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Ten Years and Two Documents: Their Significance
Henry Siegman

 

Two major events that bracket the past decade like a set of book-ends are the Vatican declaration on the Jews (Nostra Aetate No. 4) in 1965 and Guidelines for the Implementation of Nostra Aetate No. 4, issued in January of 1975.

There are two striking aspects to these events which immediately invite comment. First, they are both Catholic developments; there seem to have been no comparable developments of similar import for Christian-Jewish relations during this entire decade in Protestant and Orthodox Christianity — certainly none that come to mind as strikingly as do the two Catholic documents. Secondly, it took a full decade for the Catholic Church to issue instructions to its faithful to guide and encourage the implementation of Nostra Aetate.

Since it is the relations of the Catholic Church and the Jewish people that interest us here primarily, I will comment only briefly on the first of these two points, i.e., the discrepancy between Catholic and Protestant performance. It serves to remind us, first of all, that for all of its internal weakness and loss of authority, dramatic actions of the Catholic Church still manage to command the kind of public attention which eludes the divided and complicated structure that is the World Council of Churches.

A more telling implication, however, is the relative inaction and unimpressive record of the World Council of Churches when it comes to relations with the Jews. Its enthrallment with Third World liberation politics has virtually paralyzed its ability to take any significant initiatives in this area. This, despite the formalization of its relations with the Jews through its Committee on the Church and the Jewish People (which now meets regularly with representatives of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations),* whose most hopeful development, from a Jewish perspective, is the recent appointment of Krister Stendahl, the distinguished dean of the Harvard University Divinity School, as its chairman.

The WCC's attitude toward the State of Israel is marked by a remarkable ambivalence — or double standard, to put it more accurately. Even more remarkable is the WCC's own blissful unawareness of this fact. It is true that the WCC's declarations on the Middle East have consistently stressed support for Israel's existence and security (although its flirtations with the Palestine Liberation Organization raise some question of how they reconcile PLO objectives with Israel's existence). But while WCC support for virtually every Third World liberation movement is seen as evidence of its theological and political enlightenment, its support of Israel, i.e., the Jewish liberation movement, is seen as something of an embarrassment — a debt to be paid for persecution of Jews in the Christian West.

This attitude persists despite the fact that the Jewish liberation movement has created in the State of Israel a society that is far more democratic, progressive and egalitarian than most, ir not all, Third World societies. Admittedly, Israeli treatment of its Arab minority is in need of improvement. But I do not know of an Asian or African country — not to speak of a Middle Eastern country — whose record of treating racial and ethnic minorities is as decent and as humane as Israel's.

If there are compelling theological reasons for the support of liberation struggles, they surely lie in their promise of freeing people from political and economic oppression and enabling them to develop their human potential. Here again there is no Third World country that has made good on that promise as generously as has Israel.

Indeed, the misery and oppression of the populations of most Third World countries remains largely unchanged. And the inequality and special privilege which continue to mark the internal life of virtually every Third World country have hardly received the kind of critical attention they deserve.

Israel, on the other hand, has granted the refugees of European, Arab and Soviet oppression political and economic liberation that should be celebrated joyously by advocates of liberation theology. And yet, support for Israel, when granted at all, is extended grudgingly, and with apologies to the Third World.

It is conceivable that the problem is generic to the two faiths. Christianity parted with Judaism precisely on the issue of history: It chose the liberating experience of faith in Jesus over the stubborn evidence of unredeemed history. Fidelity to the evidence of history remains characteristic of Jewish consciousness to this day (how could it be otherwise, with Auschwitz less than fifty years behind us), while Christian liberals, particularly those who identify with the political Left, seem to opt for the redemptive experience of revolutionary movements.

Ten-year Delay

That the Catholic Church is hardly free of the difficulties which have prevented more substantial progress by the WCC in this area should be obvious from the fact that it took it ten years to issue the guidelines, although in the case of the Catholic Church, theological conservatism has been by far the larger problem. What this means is that for these past ten years the Vatican Office for Catholic-Jewish Relations was without an operational mandate. It is frustration over this state of affairs which finally led Professor C.A. Rijk, the first director of this office, to resign. The first conclusion from the relationship of these two events — i.e., their separation in time by a decade — must therefore be a negative one.

There are probably many reasons that account for the delay, but outweighing them all is the failure of the Christian world to assimilate — morally and theologically — the two seminal events of contemporary Jewry: the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel.

It is this failure, too, which was responsible for the shortcomings in the original declaration on the Jews. That declaration, while celebrated by professional Jewish ecumenists, particularly those who meddled busily in the affairs of Vatican II, was greeted by the « Jewish masses » with skepticism and even resentment. I believe that their reaction, though largely undefined and intuitive, was closer to the mark than the « informed » reactions of the professionals. For

Jews generally understood that the Catholic Church saw its statement on the Jews as an act of charity, when what the hour demanded was an act of repentance and contrition. For all its importance, in the awesome light of Auschwitz, the statement « absolving » Jews from the mythic guilt of deicide revealed a meanness of spirit that constituted its fatal flaw.

Nevertheless, Nostra Aetate marked a turning point in the history of the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. At the very least, it constituted a kind of local option legislation which made it possible for national episcopal conferences to apply themselves to the improvement of Catholic-Jewish relations with a seriousness that had not been possible heretofore. France and the United States are only two examples of countries that took advantage of this « local option ». In the United States, under the inspired direction of Rev. Edward Flannery, the Office for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued impressive guidelines and encouraged a re-examination of deeply entrenched attitudes. In France, the exercise of local option resulted in a highly sophisticated theological document on the Catholic Church's relations to Judaism (largely the work of Rev. Bernard Dupuy) which to this day is the most advanced statement on the subject issued by an official Catholic body (as distinguished from the work of individual Catholic theologians).

That Nostra Aetate was not intended to do much more than that — and, even at that, did not wish local churches to exercise the option too freely — could be seen from the evident unhappiness of Vatican officials over the declaration by the French bishops. Even in the United States, the work of the more progressive Catholic theologians (including that of Rev. Flannery) has not enjoyed the unqualified support — not to speak of encouragement — of their own bishops. I am not familiar with the situation in France, but in the United States it is safe to say that a majority of bishops still find the more « traditional » Catholic attitudes towards Judaism far more congenial than the new-fangled ideas of the Flannerys and the Dupuys of this world. It is the continuing force of these traditional attitudes which accounted for the delay in the formulation of the guidelines for the implementation of Nostra Aetate.

Criticism of the delay of the Guidelines must finally give way, however, to appreciation that the document was issued, however belatedly. On balance — and despite reservations which I will indicate — these Guidelines constitute a positive and hopeful development.

Significant Recent Developments

Shortly before the Guidelines were issued, the Vatican announced the upgrading of its Jewish « desk » within the Secretariat of Christian Unity by the creation of a new, semi-independent Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (October, 1974). And on the heels of the issuance of the Guidelines, representatives of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations met in an unprecedented private audience with Pope Paul ( January 10, 1975). While it was not evident while these events were in progress, in retrospect it is clear that these were not isolated events. They reflected the desire of the Catholic Church to « stage » an unusual public expression of friendship with the Jews at that particular time. More than that, they indicated a decision by the Catholic Church to turn a corner in the Church's relations with the Jews and to launch the Church on a new course that is based on a coming to terms with the permanence of Judaism. At the very least, these several developments alerted Catholic faithful throughout the world, that the Church's relations with the Jews, which had fallen into a state of limbo since the issuance of the Vatican II declaration, are once again on the active Catholic agenda.

A fairly accurate barometer of the significance that is to be attached to Vatican developments is the prominence they enjoy in the official Vatican publication L'Osservatore Romano. (It will be recalled that it was this publication's editor, Prof. Frederico Alessandrini, who deliberately deflated the significance of the historic meeting of Prime Minister Golda Meir with Pope Paul.) The audience of the Jewish committee with the Pope, and — even more significantly — the complete text of the Pope's statement and of the Jewish response, were reported on the front page of L'Osservatore Romano under four-column banner headlines. In the atmosphere of Vatican politics, in which curial officials compare and measure the length and location of the smallest item, the treatment given the Jewish audience was seen by Catholics to be of historic significance.

It is interesting to speculate on why the Catholic Church decided to take these actions at that particular time. I realize that such speculations are of no interest to those who see in these events — as in all expressions of friendship by the Catholic Church — a diabolical conspiracy to proselytize unsuspecting Jews. I do not share that view. It is true that a Christian, by definition, is one who believes that all of mankind, and perhaps especially Jews, must embrace Christian faith to achieve perfect salvation. The writings of Christian theologians who accord Judaism a special status in the divine economy have not really changed normative Christian thought in this regard. But it is simply not true that this Christian self-definition is translated into an active proselytizing campaign directed at the Jewish people; certainly this is not the case with the Catholic Church. In practice, if not yet in theory, the Catholic Church has more or less come to terms with the religious pluralism of the modern world, and increasingly defines its hopes in eschatological categories —categories that do not differ that significantlyfrom the Jewish eschatological hope for universal recognition of the God of Israel.

In any event, I believe that among the reasons that motivated the Vatican decision to take those unusual steps was a desire to compensate for the silence of Pius XII in the face of the extermination of European Jewry during the Nazi era. One must recall the mood of the post-Yom Kippur War days, when not only the people of the State of Israel but Jews throughout the world experienced a profound sense of isolation — even despair — reminiscent of the 1930's. (Elie Wiesel's much publicized article, which appeared in the New York Times' Op Ed page, declaring that for the first time he now believes the Holocaust could be repeated, is a good example of that mood.) The Catholic Church deliberately chose that moment to demonstrate a sense of solidarity with the Jewish people in order to « make a record », as it were, that might serve to diminish the force of accusations against the Church for its earlier silence.

Pope Paul's sensitivity to charges levelled against Pius XII are common knowledge. Since he served as Pius's Secretary of State, he sees these accusations as directed against himself as well. It is therefore not at all surprising that Pope Paul personally insisted on inserting in his remarks to the Jewish delegation in the January audience a reference to alleged efforts by Pius XII to save the Jews from the Nazis. Attempts by some Vatican officials to persuade him that these remarks were out of place and might provoke a strong Jewish reaction were to no avail.

This factor apparently also loomed large in the consciousness of other Catholic officials. Particularly revealing was an incident that occurred during the visit of a high Vatican official to the Synagogue Council of America in the fall of 1974. When discussions between this official and the officers of the Council were concluded and the meeting was about to adjourn, the official asked to be permitted to make an additional remark. Choosing his words carefully, he spoke emotionally of the sense of isolation and despair felt by the Jewish people following the Yom Kippur War. He asked permission « as an outsider » to express the hope that Jews will not give in to this despair, and that they will fall back on the spiritual resources of Jewish faith to see them through those difficult times. There was a palpable sincerity to his statement which deeply moved everyone present. Rabbi Irwin M. Blank, who was then President of the Council, responded warmly to his comment, but also added that if despair comes from within, and only Jews themselves can overcome it, isolation comes from without, and the Catholic Church could do its share to break it. The Vatican official agreed and promised to take the message back to Rome. The events which followed would seem to indicate that he did.

There are undoubtedly other reasons as well that explain why the Catholic Church decided to make an important move vis-a-vis Judaism atthat particular point. The much-heralded dialogue with Protestants seemed to be going nowhere. Prospects for progress with the Orthodox churches were not too bright either (and have since deteriorated even further). Ironically, it is only the dialogue with Judaism that could be cited as evidence of the Catholic Church's continued commitment to progress in the ecumenical enterprise.

Other considerations were the desire of the Church to balance certain earlier actions which had been criticized as excessively pro-Arab, and also to store up credit for the future. The Vatican will certainly not be the last power in Europe to pay obeisance to the newly acquired power and wealth of the Arab world. It is in this light, too, that the lack of any mention of the State of Israel in the Guidelines and in the Papal audience must be seen.

Evaluation of the Guidelines

But whatever the motivation for the issuance of the Guidelines and for their timing, the document is bound to have an impact quite independent of the circumstances that produced it, and must therefore be evaluated on its own terms — for what it says as well as for what it fails to say.

Criticism of the document from Jewish sources focused on essentially four points:

1) The Guidelines fail to acknowledge the significance of the State of Israel to Jews everywhere.

2) The Guidelines breathe a missionary spirit, and see Catholicism as a fulfillment of Judaism.

3) The document's alleged advocacy of common prayer is seen as particularly dangerous.

4) Taken as a whole, the document does 8not reflect any significant theological advances over Nostra Aetate.

Criticism which I personally would add to the « grievance list » is that in its reference to the sordid history of Christian-Jewish encounters, the document is guilty of a certain ungraciousness, at best, and a misrepresentation of history, at worst. The characterization by the document of the past as one « too often marked by mutual ignorance and frequent confrontation » suggests a mutuality of guilt which might lead an innocent reader to conclude that Jews persecuted the Catholic Church. This lack of fidelity to historical truth flaws not only the Guidelines but Nostra Aetate as well. It is rather remarkable that while Nostra Aetate's section on Islam begs Muslims' forgiveness for Christian injustices, there is no such expression of regret in the section on the Jews, where one might have thought there is far ampler justification for contrition.

1. COMMON PRAYER

Of the four criticisms enumerated above, one is entirely without foundation, and can therefore be disposed of quickly. It is simply untrue that the document calls for common prayer. In a highly sensitive and nuanced passage, the document suggests the possibility of « a common meeting in the presence of God in prayer and silent meditation », particularly « in connection with great causes such as the struggle for peace and justice ». The suggestion is to apply only « in whatever circumstances as shall prove possible and mutually acceptable ». Aside from the fact that this passage does no more than state the Catholic Church's own openness to this kind of « common meeting in the presence of God », and recognizes that it may not be in all circumstances « mutually acceptable », common prayer applies to joint liturgical services only, which the statement does not advocate and, in fact, the Catholic Church does not sanction. It does not approve such joint liturgical services with Protestants, much less with Jews. What the document has in mind is the joint recitation of a Psalm or silent meditation at conferences and meetings devoted to « great causes such as the struggle for peace and justice », a practice that has been a commonplace for many years. It is therefore a non-issue.

2. MISSIONARY SPIRIT

The other points are more complicated. As indicated earlier, the assumption that the Catholic Church is engaged in an active campaign of proselytism directed at the Jewish community does not accord with the facts. This, however, does not yet dispose of the theoretical aspects of the problem, which require some further elaboration.

The starting point of Christian-Jewish dialogue must be a mutual acceptance of the ultimate incommensurability of Judaism and Christianity; our most critical affirmations of faith whichdefine that which is most unique about them — Sinai and Calvary — are mutually exclusive. The purpose of dialogue is not to fashion a new syncretism but to develop a respectful understanding of differences, as well as of those areas of religious thought and experience which we do share in common.

Nevertheless, when the Church asserts the uniqueness and « superiority » of Christian faith, some Jewish critics take umbrage and declare that « no self-respecting Jew » can fail to resent such affirmations. The implication of such criticism is that the only Christian posture that would be acceptable to Jews is one which grants the equality of Christianity and Judaism. This, in my view, is quite unacceptable — on Jewish grounds, if on no other.

As a believing Jew, I affirm that Judaism is the « truest » religion. That affirmation is part of what makes me a believing Jew, and I do not expect Christians to be offended by it. Conversely, I cannot be offended by parallel affirmations of faith made by Christians — or by Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, for that matter. For to insist that Christians may not entertain such beliefs about their own faith is to cut the ground from under the Jewish position. That is why I believe that Jewish criticism of the Guidelines that they fail to recognize the equality or legitimacy of Judaism is not only theologically uninformed but imprudent.

Furthermore, a Jewish demand that Christian theology recognize the validity of Judaism for Jews implicitly grants a Jewish legitimacy to Christian theology. Judaism constitutes a denial of the central Christian mystery and its notion of salvation. It cannot at one and the same time reject Christian theology and demand that it be reformulated to accommodate the legitimacy of Judaism. In any event, as suggested earlier in this article, the Christian conviction that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism parallels a traditional Jewish conviction that Judaism is a fulfillment of Christianity - ideologically if not chronologically.

Judaism is very much in need of a respectful understanding by men of all faiths. It can gain much, spiritually and intellectually, from an open and honest dialogue across faith lines. What Judaism does not need from others, and what no other faith can give it, is a validation of its own central faith commitments. That can come only from within Jewish life and thought, not from outside of it. It is no denigration of Christianity to state that a Christian acknowledgment that the Sinaiitic covenant was not abrogated can have no weight in Jewish theology. (If the reverse is not necessarily the case, that is because Christianity chose to validate itself — historically and theologically — within Judaism.)

3. LAND OF ISRAEL

The Guidelines received near universal Jewish condemnation for their failure to recognize the central role which land and people occupy in Jewish religious thought. Some critics also faulted the Guidelines for perpetuating the Vatican's non-recognition of the State of Israel. However, the linkage of these two issues only serves to confuse the real problem.

Vatican diplomatic recognition of the State of Israel is clearly a political question (although failure to grant that recognition is undoubtedly influenced by theological considerations). Conversely, the role that land occupies in Jewish thought and the unique religious significance attached to the land of Israel in Jewish theology is clearly a religious question (although it can and often does have political implications). One need not be a Jew, nor need one affirm the religious significance of the land of Israel, to recognize that the Jewish people's attachment to the land of Israel for 2000 years constitutes an objective historical fact which carries with it secular political implications. In the realm of secular politics, what matters is not the motive, but the fact of a people's attachment to a particular territory. The consistency and tenacity of that attachment, not its peculiar motivation, should have concrete political weight.

To state this point differently, if the Jewish people had in fact retained their sovereignty in Palestine and the Diaspora had not occurred, no one would have argued today that their sovereignty is invalid because it flows from a religious attachment to the land of Israel.

The Catholic Church deserves to be criticized for its long-standing failure to establish full diplomatic relations with the government of Israel. But it is precisely the fact that such recognition is a political and not a religious act which makes for the Vatican's vulnerability. For if it were a theological question, then grounds for criticism would be far more questionable. The religious significance of land is a uniquely Jewish concept, and finds little resonance in Christian theology. One can therefore hardly base demands in the secular political realm on such particular theological ground. If theology were indeed admissible, then the Catholic Church might well ask why its own theology, which (in other than Christian fundamentalist guise) does not share Jewish assumptions about the sanctity of land and the return of Jewish sovereignty, should be less determining than Jewish theology. It is precisely because the recognition of Israel by the Vatican is strictly a political issue that the Vatican stands accused of arbitrariness and prejudice in failing to accord Israel that which it has granted the most miniscule and un-viable political entities.

While the question of Vatican recognition of the State of Israel would have been out of place in the Guidelines, since it is a religious document, its failure to deal with the theological dimension of the Jewish relationship to the land of Israel constitutes a grievous omission. Within the context of the document's own declared desire to understand Jews as they understand themselves, it must be faulted for failing to spell out to Catholics that in the year 1975, it is impossible to understand Jews, nor can anyone communicate with them meaningfully about their deepest fears and aspirations, without an appreciation of the role of the State of Israel in Jewish consciousness.

In a recent interview in the Jerusalem Post, Rev. Pierre de Contenson struggled valiantly to explain the omission. He points out that the Guidelines do not refer to other central Jewish affirmations, such as the Sabbath and Kashruth (dietary laws). I suspect that when pressed, he would concede the awkwardness of the argument. It is neither the Sabbath nor Kashruth (which are indeed central in Jewish religious thought), but the continued existence of the State of Israel that has been the single most burning question of Jewish survival in the post-Auschwitz era. To pretend otherwise is to render a service neither to truth nor to the objectives of the dialogue.

But if we are genuinely concerned with truth and the integrity of the dialogue, then, having said this much, more needs to be added. The most vociferous criticism of the Guidelines for omitting the religious significance of Israel came from the extreme Orthodox Right in Israel, which has no real interest in Christian declarations of any kind, and — on the other end of the ideological spectrum — from avowed secularists, whose championing of the religious centrality of Israel is less than convincing. There is something fundamentally dishonest about their pronouncements on the subject, for neither one of these two groups has the remotest interest in dialogue with the Church. Their charge that the omission of Israel from the Guidelines diminishes them virtually to the point of worthlessness, besides being untrue, is therefore entirely disingenuous.

4. ADVANCE OVER NOSTRA AETATE

For all its shortcomings, the document contains significant advances over Nostra Aetate. The universal and perennial attitude of the Catholic Church toward Judaism, which remained fundamentally unaltered by Nostra Aetate, is that its vitality and religious worth are to be found in its pre-Christian existence only. The Guidelines are the first official Catholic document on the highest level of authority which views Judaism as a rich and vital religious movement in itspost-Christian period as well. That is perhaps the document's most significant contribution.

The document calls on Catholics to study Judaism in all of its aspects and to end the ignorance which has been at the root of past hostility and rancor. It encourages the establishment of formal studies of Judaism within Catholic educational structures, including the creation of special chairs in Jewish studies.

Equally significant is a passage in the Guidelines which says that the « Old Testament » and Jewish tradition founded upon it must not be juxtaposed to the New Testament in such a way as to make the Old Testament appear as a religion of justice and legalism, as opposed to a New Testament emphasis on love of God and neighbor. The passage cites specific biblical sources which stress the centrality of love.

Catholics are urged to exercise care in the selection of liturgical readings, in homilies based upon them, and in translations of liturgical texts, particularly those passages « which Christians, if not well informed, might misunderstand because of prejudice ».

Perhaps most important, the document proposes that Christians seek to « learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience ». A genuine openness to Jewish religious categories and self-definition would for the first time make possible an honest and fruitful dialogue between the Church and the Synagogue.
It may be true, as some critics have argued, that as far as the U.S. and France are concerned, the Guidelines offer little that is new. But this criticism ignores the reality in most other Catholic communities throughout the world, including a « Catholic » continent like Latin America, where the Guidelines, for all of their sobriety, represent a revolution in traditional attitudes. And even in the most progressive countries, one cannot begin to compare the weight of a Vatican document of the highest level of authority with statements issued by episcopal offices on Catholic Jewish relations. As indicated earlier, it is doubtful that the American and French statements have made much of an impact on the attitudes of the bishops in those countries, not to speak of the rank-and-file.

In the final analysis, the debate over the Guidelines misses the point. If the Guidelines were the culmination of a process that had run its course, if they represented the Church's new theology of Judaism, then they would indeed be disappointing. However, the Guidelines were not intended to end but to initiate a process. What the Catholic Church has done is create the tools which make possible a re-examination of the entire range of its own internal life —in education, in the training for the priesthood, in its understanding of the Bible, in its catechism — insofar as these relate to an understandingof Judaism. These tools did not exist before, and that is why nothing much came of the Vatican II declaration on the Jews.

The big question is therefore whether the Church will put these new tools to good use. This will depend on many factors, and primarily on the Church's own determination and persistence, for it will have to overcome obstacles that will inevitably be placed in its path by those within its own ranks who cannot easily shed old prejudices and hostilities.

In their struggle to realize fully the promise inherent in the Guidelines, those dedicated Church officials and theologians whose untiring efforts have brought the Church to this new stage will find, I am persuaded, openness and appreciation and — where appropriate — support and reciprocity in the Jewish community.

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Rabbi Siegman, one of the initiators of the Institute for Jewish Policy Planning and Research, is executive vice-president of the Synagogue Council of America.

* The committee is made up of: World Jewish Congress, Synagogue Council of America, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and Israel Committee for Interfaith Contacts.