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The Rev. Robert J. McNamara plans to do
something this Friday evening that would have
been unthinkable in the first 2,000 years of the
Catholic Church: He’s going to a synagogue.
More unthinkable, he’s going to be delivering
the Shabbat sermon.
Indeed, until fairly recently, the Catholic
Church forbade priests to step foot into
synagogues, even under the highly unlikely
circumstances that they had been invited. After
all, according to the church’s official stance,
Jews were infidels who rejected and killed
Christ and who needed to be converted in order
to be saved from eternal damnation.
But this Friday evening, along with 100 or so
parishioners from St. Bernadine of Siena
Catholic Church, McNamara will share the bima
with Rabbi Stewart Vogel at Temple Aliyah in
Woodland Hills. And he will very likely receive
a standing ovation from the Jewish
congregants.
Why? What changed?
What happened was something called Nostra
Aetate, perhaps the most important document
issued by Vatican Council II in Rome, and
essentially the church’s first positive
statement about Judaism since the Christian
Bible began to be codified nearly 2,000 years
ago.
Nostra Aetate (in our time), the Declaration
on the Relationship of the Church to
Non-Christian Religions, was promulgated by Pope
Paul VI on Oct. 28, 1965. Radically reversing
the church’s previous position, it states, “The
Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and
holy in these religions,” referring to Judaism,
as well as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
The landmark document’s fourth section
pertains particularly to Jews, accepting that
Jews also live in covenant with God. It states,
“ ... this sacred council remembers the
spiritual ties which link the people of the new
covenant with the stock of Abraham.”
Nostra Aetate removes the charge of deicide,
absolving all Jews, past and present, of killing
Jesus. It also clearly “deplores all hatred,
persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism directed
against the Jews at any time or from any
source.”
And perhaps most ground-breaking, it
advocates previously forbidden dialogue,
declaring, “Since Christians and Jews have such
a common spiritual heritage, this sacred council
wishes to encourage and further mutual
understanding and appreciation. This can be
obtained, especially, by way of biblical and
theological inquiry and through friendly
discussions.”
Nostra Aetate, according Cardinal Roger
Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, is “a short
document but one whose implications and
repercussions are enormous.” And perhaps nowhere
is this truer than Los Angeles, home of the
largest U.S. archdiocese, with almost 5 million
Catholics and the second-largest U.S. Jewish
population of about 550,000.
Here the 40th anniversary was publicly
celebrated on Sept. 22 before a gathering of
about 350 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the
Angels, in an event jointly organized by the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the American Jewish
Committee (AJC) and the Board of Rabbis of
Southern California.
But Catholic-Jewish relations in this city
have not always been so cordial.
While Nostra Aetate received an overwhelming
2,221 votes to 88 by the bishops in Rome in
1965, it received a far less favorable reception
in Los Angeles by Cardinal James Francis
McIntyre, known for his archconservative views
and opposition to Vatican II reforms.
McIntyre, who earned a reputation as a
prolific “builder of schools,” was known to
greatly admire Jewish real estate developers. He
claimed, in fact, that every time a Jewish
developer completed a large project, he would
build a church or parochial school nearby.
He was less enthusiastic, however, about
building interfaith relations.
Still, as far back as 1955, without
McIntyre’s endorsement and even before Nostra
Aetate’s arrival, the AJC, in conjunction with
Loyola University president, the Rev. Charles S.
Casassa, S.J., started the Summer Human
Relations Workshop. The classes, comprised
priests, nuns and seminarians, with a smattering
of Jews, Protestants and nonbelievers, dealt
with discrimination issues.
Casassa was assisted, beginning in 1958, by
Dr. Neil Sandberg, who moved to Los Angeles as
AJC’s western regional director and helped
expand interfaith programs.
But when Sandberg suggested increasing these
Catholic-Jewish outreach efforts, McIntyre
responded, “We have dialogue; I talk to Edgar
all the time,” referring to his close friendship
with the late Rabbi Edgar Magnin of Wilshire
Boulevard Temple.
But the groundwork had been laid by Nostra
Aetate, by Casassa and Sandberg and, indirectly,
by a situation at Carver Junior High School,
where representatives of several faiths came
together to defuse racial unrest in 1969.
Less than four years after the Watts Riots,
with relations between the school’s Black
Student Union and the United Mexican-American
Students tense and with threats from the area
superintendent to expel the black students, a
small group of clergy was called in.
That was the first meeting of Monsignor
Royale Vadakin, then associate pastor of All
Souls Church in Alhambra, and Rabbi Alfred Wolf
of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
That effort triggered the founding of the
Interreligious Council of Southern California in
1970, as well as a life-long friendship between
Vadakin and Wolf that transformed the
Catholic-Jewish landscape of Southern
California.
Vadakin and Wolf became so close that Wolf’s
grandson, confused at age 5 when hearing that
Vadakin was Catholic, mused, “I thought Father
Vadakin and papa were brothers.”
Together, they created the Priest-Rabbi
Committee, sponsored by the Board of Rabbis of
Southern California and the archdiocese’s Office
of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, a new
position offered to Vadakin in 1971.
One of the Priest-Rabbi Committee’s early
concerns dealt with several Christian Bible
passages read during Lent and Holy Week that
fostered anti-Semitic sentiments. One such
passage was the Palm Sunday reading of the
Passion according to St. Matthew, where the
people cry out, “Crucify him” (Matthew 27:22)
and, “Let his blood be on us and on our
children” (Matthew 27:25).
The response was Lenten Pastoral Reflections,
the committee’s first formal statement, issued
in 1977, which offered suggestions for handling
such highly charged material. “We cannot make
the mistake of blaming the whole Jewish people
(of 33 C.E. or of today) for Jesus’ death,” the
statement advised.
Vadakin and Wolf also tackled controversial
subjects in the Catholic-Jewish Respect Life
Committee, which they formed in 1975 in
conjunction with AJC and which included priests,
rabbis and lay people from both communities.
Their first topic was abortion. Many Jewish
groups have long been associated with
maintaining the legality of abortions, which the
church opposes. Despite disagreement on this
matter, discussions remained respectful.
“Was I destined to do this [interfaith
work]?” Vadakin asked. “I don’t know.”
His childhood recollections include any
number of positive experiences with Jews. His
father worked for Sears, Roebuck and Co., and
the whole family looked on Sears President
Julius Rosenwald as a great hero for instituting
a profit-sharing plan. Plus, living in Pacific
Palisades, Jews and Catholics — who were equally
disliked and discriminated against by the
Methodist majority — tended to band
together.
More surprising, perhaps, is the devotion to
interreligious work by Wolf, who grew up in Nazi
Germany. A rabbinic student in 1935, he was
saved when Hebrew Union College brought him and
four other students to the Cincinnati campus
“In some ways, you’d think he wouldn’t have
wanted to engage in Catholic-Jewish dialogue,”
said Vadakin, now vicar general of the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, “but he had just a
very basic belief in the goodness of the human
heart.”
And, in fact, Wolf’s son, Dan, believes his
father, who died in 2004, reached out even more
because of his early experiences in Germany and
in Dothan, Ala., home of his first pulpit.
There, blacks, Jews and Catholics were
discriminated against by the Baptist majority,
but Wolf, according to his son, was “determined
to reform the South.” Dan Wolf said, “He saw
firsthand what happens if groups don’t relate to
each other.”
Today, Jews and Catholics in the United
States, for the most part, do relate well to one
another. And while most, outside of clergy and
academics, are not familiar with the actual
Nostra Aetate document and its significance,
they recognize and appreciate a changed
environment.
They saw Pope John Paul II, on his visit to
Israel in 2000, inserting a note asking
forgiveness in the Western Wall and conversing
with Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem. And
Benedict XVI, on his first trip outside Rome as
pope in August, spoke at a synagogue in Cologne,
Germany.
Closer to home, contemporary works by 14
Jewish and Christian artists depicting Passover
and Easter themes were displayed together last
spring at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the
Angels in an exhibition titled,
“Passion/Passover: Artists of Faith Interpret
Their Holy Days.”
And there are many educational programs.
Wolf and Vadakin’s Jewish Intern Program,
taken over by the AJC and renamed the
Catholic/Jewish Educational Enrichment Program,
sends Rabbi Michael Perelmuter into classes of
ninth- through 12th-grade students at 17
archdiocesan high schools.
On the Jewish side, also since 1992, Catholic
educator Dr. Michael Kerze has been visiting
12th-grade Jewish studies classes at Milken
Community High School in Los Angeles, comparing
such Catholic and Jewish concepts as repentance
and covenant. He also teaches a class at Milken
Middle School in which, Kerze said, students
move beyond asking questions about Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny to questions about the
virgin birth and the Trinity.
Many Catholic leaders believe that Christians
need to study the Torah and Judaism to better
understand their own religion. But not all
Jewish educators believe the reverse is true,
because American Jews live in a culture
permeated by Christianity.
That’s not the view, however, of Rabbi Gary
Greenebaum, AJC western regional director, who
pointed out that society typically offers a kind
of “watered-down” Christianity. “The more we
learn about other religions, the more we learn
about our own,” he said.
Still, difficulties and even irreconcilable
differences are inevitably going to arise
between Catholics and Jews, given their
conflicting concepts of covenant and the
Messiah, of sin and redemption. And people on
both sides are leery of proselytizing, some
fearing that contact could lead to a departure
from the tenets of their faith or even to
conversion.
Many Jews have a deep distrust of non-Jews
and fear even walking into a church. Middie
Giesberg, for example, a devoted member of the
Catholic-Jewish Women’s Conference since 1978,
remembers growing up in a heavily Irish Catholic
neighborhood in Portland, Maine, and being
scared to death just walking past a large
Catholic church every day on her way to
school.
And for the Orthodox community,
Jewish-Catholic relations are generally not on
the radar.
“It’s not that it’s not important, but when
the Orthodox community does look outward, it has
generally been in search of support for Israel,
and that’s not the Catholic community, generally
speaking,” said Yosef Kanefsky, rabbi of B’nai
Judea Congregation in Los Angeles and president
of the Board of Rabbis of Southern
California.
The limits of religious rapprochement were
evident in the reaction to Mel Gibson’s film,
“The Passion of the Christ.” Many Jewish leaders
criticized the film as blaming Jews for the
crucifixion of Christ. Many Christians,
including Pope John Paul II, characterized the
film as an accurate rendition of events as
described in the Bible. Pope John Paul II said,
“It is as it was.”
The film “was clearly a ripple and a setback,
but it’s not going to impede our progress or our
work together,” said Rabbi Mark Diamond,
executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis
of Southern California.
And AJC’s Greenebaum believes that the
reaction to the film actually speaks to the
success of Nostra Aetate. “Passion plays
throughout history have been great causes of
pogroms and violence against Jews,” he said,
noting that Gibson’s film did not provoke such a
response.
Years earlier, in fact, a notable segment of
the Jewish community thought a meaningful
acknowledgement was long overdue. Dabru Emet, a
response to Nostra Aetate and subsequent
Christian statements, was issued in September
2000 and signed by 300 Orthodox, Conservative
and Reform rabbis.
“We believe it is time for Jews to learn
about the efforts of Christians to honor
Judaism,” reads the text of Dabru Emet [speak
the truth]. “We believe it is time for Jews to
reflect on what Judaism may now say about
Christianity.” It presents eight statements on
how Jews and Christians might relate to one
another.
And Catholic and Jewish leaders recognize
solid reasons for engaging in this work.
“Too often people look to each other in
moments of crisis. It’s so much more important
to establish positive relations before the
crises hit,” said Temple Aliyah’s Vogel.
“We can study and learn each other’s
traditions and beliefs and better understand our
own,” Greenebaum added.
But there’s more work to be done.
Both Catholic and Jewish leaders would like
to see more education, including more serious
study of texts.
“I think that the average Jewish person knows
precious little about Nostra Aetate and Catholic
doctrine, about what unites us and what divides
us,” Diamond said.
Some Catholics would like to see Jewish
students learn more about Catholicism. “What I’d
like to see, to be honest with you, is a little
bit more reciprocity here,” said the Rt. Rev.
Alexei Smith, the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s
director of ecumenical and interreligious
affairs.
Some religious leaders would also like to see
more parish-synagogue partnerships.
Historically Wilshire Boulevard Temple
developed ties with neighboring St. Basil
Catholic Church and University Synagogue with
St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in
Brentwood. But only Temple Aliyah and St.
Bernadine of Siena appear to have an active
exchange, dating back about seven years to a
joint scripture study initiated by Sister Malua
Conheady and Rabbi Tsafreer Lev.
Catholic and Jewish leaders would also like
to see more joint community involvement.
“Look at the needs of our city. We both have
charitable organizations. Why do we continually
have to work as individual entities instead of
pooling our resources to help people?” Smith
said.
But that sort of challenge is a far cry from
a Catholicism that for centuries made
theological war on Judaism and sometimes actual
war on Jews.
“We are both heirs to Abraham’s challenge,
‘vehyai bracha’ or ‘become a blessing,’” said
Rabbi Michael Signer, professor of Jewish
thought and culture at the University of Notre
Dame. “As John Paul II said to us, first we need
to become a blessing to one another. And then to
the world. That’s the challenge that 40 years of
Nostra Aetate lays before us.”
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