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Cardinal Dolan, in a talk on the revolution in Jewish-Catholic relations in the past 50 years, linked the friendship between the two faiths to St. John Paul II and his call for them to unite in opposing secularism and promoting faith.
The cardinal delivered the annual John Paul II Center Lecture for Interreligious Understanding May 6 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan. The lecture marked the 50th anniversary of “Nostra Aetate,” (“In Our Time”), the Second Vatican Council document that launched a new era of dialogue and understanding between Catholics and Jews.
Commenting on the changes, Cardinal Dolan said, “The friendship between us, I feel, has never been stronger.”
Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and an authority on American Judaism, offered remarks following the lecture.
Cardinal Dolan spoke about the contributions of Pope John Paul II to Catholic-Jewish relations, in part, he said, because John Paul was the pope for more than half of the 50 years since “Nostra Aetate,” the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, as proclaimed by Pope Paul VI on Oct. 28, 1965.
The cardinal focused on two areas: theological advances in Jewish-Catholic understanding under John Paul II and “the candid dialogue over the neuralgic issues” that surfaced during his pontificate.
Those issues, the cardinal said, include “the somber and tragic legacy of Christian anti-Semitism, the role of the Holy See during the Shoah,” the prayers formerly used on Good Friday, and the cross erected at Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II “never dodged” those painful issues, the cardinal said.
He stressed John Paul’s concern over growing secularism worldwide. The pope, he said, believed that the most dangerous development in modern society was “the denial of God’s existence.” He said the pope also believed that Jews are “the natural allies” of Christians in combating disbelief and leading humanity back to spirituality.
The cardinal quoted from the Psalms to illustrate John Paul’s approach to the meaning of human life: “Only in God is my soul at rest.”
The cardinal also spoke about the depth of John Paul’s suffering as a young man, personally because of the deaths of all his immediate family, and as a Pole by the conquest of his beloved Poland by Hitler and Stalin—the conquests that brought, among other cruelties, government-enforced atheism.
“What got the people of Poland through but the faith expressed by Jewish wisdom: ‘Only in God is my soul at rest,’” Cardinal Dolan said. It was no wonder, he added, that John Paul’s first words as pope, spoken to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square, were, “Be not afraid!”
The cardinal also spoke about the pope’s visit to Poland in June 1979, when he addressed an enormous crowd and the people began to chant, “We want God!”
“It was as if John Paul’s visit to his beloved homeland had put on the lips of his people the pining of the Hebrew psalmist: ‘Like a deer that thirsts for living water, so my soul longs for you, O my God.’”
He added, “‘Nostra Aetate’ tells us that all of us comprise a single community, and we have a single origin. One, also, is our final goal: union with God.”
Cardinal Dolan recalled the visit of John Paul II to the Synagogue of Rome in 1986, “when the pope called Jews and Christians to ‘a collaboration in favor of humanity.’”
“Nostra Aetate,” he said, “inspired John Paul II not just to tolerate Jews,” not just to hold theological discussions or meet in times of controversy, but “to invite them into a providential, urgent partnership” based on faith, love and a shared commitment to biblical truth, “calling the world away from the worship of false gods…into the arms of the one, true, eternal God, who personally and passionately loves us, who has a plan for us and in whom alone we find purpose and peace.”
The lecture is sponsored by the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue at the Angelicum in Rome.
Chancellor Eisen, in his remarks, strongly endorsed the cardinal’s call for interreligious collaboration.
“Now as ever, religious voices must be raised in service of interreligious respect as loudly and persistently as those that seek to drown out this commitment with bombs and bullets,” he said. The cardinal, he added, “summons us to work we must do, and do together.”
