September
17, 2002 3:10
p.m. Toward
the Disappearance of Christ
A
bishops’ committee gets salvation wrong.
ttention is
drawn in the New York Times to a little-noticed document issued
on August 12 in Washington by a group of American rabbis and Roman Catholic
bishops. It is called "Reflections on Covenant and Mission"
and argues the astonishing proposition that Catholics should not try to
convert Jews. The Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Affairs summarizes, "The Catholic Church has come to recognize that
its mission of preparing for the coming of the kingdom of God is one that
is shared with the Jewish people," inasmuch as the Jewish people
"also abide in covenant with God." The New York Times's
reporter Daniel Wakin aptly summarized the meaning of the "Reflections":
"Put another way, your road to salvation is as good as mine."
There are historical
and sociological factors which figure in the work of the Bishops' Committee.
The first, the nightmare of the Holocaust. The Church has never assumed
responsibility for it, no more than it assumes responsibility for Hitler.
But the long tenure of Pope John Paul II is marked by dramatic efforts to
disown, as indeed un-Christian, that much of Church history that tolerated
and encouraged what we would now call anti-Semitism, considered, back then,
evangelical ardor. The Pope not only "apologized" for those heavy
footprints in Christian history, he sought out opportunities to dramatize
a kind of theological consanguinity between Christians and Jews, traveling
to Jerusalem, praying in a synagogue, and shedding symbolic tears at the
Wailing Wall.
But the bishops who assented to the "Reflections" have gone a
step further. Catholic recognition of Judaism's theological legitimacy is
not new. This is one step further. Mr. Wakin quotes the Rev. Jerry Blaszczak,
chaplain of Fordham University, to the effect that the Church has generally
stopped trying to convert Jews a result of a movement that began with the
Second Vatican Council nearly 40 years ago, which, in Mr. Wakin's words,
"affirmed the closeness of the two religions."
Immediate opposition to this holistic view of Christian/Jewish relations
was registered by Jim Sibley, coordinator of Jewish Ministries for the Southern
Baptist Convention. "There can be no more extreme form of anti-Semitism,"
he said, than to deny Jews access to evangelization. A Catholic was finally
found, in the Times story, to back off from the new exhortation to
deny Christian concern for Jews. The Rev. John Echert, who teaches scripture
at St. Thomas Seminary in St. Paul, is said, in the Times paraphrase,
to have called the document "an embarrassment that lacks teaching authority."
It is one thing to acknowledge the historical role of Judaism and to project
its eternal theological claims. The "Reflections" quote John Paul
(in 1982) as urging Christians to remember "how the permanence of Israel
is here accompanied by a continuous spiritual fecundity, in the rabbinical
period, in the Middle Ages and in modern times, taking its start from a
patrimony which we long shared."
The survival of Israel
is accepted as divine testimony to the special sanction of God. But the
ecumenicists brush up against contradiction in interpreting the singularity
of Judaism's covenant as protecting it from the basic claims of Christianity.
St. Paul (Romans 10: 1–4) used language that either means nothing
at all, in which case nor does any Biblical language, or else something
beyond the reach of bishops to ignore, let alone undo. "For they
[His fellow Jews] being ignorant of God's righteousness," wrote Paul,
"and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted
to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes."
So why should it offend if Christians continue to pray for "the conversion"
of the Jews? Are we supposed also to deplore the solicitude of those Christians
who converted Jean-Marie Lustiger, who is now Cardinal Archbishop of Paris?
Immediately after the Second World War, the Chief Rabbi of Rome converted
to Christianity. Do we assume that to have been a thoughtless act? On
the local scene, Lewis Lehrman ran for governor of New York in 1982 and,
soon after, joined the Catholic Church and abandoned politics, perhaps
because there is gnashing of teeth when prominent public figures cross
the theological aisle. An aisle which the "Reflections" people
are suggesting doesn't really exist.
The bishops who suggest that it is understandable for Christians to proceed
as if Christ had never happened are engaged in emasculating the Faith.
And to say to a Jew that Christians are unconcerned about him is, as suggested
by Mr. Sibley, less an injunction to acknowledge the covenant of Israel,
than an act of condescension and indifference.
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ttention is
drawn in the New York Times to a little-noticed document issued
on August 12 in Washington by a group of American rabbis and Roman Catholic
bishops. It is called "Reflections on Covenant and Mission"
and argues the astonishing proposition that Catholics should not try to
convert Jews. The Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious
Affairs summarizes, "The Catholic Church has come to recognize that
its mission of preparing for the coming of the kingdom of God is one that
is shared with the Jewish people," inasmuch as the Jewish people
"also abide in covenant with God." The New York Times's
reporter Daniel Wakin aptly summarized the meaning of the "Reflections":
"Put another way, your road to salvation is as good as mine."
