Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Because of the intimate inter-dependence between Christians and Jews, for theological and historical reasons - to the point that we can speak of a bond even at the level of identity - Catholic catechesis, teaching and preaching, cannot fail to reflect ever more deeply on this singular relationship founded on the one saving design of the God of the Covenant.
In fact when speaking of relations between Jews and Christians we refer to a unique and special bond in the field of interreligious dialogue. The Nostra Aetate Declaration on the Church's Relations with Non-Christian Religions, issued on 28 October 1965 - while the Second Vatican Council was in session -, states at paragraph 4: “ As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham's stock. Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets”.
Hence it is a special relation which, as we said earlier, involves not only mere historical and archaeological issues, which are certainly important; it reaches in profundity the very roots and identity, revealing a singular common heritage. A bond, between the two Abrahamatic faiths then, not only formal but also substantial and spiritual. By learning more about the Jews and how they profess and live their religion today, Christians become more familiar with many aspects of Church life.
It must be said however that to convince people of the importance of this valid and indispensable comparison is no easy task: not by chance in June 1995 the Holy See issued “NOTES on the correct way to present the Jews and Judaism in preaching and catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church ”, in which it affirmed: “ The singular character and the difficulty of Christian teaching about Jews and Judaism lies in this, that it needs to balance a number of pairs of ideas which express the relation between the two economies of the Old and New Testament: Promise and Fulfilment; Continuity and Newness; Singularity and Universality; Uniqueness and Exemplary Nature.”. Terms which should not be counter-posed, but instead read in the same process of close and fruitful relations. In fact, in the light of the whole of Sacred Scripture, promise and fulfilment clarify each other reciprocally, the newness of the Gospel is definitively a transformation of what went before, the singularity of the Chosen People should be understood as inclusive and indeed even universal, rather than exclusive, and its unicity should be set in the dynamics of exemplariness for all the peoples of the world.
If Jesus said there will be only one flock and one shepherd (Jn 10,16) then Judaism and Christianity cannot be understood as two parallel paths towards the same salvation. As the Council Decree on ecumenism affirms: "For it is only through Christ's Catholic Church, which is "the all-embracing means of salvation," that they [separated brethren] can benefit fully from the means of salvation", (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3), bearing witness to Christ, the Redeemer of the whole human race, although with rigorous respect for religious freedom.
This clarification is necessary, not to sink, as it happened in the remote and recent past, - it suffices to recall the tragedy of the Holocaust - into misunderstanding, or worse prejudice, which caused such harm not only to the Jews but to other civilisations and culture on the planet.
In conclusion, Catholic teaching, catechesis and preaching on Judaism, should be accurate, objective and rigorous, in order to avoid anti-Semitic pre-comprehension, always ready to resurface even in our civil and democratic Europe of the 3rd millennium. Recent events in the news are there for all to see.
However what the Church really needs today, is not so much to eradicate any possible anachronistic residue of anti-Semitism, but instead and in positive, to recognise and become familiar with the sacred vincolo which binds Jews and Christians indissolubly and I would even dare to say, ontologically. And in this way foster sentiments of love for our “elder brothers”, chosen by God to prepare for the coming of Christ, himself a Jew; custodians through the centuries of all that has been revealed and given to us in the New Testament and in the Church, despite that fact that they do not recognise Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah foretold and awaited by their fathers and their prophets. (Michele Loconsole) (Agenzia Fides 26/9/2008)
