JEWISH-CATHOLIC LIAISON COMMITTEE
4th MEETING
Rome, January 7-10, 1975
The fourth annual meeting of the International Catholic/Jewish Liaison Committee took place in Rome on January 7-10, 1975.
The meeting was presided over by Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, by Rabbi Henry Siegman, by Rev. Edward Flannery and Father Bernard Dupuy, O.P.
Recent developments in the field of Catholic-Jewish relations were discussed. The establishment of a Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the publication of the Guidelines and Suggestions for the Implementation of Nostra Aetate (No. 4) were considered as encouraging steps for the practical application of the conciliar Declaration on the relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews in different essential areas. The document establishes a framework for the development of Catholic-Jewish relations in a spirit of mutual respect, with due recognition of basic differences. It opens new avenues for further clarifications of important and sometimes controversial issues.
The Jewish delegation expressed appreciation for several aspects of the Guidelines, particularly the condemnation of antisemitism, the recognition of the continuing development of Jewish history and religious tradition also after the rise of Christianity, the encouragement of study of Judaism in Catholic education, and the call for joint social action.
The Jewish side raised questions about several aspects of the Guidelines, including their failure to note the essential significance of peoplehood and land in Jewish faith. Questions were also raised with regard to the affirmation in the Guidelines of the obligation of Catholics to witness to their faith within the context of dialogue, and the suggestion for common prayer.
The Catholic delegation made it clear that neither the document taken as a whole nor any part of it should be understood as an attempt at proselytizing Jews.
Furthermore the Catholic delegation stated that the document did not make a general recommendation for common prayer, but referred only to circumstances in which this would be acceptable to both sides.
The meeting also discussed the concept of human rights in the Christian and the Jewish tradition with the participation of members of the Pontifical Commission Justice and Peace. It was decided to pursue this study and to envisage in the future practical cooperation in the field of human rights.
Finally, the meeting exchanged information on a series of matters of mutual concern, on the future programme and on the effectiveness of the methods of work of the Liaison Committee.
His Holiness Pope Paul VI received in audience the members of the Liaison Committee on Friday morning, January 10 in the presence of Cardinal Jan Willebrands, President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
Present at the meeting were:
From the Catholic side:
Members of the Liaison Committee:
The Most Revd. Roger Etchegaray, Archbishop of Marseille, France.
The Most Revd. Francis J. Mugavero, Bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.A.
Msgr. Charles Moeller, Vice-President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Rome.
fr. Pierre-M. de Contenson, O.P., Secretary of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Rome.
fr. Bernard Dupuy, O.P., Secretary of the French Episcopal Committee for Relations with Judaism, Paris.
From the Pontifical Commission Justice and Peace:
Msgr. Andrea di Montezemolo, Pro-Secretary.
Msgr. Bernard Lalande, Expert.
Revd. Romano Rossi, Expert.
Experts at the meeting:
Revd. Edward Flannery, Secretary of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the U.S.A., Washington, D.C.
Prof. Cornelius Rijk, Director of SIDIC (Service International de Documentation Judéo-Chrétienne), Rome.
From the Jewish side:
Members of the Liaison Committee:
Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, Consultant of Anti- Defamation League of Bsnai Bsrith, Rome.
Dr. Gerhart Riegner, Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress, Geneva, Switzerland.
Rabbi Henry Siegman, Executive Vice President of the Synagogue Council of America, New York, U.S.A.
Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, National Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, New York, U.S.A.
Prof. Shemaryahu Talmon, Chairman of the Jewish Council for Interreligious Relations in Israel, Jerusalem.
Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, Chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and Vice-President of the Synagogue Council of America, New York, U.S.A.
Experts at the meeting:
Dr. Fritz Becker, permanent representative in Rome of the World Jewish Congress.
Dr. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, Director for Europe of Bsnai Bsrith, Basel, Switzerland.
Prof. Louis Henkin of Columbia University Law School, New York, U.S.A.
Dr. Zachariah Schuster, consultant of the American Jewish Committee, Paris, France.
Address of the Jewish Spokesman
of the Liaison Committee to the Holy Father
January 10, 1975
Your Holiness,
The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations warmly appreciates the privilege of this audience.
This is an important occasion. Relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people have had many unhappy chapters. This meeting, we are hopeful, marks a new stage in our relations.
In our century, the Jewish people suffered the greatest tragedy in its history, the annihilation of the overwhelming majority of the Jews of Europe. In this century, too, the Jewish people has experienced the rebirth of the State of Israel.
The creation by Your Holiness of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, and the Guidelines for implementing the Conciliar Declaration 'Nostra Aetate' will, we believe, encourage better understanding and improve relations between Catholics and Jews, in a spirit of mutual respect and the recognition of basic differences.
We welcome the condemnation of antisemitism, at a time when this ancient hatred is again being propagated by enemies of the Jewish people.
We welcome the call on Christians to "strive to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience". We are hopeful that this striving will lead to a wider appreciation that peoplehood and the land of Israel are essential to Jewish faith. We note with appreciation the recognition by Your Holiness, in the recent address to the College of Cardinals, of the place of Jerusalem also in the love and longing of the Jewish people.
We welcome the call for joint social action. The struggle for universal justice and peace is a fundamental imperative of Judaism. We are eager to work with Christians for social justice and peace for all, everywhere. Such collaboration can also do much to foster mutual understanding and esteem.
We express our warm respect to Your Holiness and to Catholics throughout the world. May He who establishes peace in His heaven bring peace to all mankind.
Address of the Holy Father to the Liaison Committee
between the Catholic Church and World Judaism
January 10, 1975
Gentlemen,
You, the Catholic and Jewish members of the Liaison Committee between the Catholic Church and World Judaism, decided a little over a year ago in Anvers, to hold your fourth annual meeting in Rome. We rejoice in this decision of yours to meet this time in the city which is the centre of the Catholic Church: it has made possible today's fraternal meeting.
Your session is taking place a short time after we have set up, last October, a Commission of the Catholic Church for religious relations with the Jews, the first important act of which has been the publication a few days ago of the "Guidelines and Suggestions" for the application of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate in the sphere of Jewish-Catholic relations.
We will not return at this moment to the details of that document, which was addressed to the faithful of the Catholic Church by the central authority of the Church and which has doubtless been, together with the question of human rights and still other problems, one of the objects of study and shared reflection to which your session has been devoted.
This text evokes the difficulties and confrontations, with all the regrettable elements involved, which have marked relations between Christians and Jews over the past two thousand years. While this reminder has been salutary and indispensable, one should not forget that there have also been between us down the centuries elements other than confrontations. There are still many people who can witness to what was done by the Catholic Church during the last war, in Rome itself, under the energetic impulse of Pius XII Y as we personally testify Y and by numerous bishops, priests and members of the faithful, to save innocent Jews from persecution, often at the peril of their own lives.
Moreover, as we look at history as a whole, we cannot fail to note the connections, often too little remarked upon, between Jewish thought and Christian thought. We may here merely recall the influence exercised at various periods in the most exalted spheres of Christian reflection by the thought of the great Philo of Alexandria, who was considered by Saint Jerome as "the most expert among the Jews", a judgment echoed by, among others, the Franciscan Doctor Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. But, precisely, since the Catholic Church has just commemorated, at the same time as the seventh centenary of the death of Saint Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, that of the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, who died, like Bonaventure, in the year 1274, there very naturally come to our mind the numerous references of our Angelic Doctor to the work of the rabbinic scholar from Cordoba, who died in Egypt at the dawn of the thirteenth century, Moshe ben Maimon, in particular his explanations of the Mosaic Law and the precepts of Judaism.
For his part, the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas was to expand in its turn in the scholarly tradition of mediaeval Judaism: as has been shown for example by the studies of Professor Charles Touati of the School of Higher Studies in Paris and by Professor Joseph Sermoneta of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, there existed in the Latin West at the end of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth century, a whole Jewish Thomistic school.
These are merely some examples drawn from many others. They bear witness to the fact that at different periods and at a certain level there has been a real and profound mutual esteem and a conviction that we had something to learn from one another.
We formulate, gentlemen, the sincere wish that, in a manner appropriate to our age and thus in a field that to some extent exceeds the limited domain of merely speculative and rational exchanges, a true dialogue may be established between Judaism and Christianity.
Your presence here as some of the most authoritative representatives of world Judaism bears witness to the fact that this personal wish finds a certain echo in yourselves. The terms with which we express it, the presence of the devoted Cardinal President of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, that of our brothers in the episcopate, the Archbishop of Marseilles and the Bishop of Brooklyn, are dear indications to you of the sincerity and collegial decision with which the Catholic Church desires that there should develop at this time that dialogue with Judaism to which the Second Vatican Council invited us by its Declaration Nostra Aetate (cf. no. 4).
We hope that this dialogue, conducted with great mutual respect, will help us to know one another better and will lead us all to know better the Almighty, the Eternal One, to follow more faithfully the ways that have been traced out for us by him who, in the words of the prophet Hosea (11:9), is in our midst as the Holy One, who takes no pleasure in destroying.
We dare to think that the recent solemn reaffirmation of rejection by the Catholic Church of every form of antisemitism and the invitation that we have extended to all the faithful of the Catholic Church to pay heed in order "to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience" may, on the Catholic side, provide the conditions for beneficial development.
We do not doubt that you on your part will correspond, according to your own perspectives, to our effort, which can only have meaning and fruitfulness in reciprocity.
In the perspective of understanding and friendship which we evoked before the Sacred College on 23 December last, we formulate for you here present, gentlemen, and for your families, but more widely still for the entire Jewish people our best wishes of happiness and peace.