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Ed. This article, in two parts, was reprinted with permission in The Hebrew Catholic, No. 80. Each part originally appeared in "GoodNews", the magazine from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal serving the Church. It is published on behalf of the National Service Committees for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in England and Ireland. The online archive of past issues and this article may be found at the following addresses: The People of the Covenant Fr. Peter Hocken, a member of the new International Theological Commission for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, looks at how the Catholic Church has changed its teaching and understanding about the place of the Jewish people in Salvation History and the implications of this for us. Part One One of the most remarkable changes in Catholic teaching and attitudes resulting from the Second Vatican Council concerns the Jewish people. For the first time the Catholic Church gave an authoritative teaching on this subject. The teaching corrects the exegesis and thinking that had shaped Catholic attitudes to the Jews throughout the ages. Since the Council, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews has issued three further documents: Guidelines on Religious Relations with the Jews (1974); Notes on the Correct Way to present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church (1985) and We Remember (1998), a reflection on the Holocaust. In this first article, I will first summarise the teaching of the Council, noting how this has been developed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II. Where the Catechism and the Pope add to the Council’s teaching, these points are mentioned subsequently. The Teaching of Vatican Two The teaching of the Council on the Jewish people is found in para. 4 of the Decree on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (1965).
The Pope developed this thought when he made history by visiting the synagogue of Rome:
The Catechism expresses this succinctly:
God has not rejected the Jewish people, and they remain God’s chosen covenant people:
The 1985 Vatican document states:
Thus the proper mode for relationship to further "mutual understanding and appreciation" is dialogue. (NA, 4)
On the contrary, there is to be a deep Christian respect for the Jewish people. The Catechism The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, issued in 1994, reflects an exegesis of Scripture that recognises in a new way the Jewishness of Jesus and the first generation in the Church. Under "Jesus’ temptations", we find:
An important addition in the Catechism concerns the role of the Jews in the climax of salvation history. Under the striking heading, "The glorious advent of Christ, the hope of Israel", we read:
The Catechism notes in relation to our shared hope:
John Paul II Pope John Paul II has given his full encouragement to this new openness towards the Jewish people. But maybe the Pope’s most distinctive contribution is his call for Catholics to repent for the sins of the past. This appeal was first made in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994), repeated in the encyclical on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint (1995). While these documents did not specifically mention the Jewish issue, it seems that this question has impelled the Holy Father towards the call for repentance. Thus, as part of the Church’s preparations for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 the Pope set up two commissions to study the Catholic treatment of the Jewish people through the ages and the Spanish Inquisition. The liturgy of repentance in St Peter’s Basilica on 12th March, 2000, included this prayer:
Two weeks later in Jerusalem, the Holy Father followed Jewish custom by placing this prayer in a crevice of the Western (wailing) wall. This gesture more than anything else symbolised a revolutionary change opening the door to a different future. A further article will look at some of the implications. Footnotes Part Two: The Radical Challenge Ed. Fr Peter Hocken, a member of the new International Theological Commission for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, reflects on the implications of the Catholic Church’s recognition of the special on-going convenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people and the recent phenomena of Messianic Jews and Hebrew Catholics The teaching of Vatican Two on the Jewish people might seem at first sight to be a minor theological adjustment on a borderline issue. However, the more we dig into the questions that it raises, the clearer it becomes that the place of the Jewish people touches on very foundational issues such as the relationship between the two Testaments and the two covenants, the nature of the Church and the human identity of Jesus. It is then not surprising that it is taking the Catholic Church some time to work out all the implications of this remarkable transformation in understanding. The Covenant with Israel still stands Throughout most of the Christian centuries, the Jews were seen as outside the covenant, and therefore their situation was no different theologically to that of other non-Christians. The Jews were simply objects for Christian mission and evangelisation. However, once we say with the fathers of Vatican Two that the covenant with Israel still stands, we have to rethink our approaches towards the Jewish people. We can no longer approach the Jews as no different from other non-Christians. But what does this mean in practice? First, it has meant making dialogue the principal pattern of relationship. As the Vatican Guidelines of 1974 state:
As the dialogue between Catholic scholars and Jewish leaders got under way, the Catholics have been made aware of Jewish sensitivities, including their abhorrence for Christian attempts to convert Jews, which are seen as yet another attempt to destroy Judaism and the Jewish people. Newly aware of Jewish memories of forced baptisms, compulsory attendance at Catholic sermons and other forms of public humiliation, these scholars have insisted that all proselytism must be avoided. Does this mean that it is wrong to tell the Jews about Jesus Christ? Or that it is wrong to encourage a Jew to be baptised? There is no dispute about the duty of any individual to follow their conscience, and thus about the right of any Jew to act on his faith who believes in conscience that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of the world. The Significance of Jewish believers in Christ In recent decades, there have been moves by some Catholics of Jewish origin to reaffirm their Jewishness within the Catholic Church. Thus there is now an Association of Hebrew Catholics, founded in Israel by a Carmelite, Fr Elias Friedman, but now based in Michigan, USA (website: www.hebrewcatholic.org) These Hebrew Catholics see their patron as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) who continued to affirm her Jewishness after her conversion to the Catholic faith. Outside the Catholic Church, the Messianic Jews go even further: they are saying that when a Jew believes in Jesus as Messiah of Israel and Son of God, not only do they not cease to be Jews but there is no need for them to join what they see as a completely Gentile Church. This is a new debate. The existence and the claims of the Hebrew Catholics and the Messianic Jews highlight the dilemma facing the Church since Vatican Two. If the covenant of the Jewish people with the God of Abraham still holds, as the Council and the Catechism assert, then it cannot be right to persuade Jews to abandon their Jewishness, and to leave behind their culture and their history in order to join the Church. We cannot stop them doing this, if this is their choice, but we should do nothing to encourage it. This point the Catholic scholars in dialogue with the Jews see clearly, that traditional Christian evangelism of the Jews destroys Judaism and the Jewish heritage, and it should not happen any more. But the Hebrew Catholics and the Messianic Jews insist on the right of Jewish people to hear about Jesus, one of "their own", and in fact their own Messiah. They protest rightly against all attempts to limit the gospel of salvation in Christ to the Gentiles, as in some "two covenant" theologies saying Jews are saved by their covenant and Christians by theirs. For the New Testament witness is clear that the gospel is first for the Jews, and then for the Gentiles (Rom. 1: 16). The Hebrew Catholics and the Messianic Jews point to the root problem as the prohibition through the centuries of explicitly Jewish expressions of the Church. This forced Jewish converts to be totally assimilated to the nations. It ensured that Christian conversion meant a destruction of Judaism and Jewishness. The Present Situation However, the patterns of many centuries cannot simply be reversed overnight by new Church decisions or by the desire of Jewish converts to be Jews who believe in Jesus. The Jewish authorities do not recognise these Jewish converts to Jesus as still Jews. For them, they are ex-Jews who are now Christians. To them, the Hebrew Catholics look like ordinary Catholics, and the Messianic Jews look like Evangelical Christians. In this situation, I believe that we have to respect both the hesitations and the scepticism of the Jewish people as a whole towards all forms of "Jewish Christianity", and the desire of contemporary Jewish believers in Jesus to live as Jews within the body of Christ. For it will take time for the deep wounds of the past to be healed, and for the Jewish believers in Jesus, both within and outside Catholic communion, to discover what it means to be both Jewish and believers in the Jewish Messiah. We can be confident that with time the Jewish believers in Jesus will be more manifestly Jewish in a way that will look different from Gentile Christianity and in a way that their fellow Jews can recognise as Jewish. At the same time, we need to avoid simplistic formulations that attempt to sew up a logical solution whether by a two-covenant theology saying in effect that the Jews do not need to recognise Jesus as they are saved through their own covenant or by affirming the need to evangelise Jews into the Church in a way that denies their specific covenantal status. Footnote
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