Achievements
and Further Challenges in the Jewish-Christian Dialogue
Address delivered at the inauguration of the SIDIC Library Collection and Documentation Centre at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Courtesy of
I.
This
address on the occasion of the inauguration of the SIDIC
Library Collection and the SIDIC-Rome
Documentation Centre at the Pontifical
Gregorian University cannot begin but with a warm word of thanks. Thanks
to the Sisters of Sion and their work, or better for the implementation of
their mission. The SIDIC Library
Collection and the SIDIC
Documentation Centre, which is today officially and publicly transferred
to the Cardinal Bea Centre of the Pontifical
Gregorian University, is – with its more than 6,000 volumes on the
Biblical, talmudic, midrash sources of Judaism, on anti-Semitism, the
Jewish–Christian dialogue, the Jewish Liturgy and Jewish history – an
impressing and outstanding sign of the work which was done in the last
decades, a signpost of a new momentum and new fruits for the Jewish-Christian
dialogue: the healing of deep wounds from the past,
the overcoming of misunderstandings and the promotion of reconciliation
and peaceful collaboration between the two religions.
But
the Library and the Documentation
Centre – despite their importance – are only the outward dimension of
a mission which goes much deeper and is much larger. It has been the mission
of the Congregation of our Lady of Sion
since its foundation in 1843 to witness through word and life to God’s
faithful love for the Jewish people and to work towards the fulfilment of the
promises concerning the Jews and the Gentiles, the promises of justice and of
peace which were proclaimed by the prophets for all humankind.
The
name Lady of Sion was chosen by her
founder because Mary according to the Biblical tradition is the daughter of
Sion par excellence, she was –
although Christians have been known to forget – a Jewish woman, as Jesus was
a Jew, and Sion is the Biblical name for Jerusalem, City of Peace. These
origins evoke in these months much sorrow and sadness for all but the peaceful
events we now witness – but nevertheless the unbroken promises which this
name contains also evoke the hope so urgently needed in this difficult
situation. The Sisters of our Lady
of Sion were and are a sign of hope founded in the – by the faithfulness
of God – unbroken covenant and its promises of peace.
I
call to mind the foundation of the Congregation
of our Lady of Sion in mid–19th century because in these days we
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council
in October 1962 and the promulgation of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra
aetate on the 28th of October 1965, which was a historical breakthrough in
Jewish-Christian relations and at the same time a hopeful new beginning. In
remembering both the foundation of the Congregation
of our Lady of Sion and the promulgation of Nostra
aetate makes one reflect that the Conciliar breakthrough had forerunners
and was not possible without the courageous work of this Congregation. But
also the implementation of what the Council in a solemn Declaration stated
needed dedicated women and men who worked hard for its reception, realisation
and continuation. Among them the Sisters of the Congregation
of our Lady of Sion were the first.
II.
In
this context I could and should remember
many other outstanding personalities who paved the way to the Council’s
Declaration Nostra aetate and to
our present Jewish-Christian dialogue. I limit myself to one, who is also
important for this solemn inauguration, namely Cardinal Augustin Bea.
Pope
John XXIII was elected to be a Pope of transition, an interim Pope so to say,
but who was himself to be the architect of transition in the Church. One of
the most fundamental shifts he made was the beginning of a new era in
relations between Christians and Jews. Already as Nuncio in Istanbul during
the Second World War he personally intervened to save Jewish lives. His own
background therefore lent solid credibility on which to usher in a new age of
relations. So he could tell Jews he met soon after his election: “I am
Joseph your brother.” This was a new and unaccustomed tone after so many
centuries where the relations between Jews and Christians were anything but
brotherly and friendly.
But
to implement such a new start can be a challenge for a Pope too. Popes have
according to Catholic doctrine the fullness of jurisdiction within the
Catholic Church; but it would be more then naive to think that a Pope himself
is not conditioned by many others around him. Pope John XXIII was fortunate to
find an able collaborator in a fine, highly regarded German Old Testament
scholar and at the same time a man who knew the Curia and who knew to deal
with it, a man gifted with wisdom, prudence and courage, human sensitivity and
a wakeful spiritual mind, Cardinal Augustin Bea. The Pope appointed him the
first President of the then Pontifical
Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (1960) and after a memorable
visit of Jules Isaak in June 1960 charged him to prepare a document on Jews
for the Council he had announced shortly earlier.
The
way ahead was to become a thorny one. After the document had made its passage
through the Council, Cardinal Bea told a friend: “If
I had known all the difficulties before, I do not know whether I would
have had the courage to take this way.” There was vehement opposition both
from outside and from within. From inside the old well–known patterns of
traditional anti-Judaism emerged, from outside there was a storm of protest
from Muslim countries with serious threats against the Christians living there
as small minorities. In order to save the furniture from the burning house it
was decided to integrate the envisaged Declaration as one chapter in the Declaration
about the Non-Christian Religions,
to be known later with its first words as Nostra
aetate.
Yet
this was a compromise, for Judaism is not one religion among the non-Christian
religions, but as the Chapter 4 of the Declaration made very clear,
Christianity has a particular and a unique relation with Judaism. We
cannot define Christianity and its identity without making reference to
Judaism, what is not the case with Islam, Buddhism or any other religion.
Judaism belongs to the very roots of Christianity. But to share this
conviction, to formulate it and to find a majority within the Council was not
an easy accomplishment. It was not only the well known French Archbishop Lefèbvre
who raised opposition to, but many others, especially from countries with
Muslim majorities.
There
are two well–known major decisions of the Council. On the one hand, the
rejection of all kinds of anti-Semitism and, on the other, the remembrance of
the Jewish roots of Christianity, our common heritage as sons of Abraham in
faith. Both positions have in the meantime been incorporated in the binding
teaching of the Catholic Church.
The
present Pope, John Paul II has pursued these insights energetically and has
deepened both aspects. Anti-Semitism is for him a fierce violation of human
rights, it is against the dignity of every human person, which is not
contingent on descent, culture, religion or sex, and it is in strict
contradiction of what is expounded on the very first page of the Bible, that
God created the human person, and this means: created every single human
person, in his own image and
likeness, so that therefore every human person possesses an infinite dignity
which deserves absolute respect from his/her neighbour.
John
Paul II has repeated again and again in many circumstances throughout his long
pontificate that the Jewish people are the chosen and beloved people of God,
the people of God’s covenant which for God’s faithfulness is never broken
and is still alive. When he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome he called the
Jews “our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham”. On the first Sunday of
Lent 2000 and in the moving scene on the Western Wall in Jerusalem he prayed
for forgiveness for all the sins Christians had committed against Jews, he
called the Shoah the Calvary of the 20th century.
III.
The
names of the Sisters of Our Lady of
Sion, of Cardinal Bea, of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II stand next to
many others representing a very historical new beginning in Jewish-Christian
relations. They are witnesses that conversion and new beginning are possible
even after a long historical period of contempt, slander, polemics and
oppression. But they point out only to a beginning of a new beginning. Their
work is still unfinished. So it is correct, when in the invitation to this
inauguration we read: “A new momentum, in the life of SIDIC”.
For
it is necessary to build on the ground which the Council had laid and to
translate the Conciliar message not only into the language but also into the
very different individual and regional situations and contexts. The present
young generation was not yet born when the
Council ended 37 years ago; it represents for them quite remote history,
almost a pre–diluvial period. So we must transmit the Council’s message
again and again to the new young generation. Overcoming anti-Semitism and
fostering positive and friendly relations between our faith communities cannot
be done once for all, for it is a permanent educational task. I congratulate
and thank therefore the Pontifical Gregorian University for the wisdom and the
courage to take over and to make its own this important task. I hope and wish
that other Pontifical Universities an Faculties follow this example and insert
in their regular programs studies on Judaism.
A
second task must also be called upon. Fundamental theological problems also
remain unsolved. The inherent difficulties from this point of view are
reflected in the heated debate now underway in the USA on a paper of the
National Councils of Synagogues and Delegates of the Bishops’ Committee
on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs
with the title: Reflections on Covenant
and Mission.
As
we are well aware, the problem of mission the paper deals with has been for
long time a fundamental but also a highly delicate question in
Jewish-Christian relations, a question which touches bitter historical
remembrances on forced conversions but also questions of Jewish and of
Christian identity and their constitutive differences. For Christians the
problem of mission is intimately linked with what constitutes the fundamental
difference between us: our faith in Jesus the Christ. As Christians we cannot
renounce giving witness of this our faith to all and we cannot remain silent
on our hope in Jesus we call the Christ. Dialogue is only serious and honest
when it withstands differences and recognises the other in his or her
otherness.
It
is worthy of merit that the paper raises the problem on the agenda. But as
fundamental questions of identity are implied, no fast solutions and probably
also no harmonious solution can be expected. Though I am quoted twice, it is
not my paper and not my position. I take the paper as what it is meant to be:
an invitation and a challenge for discussion. The paper urges for a way
forward to completion and to further discussion on the question, but is not
the final answer. Thus, there is still a lot to do for the Cardinal
Bea Centre to implement the new basis of Vatican II and to struggle
towards a satisfactory Christian theology of Judaism.
IV.
These
incidental remarks lead to a thorny question, with which I will deal with very
soon on an other occasion. In our context, I would like to discuss three other
future tasks and challenges. These come under three basic Biblical categories.
1.
I will begin with the “Remembrance” category. Remembrance (sechêr,
anamnesis, memoria) is a
fundamental category of both the Old and the New Testament, and therefore a
fundamental concept of our two traditions. Judaism and Christianity live from
a narrative tradition, in which the narrating past is at all times actual,
effective and powerful. Could anything be more central for Judaism than the
memory of the liberation from Egypt on Pesach-Feast? What is Christianity if
not the memoria passionis et
resurrectionis?
For
modern Judaism, the memory of the Shoah has become a new identity–making
point of reference. It is not a question of mythicizing Auschwitz, as is the
danger in many post-Auschwitz theologies. But Jews and Christians alike, as
well as all people of good will, should keep Auschwitz in their memory. “We
remember” (1998) is the title of the Vatican document on this subject. “We
remember” means: “We cannot and we must not forget”. Today and in the
future, since the number of direct witnesses of that period is diminishing, it
is an essential educational task to pass on the knowledge of historical events
to the new generation.
Memoria
is also “Remembering for the Future”, as Yehuda Bauer termed it in his opus
magnum on the Shoah; as “memoria
futuri”, it involves clarifying the past, cleansing memory (purification
memoriae) as a warning for the future and an opening for a new common
future.
Remembrance
contradicts a widespread superficial conception of happiness. Friedrich
Nietzsche held that fortunately we are able also to forget, and that only by
forgetting does happiness become happiness. In contrast, Johannes Baptist Metz
has rightly spoken of the need of a new culture of remembrance in opposition
to the modern culture devoid of memory and history.
The
Church should not fear confronting the historical truth; at any rate, she
should not be afraid of the historical truth, but rather pay respect to it. To
this end, the archives of the Holy See are being made available for historical
research; beginning from next year (2003), the entire correspondence between
the Holy See and the then government of the German Reich up until 1939 should
be accessible.
Yet,
remembrance is more than history. Memorial events and holocaust commemoration
sites, which attract foremost prominence in the present public debate, are
unquestionably significant; but they can also acquire the function of storing
the past, laying it aside and packaging it in order to take it out again on
solemn occasions as some sort of valuable family keepsake. In our information
society pretty much everything can be stored. But storing information is not
remembering. Remembrance takes place there where our soul is branded; only
when it aches can a process of healing start. Remembrance must therefore bring
about a turning back and thus – God willing – a bestowal of
reconciliation.
2.
The second category pertains to Messianic awareness. Judaism and Christianity
are religions in which there is not only the backward glance, but also a
promise for the future arising from the past. In both religions the world is
open ahead to the kingdom of life, of freedom and of peace.
No
unrealistic worldly utopia of the future can originate from such hope. Indeed,
we both know from bitter experience that those who want to attain
heaven on earth will turn earth into hell. The rediscovery of the messianic
means something else; it is not a matter of some vague plans to improve the
world. The rabbinic tradition has expressed what is meant here in the
sentence: “He who saved has one human being has saved the world”.
The
rediscovery of the messianic means becoming aware of our historical world
responsibility from the perspective of hope. It is a matter of doing the
truth. In this, Jews and Christians – for so long adversaries when not
merely indifferent to each other – should strive to become allies. They have
a great common heritage to oversee: the common image of mankind, the unique
human dignity and responsibility before God, the understanding of the world as
creation, the concept of justice and peace, the worth of the family, the hope
of definitive salvation and fulfilment.
These
understandings are among the very foundations of our Western culture; today
they run the risk of falling into oblivion and being disregarded. Cultural and
moral depravation seem imminent. After the tragedy of the Shoah, Jews and
Christians alike are challenged to intervene and are responsible for
preventing that decline, in which the West and the whole world risks losing
its soul. If that happened, the Shoah and the destruction of all religious and
cultural values would have taken place a second and final time.
In
this perspective, in the future our dialogue should not only deal with
religious questions of principle; nor should it be dedicated only to
clarifying the past. Our common heritage should be profitably made available
in response to contemporary challenges: to issues involving the sanctity of
life, the protection of the family, justice and peace in the world, the
hostages of terrorism, and the integrity of creation, among others.
“It
is our task to pass on to the new generations the treasures and values we have
in common, so that never again will man despise his own brother in humanity
and never again will conflicts or wars be unleashed in the name of an ideology
that despises a culture or religion. On the contrary, the different religious
traditions are called together to put their patrimony at the service of all,
in the hope of building the common European home together, united in justice,
peace, equity and solidarity” (John Paul II to the European Jewish-Christian
Congress in Paris on January 28-29, 2002).
3.
Finally, the third category pertaining to “dialogue”. The Bible
considers humans as dialogical beings in relation with God, and in relation
with one another. Not without good reason has it been that Jewish thinkers –
Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas – have ardently proposed the paradigm of
dialogical thought to a one–sided civilization marked by individualism, and
have inspired us to discern that it is in the countenance of the other, in
confronting the otherness of the other, that we discover ourselves. Not only
do we undertake dialogue, we are dialogue.
Meanwhile
“dialogue” has become a fashionable byword grown shabby by overuse, a worn
out coin. In our own particular
context, the word refers to ecumenical, interreligious, social, inner-church,
and also to Jewish-Christian dialogue. Often such dialogue does not go beyond
polite expressions of friendliness. That is still better than violent dispute.
But is there not also the danger of minimization, of just tolerating each
other, the risk of relativization, indifferentism, patchwork identity? In this
sense one does not or cannot authentically bear and respect the otherness of
the other.
The
Jewish-Christian dialogue cannot be of that kind. Jews and Christians, with
all they have in common in their fundamental understandings, in the
fundamental conceptions which are constitutive for their respective
identities, are and remain different. These differences concern their
religious convictions on the question of God and Christ, their notions of
world redemption or otherwise, their different practices in the order of
Sabbath and meals, as well as their attitude to what the Jews call “ha-arez”,
“the land”, and what – after 1945 and after the foundation of the State
of Israel in 1948 – is determined now more than ever by their political
views. Therefore we should not approach the Jewish-Christian dialogue with naïve
expectations of a harmonious understanding. It will remain a difficult
dialogue.
Yet,
precisely when we do not simple–mindedly ignore our otherness, but rather
bear with it, can we learn from each other. Still much is to be done. There is
considerable ignorance on both sides, and ignorance is one of the roots of
reciprocal prejudice. For that reason we are at present considering how to
include some basic knowledge of Judaism in the training of future priests;
conversely, the training of future rabbis should include some basic knowledge
of Christianity.
Ultimately,
relations between Jews and Christians cannot be reduced to a simple formula
and even less so can it be raised to a higher synthesis. Franz Rosenzweig and
others have spoken of a mutual completion. Yet, Rabbi Professor Michael Signer
(Chicago) is certainly right when he states that their highly tense relation
can only be expressed through images and symbols.
One
such image is found in the interpretation of the prophet Zechariah by rabbinic
theology. The prophet looks into the messianic future where the peoples are
taken into the alliance with Israel. “On that day the Lord will be one and
his name one” (14:9). According to rabbinic interpretation all of us, Jews
and all peoples, will stand shoulder to shoulder.
Only
at the end of time shall the historically indissoluble relation between Israel
and the church find a solution. Until then though they may not be united in
one another’s arms, neither should they turn their backs to each other. They
should stand shoulder to shoulder as partners, and – in a world where the
glimmer of hope has grown faint – together they must strive to radiate the
light of hope without which no human being and no people can live. Young
people especially need this common witness to the hope of peace in justice and
solidarity. Never again contempt, hatred, oppression and persecution between
races, between cultures and between religions!
Jews
and Christians together can maintain this hope. For they can testify from the
bitter and painful lessons of history that – despite otherness and
foreignness and despite historical guilt conversion – reconciliation, peace
and friendship are possible. May thus the new century become a century of
brotherhood – shoulder to shoulder. Shalom!