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Research on the presentation of judaism in french religious textbooks
The Editors

Origin of the Work: Research on the presentation of Judaism in religious textbooks being carried out at Louvain, is a practical application of the Conciliar document on non-Christian religions, the main part of which is devoted to Judaism. This work was decided upon after meetings in Rome, Paris, New York and Louvain between leading Jews and Christians. The aim of the work is to improve the manner in which the Jewish people are presented in Catholic religious teaching. To do this, help from a university was necessary so that sound conclusions, based on scientific work, could be reached. The Catholic University of Louvain was, therefore, contacted, and H.E. Cardinal SUENENS has constantly shown his very special interest in this project, which is being carried out in collaboration between the "Centre de Recherches_socio=religier.ses", and the "Centre de reche/rhes catdchetives" under the direction of Canon F. HOUTART and Canon J. GIBLET. After careful preparation, work began in May 1966 and should end in October 1967.

Object of the Work: The object of the work is twofold:

1) to study the manner of presenting the Jewish world, both by references and by omissions in French textbooks, missals and Catholic Bibles.

2) to work out a scientific method of study which could be used in other cultural areas: different forms of literature, periods in history, and even, in other problems.

Research: The method consists in:

1) deciding on the material to be analysed

2) analysis of the contents of this material; and this is the principal part of the work.

1. Decidiag_on the material to be analysed.

The number of Catholic religious textbooks, even if limited to those used in schools, necessitated a choice. An enquiry was carried out among principals of schools and religion teachers in certain regions of four French-speaking countries: Belgium, Canada, France and Switzerland. Out of the 170 books quoted in answers to this enquiry, a list of 80 religion books was drawn up. This list provides an interesting selection of works destined for all levels of secondary school teaching, and produced in different places or different times. Sufficient material was found in these books for an ample analysis of content.

2. Analysis of the content. The analysis of content covers four areas of study:

1) At the level of verbal expressions: an analysis of wording - Jews, Israel, people, Hebrews, Pharisees. These words are arranged in nine qualitative categories in a scale ranging from positive to negative. The results of this work are placed on mecanographical cards so that practical conclusions may be obtained from them and hypotheses may be verified.

2) Analysis of passages relating to the Passion aim at extracting not only the cuality of expression and attitude to the Jews, but, above all, the author's theories which throw responsibility on the Jews and Judaism for these events

3) A further analysis of the subjects should disclose the more global theories of the place of Judaism in Catholic doctrine, bearing on continuity, rooted ideas, universalism, the role and destiny of Israel.

4) Finally, from these analyses, classification of the contents of the books will be attempted.
This study is not orientated solely towards the classification and evaluation of the books in regard to anti-semitism, but towards the study of attitudes underlying them and currents of thoughts expressed. The primary aim of this work is gaining far greater depth than had been anticipated.

Louvain - Belgium