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Through dialogue, Catholics and Jews find common cause in the concerns that vex leaders of both religions, Cardinal Dolan said May 20 during a forum on the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council document “Nostra Aetate.”
“Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Time”) launched a new era of dialogue and understanding between Catholics and Jews.
Thanks to “Nostra Aetate,” “Jewish-Catholic friendship has never been stronger,” Cardinal Dolan said in his address, “The Catholic Church’s National Dialogue With Jews Since ‘Nostra Aetate.’”
“The brave fathers of the (Second Vatican) Council, aided by Jewish ‘periti’ (experts), could never have envisioned such success five decades ago.”
The success and friendship have been maintained, according to Cardinal Dolan, despite issues that have cropped up in the half-century since.
Those issues include the Catholic Church’s old Good Friday prayer about conversion of Jews; the 1987 visit to the Vatican by Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who reportedly had connections to the Third Reich; questions over Pope Pius XII’s role during the Second World War; Holocaust-denying clerics; furor over the Vatican’s 2000 document “Dominus Iesus”; the content of the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany; diplomatic exchanges between Israel and the Vatican; and Pope Francis’ recent overtures to Palestine.
Cardinal Dolan also recalled “the bickering over Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of the Christ,’” and charges of anti-Semitism leveled at it. “We are family. We argue. That’s what family is all about,” he added. “We raise our voices when we get scared.”
There are five areas of common concern that could be addressed through further dialogue, suggested Cardinal Dolan, the Catholic co-chair of the Church’s dialogue with the National Council of Synagogues.
First on the cardinal’s list was an “intensification” of efforts to “reclaim the primacy of God in a world prepared to not take him seriously.” This he said, was at the core of St. John Paul II’s post-“Nostra Aetate” efforts. But the Polish-born pope died seeing “not much progress” in this field, Cardinal Dolan said.
He proposed to leverage “the friendship inspired by ‘Nostra Aetate’ to explore the pastoral issues that befuddle both of us,” among them the reality of Jewish-Christian intermarriage, teaching children the faith, preserving the Sabbath and having “timely and relevant liturgies.”
Third on Cardinal Dolan’s list was confronting the loss of members, which he called “a juicy challenge,” adding, “The most towering pastoral problem we face together is America itself, which stresses personal choice on everything.”
Religious persecution also made Cardinal Dolan’s checklist, saying that Jewish and Christian minorities throughout the world are “in the crosshairs of the rifle scope of extremists.”
His last item was “sin and redemption,” saying, “That’s the Christian and Jewish vocabulary. That’s what the saints and the prophets have proclaimed….”
—CNS
