Statements

Celebrating and Deepening the New Christian-Jewish Relationship

A Statement from the International Council of Christians and Jews
for the Golden Jubilee of the Second Vatican Council Declaration,
Nostra Aetate

2015 ICCJ Annual Conference in Rome

June 28 - July 1, 2015

 

The following statement was prepared by the Executive Board of the ICCJ for its 2015 conference in Rome, "The 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate: The Past, Present, and Future of the Christian-Jewish Relationship." Also endorsed by the national member organizations listed below, it was presented to His Holiness Pope Francis during a private audience on June 30. Introductory remarks by ICCJ President Philip A. Cunningham also follow. For Pope Francis' message to the ICCJ, click HERE

 

Introduction

The Second Vatican Council's 1965 declaration on the relationship of the Catholic Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate is rightly described as groundbreaking, revolutionary, a watershed, and transformative. Although some of its ideas had been previously expressed in earlier post-Shoah writings, Nostra Aetate had an unparalleled global impact as a normative expression of the teaching authority of the world's largest Christian community. Fifty years later, we rejoice in the new relationship between Jews and Christians signaled by Nostra Aetate, §4. We reflect on what we have learned and what ongoing challenges confront us. Like people dreaming of what were once unimaginable possibilities (Psalm 126:1), we look forward to a future full of hope.

The Distance We've Come

Not so long ago prominent thinkers in both communities claimed that it was either impossible or undesirable for Christians and Jews to speak in a religiously meaningful way to one another. Centuries of Christian denigration and oppression of Jews had instilled deep-seated avoidance mechanisms and suspicions in both peoples. Neither community imagined it had very much to learn from the other.

Today this situation has dramatically changed in many places. Major communities of Christians have come to realize that they are not alone in being God’s faithful people. Coming to a genuine appreciation of the holiness of ongoing Jewish covenantal life with God, they have set aside past conversionary agendas. Likewise, some Jews participating in the maturing interfaith dialogue have glimpsed the presence of the Holy One in conversations with Christian interlocutors. We are both becoming aware that many theological ideas that arose in ancient adversarial contexts are increasingly unhelpful today. We have been learning how to speak to one another as friends and companions.

The Relationship Today

We are now living in an era when for the first time in history! Jews and Christians can work and study together in a sustained way, thereby enriching each other’s covenantal lives. However, this unprecedented blessing for today’s generations imparts the responsibility to use well the opportunity that has been given to us. To meet this duty, we must together face current and ongoing challenges.

  • Too many Christians and too many Jews are unaware of the rapprochement that is unfolding between us. We cling to the "mental ghettos" to which we've become accustomed. Rigorous and constant education to a true knowledge of each other's traditions is more important than ever to ensure better self and mutual understanding. While this is especially crucial in the preparation of our future leaders, "grassroots" initiatives must also be undertaken. In all our communities, there should not be any discrepancies between what our official statements declare and our everyday activities they should inform and reflect each other.

  • The habits of centuries cannot be unlearned in only a few decades. Inherited reflexes need to be retrained into new ways of acting. This happens only through regular interaction. For instance, Christians who study rabbinic texts with Jewish guides soon perceive the injustice of the timeworn caricature of Judaism as heartless legalism or its ancestral innovators, the Pharisees, as more concerned about rubrics than people. Similarly, Jews who explore church traditions with Christian companions can encounter a questing and humble spirituality far removed from any arrogance and condescension they may have expected.  

  • The long shadow of the Shoah will continue to raise difficult questions between us for many long years. Jews struggle with the awful legacy of victimization and fears of annihilation. Christians grapple with guilt for the long history of Christian antisemitism. This challenge takes a particularly pointed form when judging the actions of historical figures: does their being immersed in an antisemitic society excuse personal antisemitic views they expressed or deeds they performed? That would be a dangerous argument since social antisemitism remains widespread today. We believe that only together can Christians and Jews help each other heal and effectively confront the fraught legacy of the Shoah.

  • The seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East generate interreligious tensions and even hostility all around the world. The spiritual significance for Jews of the Land of Israel remains difficult for Christians to fathom. Moreover, the end of Jewish exile from their ancestral homeland with the establishment of a modern nation-state poses unprecedented challenges to the religious perspectives of Jews and Christians alike. As religious people, we believe that making mutual interreligious understanding the priority must guide all of our conversations and actions in the years ahead. We need to strive to be critically self-aware of how our own respective presuppositions and histories can hinder genuine empathy and insight.

  • Today, religious minorities throughout the world still suffer mistreatment, persecution, and violence. Christian minorities are increasingly targeted. The overcoming of all forms of religious persecution, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia should be a top priority of all those engaged in interfaith work.

In our world of globalization, ecological degradation, growing disparities between the rich and poor, and rapid technological change, the growing rapprochement between Jews and Christians can be an invaluable sign of hope that even the most protracted enmities and deepest divisions can be transformed into solidarity and renewal. We applaud all those who promote interreligious understanding among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all traditions.

The Journey Ahead

As we look to the decades ahead, we are acutely aware that as Christians and Jews we are engaged in an unprecedented journey that has led us from hostility to the beginnings of friendship. We have begun to care for each other, be concerned about each other's pain, rejoice in each other's rich spiritual heritage, and desire the best for each other. The ICCJ and its national member organizations throughout the world pledge to deepen the new relationship between Jews and Christians and to expand our culture of dialogue. We will strive to intensify theological discourse and education throughout our communities. Our ultimate goal is to see God in the face of the other. Like the encounter between Jacob and Esau after years of animosity, so should we see the religious value in our brothers and sisters. Then we can all say, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10).

Co-signed as of July 5, 2015 by the following national member organizations:

Argentina

  • Confraternidad Argentina Judeo-Cristiana

Australia

  • Australian Council of Christians and Jews

Austria

  • Koordinierungsausschuss für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit

Belgium

  • Organe de Consultation entre Chrétiens et Juifs Belgique

Brazil

  • Conselho de Fraternidade Cristão-Judaica

Canada

  • Christian Jewish Relations Canada

Chile

  • Confraternidad Judeo-Cristiana de Chile

Costa Rica

  • Confraternidad Judeo-Cristiana de Costa Rica

Czech Republic

  • Spolecnost Krestanu a Zidu

France

  • Amitié Judéo-Chrétienne de France

Germany

  • Deutscher Koordinierungsrat

Ireland

  • Irish Council of Christians and Jews

Italy

  • Federazione delle Amicizie ebraico-cristiane in Italia

New Zealand

  • Auckland Council of Christians and Jews
  • The Wellington Abrahamic Council of Jews, Christians, and Muslims

Norway

  • Det Mosaiske Trossamfund

Peru

  • Confraternidad Judeo-Cristiana del Peru

Poland

  • Polska Rada Chrzescijan i Zydow

Spain

  • Centro de Estudios Judeo-Cristianos

Sweden

  • Samarbetsrådet för Judar och Kristna

United Kingdom

  • Council of Christians and Jews
  • Three Faiths Forum
United States of America
  • Council of Centers on Christian-Jewish Relations

Uruguay

  • Confraternidad Judeo-Cristiana del Uruguay

 

Presentation of ICCJ Conference Participants to Pope Francis

Philip A. Cunningham, ICCJ President

Introduction

Your Holiness, Pope Francis, it is a great honor for me to present to you the 250 participants in the 2015 meeting of the International Council of Christians and Jews. From dozens of countries we have come to Rome to consider: "The 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate: The Past, Present and Future of the Christian-Jewish Relationship." As President of the ICCJ, I offer on behalf of all of us our heartfelt thanks for welcoming us to the Vatican as we celebrate what you have movingly called "our journey of friendship"[1] over the past five decades.

Pope Francis, the ICCJ came into being immediately after the Second World War as a result of a historic 1947 gathering in Switzerland called "An Emergency Conference on Antisemitism." Its famous "Ten Points of Seelisberg" not only served as a forerunner of Nostra Aetate but also gave birth to the ICCJ. Today, the ICCJ is an association of forty national organizations in over thirty countries on five continents, promoting mutual respect and enrichment at every opportunity. One national member organization networks 80 grassroots dialogue groups. Another is a collaboration of dozens of university research and educational centers. Others support official interactions among Jewish and Christian rabbis and clergy. Our diversity can be seen in the members of our Executive Board, which includes Jews and Christians from Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, and the United States. We also sponsor the Young Leadership Council to bring the importance of interreligious dialogue to coming generations and the International Abrahamic Forum to promote trilateral relations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Our conference is focusing on the past, present, and future of "our journey of friendship." We feel the journey has only just begun. A legacy of about eighteen centuries of estrangement and animosity cannot be overcome in a mere 50 years. Old habits of suspicion and caricature have to be unlearned. New theologies of our spiritual relationship have to be developed together. We've shared with you a statement on "Celebrating and Deepening the New Christian-Jewish Relationship" that we have composed as part of our conference.

However, today is a day to celebrate the blessed rapprochement that we are experiencing together. So, Pope Francis, to thank you for your own inspirational contributions on our historic journey of friendship, we'd like to offer you three small symbolic gifts that relate to the past, present, and future structure of our conference. Each gift will be presented by a Jew and a Christian to symbolize our ongoing work together.

The Past

The past has certainly taught us that friendly conversations were crucial to reach across the divisions between Christians and Jews. To mention only one example: In the 1940s, theologian Karl Thieme struggled after the Shoah to overcome the pervasive Christian belief that Jews were under God's wrath. Due to his correspondence with several Jews, most notably with Martin Buber, he experienced the love between the Holy One and the Jewish people and so came to reread Romans 11 with new eyes. Karl Thieme's insights were later incorporated into Nostra Aetate, 4, a key contribution that was the direct result of his talking with and learning from Jews.

Today, it is easy to forget the uncertainties and risks that accompanied such efforts. And we cannot forget, as Cardinal Kurt Koch has stated, "that only the unprecedented atrocity of the Shoah was able to effect a real turning point in thinking."[2] That is why, Pope Francis, our first gift to you reminds us that although the nightmarish world of the Shoah will always demand true conversion of our hearts, even then human decency did not totally vanish. I ask ICCJ's two vice-presidents, Ms. Liliane Apotheker from France and Rev. Michael Trainor from Australia, to present a very personal cup of blessing. It commemorates the rescue of Max Ostro by Catholics during the Shoah in 1942, a deed that continues to inspire his children, present here today, in the work in prudence and love of national and international Christian-Jewish dialogue and collaboration. May the memory of such selfless acts in that horrific reign of hatred always inspire us on our journey of friendship.

The Present

Pope Francis, as we turn to the present, from 1965 until today, we ponder the growing friendship we’ve experienced on our journey. Sister and Prof. Mary C. Boys, who is with us here today, has written of her long collaboration with Jewish educator Sara Lee: "Over the years, Sara and I have discussed many demanding and delicate questions—but the conversations themselves have not been difficult. To the contrary, our friendship allows us to probe in sensitive areas,"[3] including facing Auschwitz in one another’s presence.

Likewise, Rev. Hanspeter Heinz, who is also here today, has written tenderly about his more than twenty year friendship with Rabbi Michael Signer of blessed memory—a friend of many of us here as well: "The joy we shared as friends was no less important than our projects together. ... During our long walks ... we regularly lost our way because we were so absorbed in our discussions. ... Without our deep theological discussions, our friendship would have surely lacked seriousness and depth."[4]

Their informal camaraderie resonates with the famous I-Thou paradigm of Martin Buber, the fiftieth anniversary of whose death we also mark this year. Martin Buber has a special place in the hearts of the ICCJ family because his former residence in Heppenheim, Germany is now the ICCJ's headquarters. And so, Pope Francis, I ask ICCJ Treasurer Dr. Abi Pitum and ICCJ's General Secretary Ms. Anette Adelmann, both from Germany, to present you with our second small gift. It is a first edition copy of a volume of essays composed by Prof. Buber, signed by the author himself, and published in 1936 a year of personal significance to you. To paraphrase slightly, the inscription states that only by spending time together can we meet the challenge to gain insights needed for our times. May Prof. Buber's words inspire Jews and Christians to work together in meeting the needs of our times.

The Future

And finally, we come to the future. In thinking about how to describe the emerging Christian-Jewish relationship, Rabbi Daniel Lehmann has proposed the following: 

I suggest ... the metaphor of what in Aramaic we [Jews] call a chavruta, that is a learning partner. A learning partner is someone with whom you study texts, biblical or other kinds of traditional texts, but you study it in order to have a dialogue—an interlocutor, with whom truth can emerge as you play out your different perspectives on the texts. And it’s a kind of relationship which is very intimate, in which there is a sense of shared texts, and even a covenantal relationship, but in which the partners are not just trying to agree, but in fact, trying to see how their different perspectives can enhance the other person’s understanding.[5]

Rabbi Lehmann's words recall those of Pope Benedict XVI: "[W]e now see it as our task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts—the Christian way and the Jewish way—into dialogue with one another, if we are to understand God's will and his word aright."[6]

And, Pope Francis, you yourself have written: "Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples. … There exists a rich complementarity between us which allows us to ... help one another to mine the riches of God’s word."[7] Your insight is surely indebted to your own exchanges with Jewish friends, especially Rabbi Abraham Skorka, chair of the planning committee of ICCJ’s meeting last year in Buenos Aires. He has movingly written in the book of your dialogues together: "To have a conversation is to bring one's soul nearer to another's in order to reveal and illuminate his or her core. The Divine Breath, which both possess, knows to unite the two and then form a link with G-d that will never weaken."[8]

Pope Francis, these and many other similar experiences suggest that the new relationship between Jews and Christians, fifty years after Nostra Aetate, may well be maturing to the point that we are becoming able to discuss topics we have been unable to discuss since literally the era of the New Testament! Because genuine affection has grown between us, “In Our Time” we can at last freely speak to each other about our interrelationship before God. “In Our Time” we can begin to explore religious questions of such profundity that they can only be addressed by us working together for extended periods of time as learning partners, in mutuality and friendship. And so, it is only fitting that our third gift is one we would also like to present to Rabbi Skorka. Your well-known friendship is both a sign of our hopeful times and an invitation to a future full of even greater possibilities.

Pope Francis, as you know, depictions on dozens of medieval cathedrals used feminine figures to show Ecclesia, the Church, as majestic, crowned, and powerful; triumphing over a defeated, crownless, and blindfolded Synagoga. Such inimical portrayals, of course, today directly contradict the teaching of the post-Nostra Aetate Church. Therefore, Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia has commissioned an original sculpture entitled, "Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time" to celebrate through art our journey of friendship since Nostra Aetate.

As ICCJ's gift symbolizing the future, my colleague and chavruta at Saint Joseph's, Prof. Adam Gregerman and I will present you and Rabbi Skorka with two small replicas of this sculpture to be dedicated in September. The full-size version will show Synagogue and Church depicted with nobility and grace, enjoyably studying their sacred texts together as friends. Pope Francis, the ICCJ believes it is our duty before God in these blessed times to actively seek out each other as friends and fellow learners, to truly be, in the words of Pope Saint John Paul II, "a blessing to one another."[9] Such shared study will deepen our covenantal life with the Holy One and bring hope to the rest of the world.

Pope Francis, on behalf of the International Council of Christians and Jews, please accept these three tokens of our gratitude, esteem, and admiration. Please pray for us as our many different member organizations pursue our diverse missions and roles on our "journey of friendship" together.

Shalom!


[1]   Pope Francis, "Address to the Chief Rabbis of Israel" (May 26, 2014).
[2]   Kurt Cardinal Koch, "Theological Questions and Perspectives in Jewish-Catholic Dialogue," address delivered at the annual meeting of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, Seton Hall University, East Orange, NJ, USA, October 30, 2011, §1.
[3]   Mary C. Boys, "Learning in the Presence of the Other: My Friendship with Sara Lee," forthcoming in James L. Fredericks and Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, eds., Interreligious Friendship after Nostra Aetate (New York/London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
[4]   Hanspeter Heinz, "Your Privilege: You Have Jewish Friends," Philip A. Cunningham, Joseph Sievers, Mary C. Boys, Hans Hermann Henrix, and Jesper Svartvik, eds. Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships (Grand Rapid: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 4.
[5]   Daniel Lehmann, quoted at 07:18-8:32 in "Metaphors for a Unique Relationship," Walking God's Path: Jews and Christians in Candid Conversation [video series] Episode 5. Produced by Philip A. Cunningham, John Michalczyk, and Gilbert Rosenthal (Boston: Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, 2004).
[6]   Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, Holy Week: from the entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 35.
[7]   Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), §248-249.
[8]   Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Image Books, 2013), ix.
[9]   Pope Saint John Paul II, "Address on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," (April 6, 1993).