in order to show Catholics that their religion is totally rooted in Judaism. But for us this readiness to establish roots poses another question: How can Christians justify their election and their "Covenant" if they do not have the Jews behind them or by their side, implicit witnesses ... to the truth of their religion which without them would be inconceivable even to themselves?

In the chapter on the Church and the Jewish People, the authors, after having recognised the numerous merits of the Jews - to know the Covenant, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Torah - do not cease to evoke "the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus" (p. 185). It is clear that for them the Nazarene accomplished the Law of Moses by "going further" than the Law. "The old Law is a preparation for the Gospel", we read. In other words without the latter the Law no longer has any meaning. It has become obsolete.

Towards the end of the catechism we read "The Law confided to Israel has never sufficed to justify those who were obedient to it" (p. 512). Such theological assurance is surprising, if not shocking. We expected not to find these disparaging formulae any longer, which have no theological justification. Are Christians, Catholics, so sure that they are justified by their own Christianity? Has not their morality become another law even if the original intention was to nullify the laws of purity and impurity? They have cut themselves off from Sinai in effect, and by that from the Covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?

Further on "The Torah remains a law of slavery" and more serious, we Jews do not have "the grace of the Spirit to fulfil it". Is that the renewed teaching of the Church on Jews and Judaism? If so, it is without hope. Can a theological truth be justified at the cost of an injustice and a usurpation of heritage?

...Returning to moral questions and in particular to sexual ethics, this catechism concurs with Jewish law, which in this instance is neither surpassed nor retrograde in relation to the teaching of the Church.

One of the most outstanding chapters is that on Prayer. The authors write that the Jewish prayer of the Psalms "commemorates the promises God has already kept and awaits the Messiah who will fulfil them definitively". (p. 525). Elsewhere, these other words written in the same spirit: Jewish faith is already a response to the revelation of God" (p. 185). In conclusion, this catechism is in many respects a more open teaching than its predecessors but it shows once again the theological limits of dialogue.