This
text is based on the unedited transcripts of lectures given in the
series "The Catholic Church and the Jewish People from Vatican II to
Today" delivered at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome
between October 19, 2004 and January 25, 2005 under the auspices of the
Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies. The full collected texts of the
course of lectures will be published during the first half of 2005 by:
Editrice
Pontificia Università Gregoriana
Piazza
della Pilotta 35
00187 Rome
editricepugpib-info@biblico.it.
.
The
Creation of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and Its
Work
Cardinal
Jorge Mejía
Rome,
23rd
November
2004 at the Pontifical
Gregorian University
.
Todays lesson in the course The Catholic Church and the
Jewish People from Vatican II to Today has, as one can see from the title, two themes and three
speakers. From 1977 to 1986 I was the Secretary of the Commission for
Religious Relations with the Jews, and as such I am going to present the
first theme: the establishment of the commission, its origin, but also its
work during those years, which had important repercussions on what happened later.
The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews was
established by Paul VI on October 22, 1974, exactly thirty years ago[1].
Hence todays commemoration. One ought to remember that the creation of
the commission is in a certain sense a point of arrival, as well as a
starting point. It seems to me therefore that todays lesson could be
divided into three parts, not merely for didactic reasons, but also so as
to organize properly the presentation of the topic.
These three parts are: 1) the precedents of the
Commission and its beginning; 2) its configuration in the context of the
Roman Curia; 3) the chief moments of its work between its creation and the
end of my period as Secretary; thus, between 1974 and 1986.
1) The Precedents.
The
Commission is not the absolute beginning. Already before 1974, during the
Second Vatican Council, the theme (which was certainly very difficult and
the object of many discussions) of the relations with Judaism had come to
the fore when the Fathers were preparing the document which today is known
by its first Latin words Nostra Aetate.
This document mentions the problem of the relations with Judaism only in
paragraph number four, which is the penultimate; earlier on, the text
speaks of the other non-Christian religions. It appears therefore that
Judaism is not considered differently from other religions, with the
exception of its presentation in the famous introductory statement where we read:
Considering the mystery of the Church, this sacred Council remembers
the tie that spiritually unites the people of the New Testament and the
descendants of Abraham. The rest of the paragraph continues in the same
tone. In the debate preceding the redaction of the document, especially in
various interventions by Cardinal Augustin Bea and other Council Fathers,
the special character of Judaism and of its relations with the Catholic
Church had also been emphasized. For this reason, when Pope (now Blessed)
John XXIII had decided to create the Secretariat for Christian Unity as a
preparatory organ for the Council[2],
the question of Judaism and of its relations with us had been entrusted to its President[3],
Cardinal Augustin Bea. This must be noted carefully when we consider the
subsequent developments. From that moment onwards, the relations with
Judaism were kept distinct and separate from relations with other
religions, and this despite the structure and the thrust of the
Declaration Nostra Aetate
that I mentioned a moment ago[4].
When later the Secretariat for Christian Unity became an organ of
the Roman Curia, or, in other words, a dicastery, the relations with
Judaism remained within the ambit of its competence[5],
even if in the meantime another dicastery known today as Council for
Interreligious Dialogue had been created to handle the relations with
non-Christian religions[6].
This dicastery would then handle all non-Christian religions, with the
exception of Judaism. This must
be kept very clearly in mind, since within the Secretariat for Christian
Unity almost from the very beginning was also established an Office with
the specific task of handling the relations with Judaism. This Office was entrusted by Cardinal
Bea to Professor Fr. Cornelius
A. Rijk, who was therefore the first one at the Holy See to be responsible
for the relations with Jews when these relations were an absolute novelty
and therefore had still to find their own way[7].
Fr. Rijks work was pioneering and I am glad to remember here his name
and his achievements, independently of his limits. All of us who came
later are, in one way or another, in his debt. The task of Fr. Rijk
was twofold. On one hand, under the supervision of Cardinal Bea, he had in
some way to institutionalize within the Holy See the absolutely new
relations with Judaism. On the other hand, he had to prepare some
guidelines so that the Catholic Church and its central governing bodies,
as well as the national Episcopal Conferences, could establish these
relations, which were equally new, or in fact totally alien for the great
majority of the worlds episcopate[8].
One can then easily understand the difficulty of both tasks. And in fact
there was yet another difficulty: how to choose the right interlocutors
within Judaism, which is a complex and certainly not monolithic reality.
This became easier after 1970[9],
after the creation of the organ known as IJCIC -an acronym indicating the
initials of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious
Consultations that included representatives of the main Jewish
organizations[10]-
and of its International Liaison Committee that dealt with the relations
between the IJCIC and the Secretariat for Christian Unity. In order to
tackle the two tasks mentioned above, it was immediately thought necessary
to compose an official document that could facilitate the application of the
content and of the new, more open attitude of Nostra
Aetate. To prepare
the composition of this document a first meeting of experts took place in Rome
between April 9th and 12th,
1969, some time after the creation of the Office for Relations with the
Jews. Work towards this document continued in the following years, also
with the participation (which, one could say, was after all their duty) of
the bishops who were members of the Secretariat for Unity. In the
meantime, however, the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews
had been established in October 1974 and to this Commission it eventually
fell to promulgate this document, under the name Guidelines
and Suggestions for the application of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra
Aetate,
on
December 1st, 1974. This document would effectively become the
charter of the new Commission.
2) The Commission: Its Place within the Roman Curia and Its
Structure.
The creation of such a commission was a novelty in the Roman Curia and is
one of the merits of the great Pontiff Paul VI to have made this decision
in an institutional context, in full continuity with the theory of
dialogue expounded in his inaugural encyclical Ecclesiam
suam[11].
At the same time, the Pope had created a parallel Commission for Religious
Relations with Islam within the Secretariat for Non-Christians[12].
Thus the pre-existing Office became a Commission with its own identity
and structure. In connection with this, it is necessary to note three
things. A) The Commission, like the earlier Office, has remained within
the Secretariat for Christian Unity (today the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity). If therefore Judaism can be considered a
non-Christian religion, it is not so in the same sense as the other
religions to which this label can be applied. Its relation with the
Catholic Church and, more in general, with the reality of Christianity is
completely different[13].
It was this consideration that led to the decision to establish this
Commission not within the Department that handles the other religions, but
within the Department that deals with other Christian denominations. Maybe
this solution is not the best since it might create the misunderstanding
that the goal of these relations is the establishment of a unity, as with
other Christians; and this, as is now clear, is absolutely not the case
with Judaism. From another point of view, however, there is a true
relationship between ecumenical commitment in the strict sense and the
relations with Judaism, at least in the sense that this relation is a
vocation shared by all Christians and thus can truly help their mutual
reconciliation. B) The Commission, however, unlike the earlier Office, is
distinct from the Secretariat (todays Pontifical Council), but is
connected to the latter (these are the terms used in the document
that established the Commission[14]).
It thus possesses its own structure that coincides in part with that of
the Pontifical Council, and shares the same President, who, after
Cardinals Bea, Willebrands, and Cassidy, is now Cardinal Kasper. The
secretary of the Pontifical Council is instead the vice-president of the
Commission, His Excellency Mons. Brian Farrell, who succeeds Mons. Charles Moeller, His Excellency Ramón
Torrella (the recently deceased former Archbishop of Tarragona in Spain), Mons. Pierre Duprey, and briefly His
Excellency Mons. Marc Ouellet (today Cardinal Archbishop of Québec). The
Commission has its own secretary, today the esteemed Fr. Norbert Hofmann,
who succeeds (in chronological order) Fr. Pierre Marie Stanislas De
Contenson OP (about whom I shall have more to say), myself, Fr.
Pierfrancesco Fumagalli (who is present here today), and Fr. Remi Hoeckman
OP, who is now retired and returned to his home country of Belgium. C) The mandate of the Commission has,
from its inception, explicitly referred to the religious
relations with Judaism. One might ask what is the meaning of this
adjective attached to the name of the Commission and how one ought to
interpret it. I would like to say that this is not necessarily a
limitation; on the contrary, it is perhaps a liberation: Judaism is a
religion, and a world religion, in the sense that it is present on all continents; one can say that it has a truly universal vocation, if
not perhaps a missionary one. Judaism, however, presents itself as having
a special relationship with a state, the state of Israel, a state that had
already been in existence for same time (since 1948) when the Council was
preparing the Declaration Nostra Aetate.
The life of this state
has certainly not been very peaceful, nor has it been peacefully accepted
by other states, especially its neighbors in the Middle East; and in fact,
this state had always been recognized as such, but did not have diplomatic
relations with the Holy See, until 1993. Thus there were a number of
political implications, and it was opportune and necessary to distinguish
between the latter, which were perhaps the concern of the office of the
Secretary of State, and the great religious tradition of Judaism that is
so close to ours.
This was the motivation
behind the addition of the adjective religious to the name of the
Commission, which in this way can be interpreted correctly.
3) The First Years of the Commission.
Fr. Cornelius Rijk, despite the fact that he remained for some more time
at his place at the then Secretariat for Christian Unity, was
not chosen as first secretary of the Commission. The task was entrusted to
another official of the same Secretariat, the already mentioned Fr. De
Contenson, OP. He had the duty, as well as the honor, to get the new
entity to work in its three-fold relation with the Roman
Curia, with the universal Church and with the representatives of Judaism.
For the first of these tasks, he received guidance and assistance from his
superiors in the Secretariat, Cardinal Willebrands and Mons. Moeller. For the second, he could rely
on the work already accomplished by Fr. Cornelius Rijk; the organs of
consultation mentioned above were already in place, and Fr. De
Contenson was also helped by a group of consultants who had been chosen
among more or less well known experts on Judaism. For the third task, the
establishments of these relations in the universal Church, he could count
on different priests and lay people of different origin, who in various
parts of the world were involved in the same work. Fr. De Contenson also
had the great joy to witness the publication of the Guidelines and
Suggestions prepared by Fr. Cornelius Rijk with the valuable and sometimes
decisive assistance of the experts, and also approved by the various offices of
the Curia
which must
be consulted to publish documents such as that of the Commission
and which
are then officially promulgated by the Holy See. Thus Fr. De Contenson,
after Fr. Cornelius Rijk, laid the foundations, on which after him we have
all been building until the present. If I remember him here in a special
manner, it is because he dedicated himself so selflessly to his task,
despite the fact that, among other commitments, he was also involved in
the Leonine Edition of the works of Thomas Aquinas. Because of this
overwork he broke down
physically. After two years he died a saintly death, victim of two heart
attacks. I heard that at his deathbed a confrère
of his asked him whether in his work he had been assisted by the faith of
Jews and Christians in the same Lord and God. Fr. De Contenson answered:
oui, le même, mais avec une petite différence [yes, the same, but
with a small difference]. We Christians believe in the Triune
God.
Conclusion
It
is not necessary that I prolong this talk excessively so as to detail what
the successors of Fr. De Contenson have been able to do. This is already
contemporary history. For all that concerns my time as Secretary of the
Commission, I wish to make three very brief observations.
First:
my appointment as the Commission's Secretary a result of the emergency
created by the death of Fr. De Contenson. From one day to the next I found
myself entrusted with this responsibility, with only a rather inadequate
preparation, coming from my earlier work as secretary of the department of
CELAM (the Latin American Episcopal Conference) devoted to ecumenical
and interreligious relations, as well as my years as professor of
Scripture and Hebrew language at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic
University of Argentina. More than ever did I realize how much I was in
debt to all those who preceded me, as well as of how much could be done in
the area of the relations between the Catholic Church (and in particular
way the Holy See) and Judaism, an area which of all areas of pastoral work
undertaken by the Church was (and still is) one of the most recent. [I
have in mind] my predecessors as well as the experts who helped me, among
whom [I wish to remember] Prof. Tommaso Federici, Fr. Roger Le Déaut and
the Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, later Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.
Second:
with their help and the understanding and the patient support of my
superiors of that time, especially the vice-president Mons. Ramón Torrella, it was possible to
arrive at the publication of a second document, which was more complex as
well as more complete than the first, but which necessarily presupposes
it: the Notes
on the Correct Presentation of the Jews and of Judaism in Preaching and
Teaching in the Catholic Church, promulgated on June 24th,
1985. I think that this document is still valid and helpful as it attempts
for the first time, among other things, to explain the significance for us
of the connection between religion, land and State, which is so crucial
for the Jewish people and which they still so much emphasize[15].
The two or three passages in this document that refer to this issue are
the result of a fecund collaboration between the Commission and the
Secretariat of State, which is always helpful for the work of the
Commission. At that time, the Secretariat of State was under the direction
of Cardinal Casaroli, as well as of Mons. Silvestrini (now a Cardinal), to whom I
wish to express my gratitude.
Third and last:
the visit of the Holy Father to the Great Synagogue of Rome, on April
13th,
1986, has been up to now one of the three decisive moments of his
pontificate marking the history of the relations between the Catholic
Church and Judaism. As we all know, the other two are the apostolic trip
to Israel
during the year of the Great Jubilee,
with the prayer at the Western Wall, and the request of pardon for all the
suffering that the Jews had to undergo at our hands during our common
history. This, of course, without mentioning the establishment of
diplomatic relations with Israel
in December of 1993.
The visit of the Holy Father to the Synagogue in Rome
was an initiative of his with whose
organization I found myself entrusted. And with this visit, during which I had the
privilege of accompanying the Holy Father, my time at the Commission also
ended: I had been consecrated bishop on the previous day, and I had been
transferred to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as its
vice-president.
The torch was thus passed on to other hands, which, as
you shall hear now, have already had, and shall continue to have also in
the future, the opportunity to continue and to broaden the work of the
Commission for the Religious Relations with Judaism as long as the Lord so
wishes. Or, perhaps better, until the Lord finally comes. At that point,
this Commission shall have outlived its usefulness.
Thank you.
Notes
[1]
Cf. the official communiqué in the Information Service of the
Secretariat (today a Pontifical Council) for Christian Unity, 1974/3, p. 22: Taking into account the development of
closer relations concerning matters of religion between the Catholic
Church and Judaism and the Catholic Church and Islam, the Holy Father
has decided to create two Commissions for relations with these
religions. For the reference to Islam, see below.
[2]
Cf. Acta Apostolicae Sedis
52 (1960), p. 436.
[3]
Cf. Cardinal Agostino Bea, La
Chiesa e il Popolo Ebraico, Morcelliana,
Brescia, 1966, 2nd edition, p. 21:
in the audience
granted to me on September 18th, 1960, Pope John XXIII
entrusted the Secretariat for Christian Unity with the task of preparing
a Declaration concerning the Jewish people
, having in mind, of
course, the approaching Council. Cf. also S. Schmidt Agostino
Bea.Il Cardinale dellUnità, Città Nuova, Roma, 1987, pp. 351-357,
esp. p. 355.
[4]
This is not the place to discuss the difficult course of the Declaration in the pre-conciliar and the conciliar debates; for
this, cf. Cardinal Agostino Bea, La
Chiesa e il Popolo Ebraico (quoted in note iii), pp. 22-25. The
future Declaration, initially suppressed from the program for the
Council, was then placed after the fourth chapter of the draft of the
future Decree on Ecumenism, and eventually it developed into an
autonomous document during the second and the third session of the
Council, thanks especially to the patient work of the same Cardinal
Bea. Cf. also S. Schmidt, ch. 1 (note 2), pp. 564-613, whose report
can be trusted as Schmidt was a careful historian and at the same
time, as Cardinal Beas secretary, he was very close to the leading
figure in these developments.
[5]
Cf. the Apostolic Constitution Pastor
Bonus (06/28/1988), art. 138: Within the Council (for Christian
Unity) a further
Department has been established to study and handle the issues
concerning the Jewish people from the religious point of view; this
Commission is chaired by the President of the Council itself; already
in Regimini Ecclesiae Universae
(08/15/1967), art. 94
[6]
Established with the Motu
proprio of 05/19/1964, later established as an organism of the Holy See in Pastor
Bonus, art. 159-162.
[7]
Fr. Rijk began his contacts with an International Consultative
Committee of Organisations for Christian Jewish-Co-operation in Vienna, on 12/6-8/1967. Cf. Information Service 1968/4, p. 13, with a
brief report on the meeting.
[8]
This was the case, despite the fact that already then existed
so-called Amicizia/Amitié/Amistad/Freundschaft between Jews and
Christians. It is however only after 1974 that Episcopal commissions
for this purpose were established by Episcopal Conferences.
[9]
The first official meeting of this organ with the Secretariat for
Christian Unity took place between the 20th and the 23rd
of December 1970. The two sides redacted a so-called Memorandum of
Understanding to outline the content and the limits of the
encounter from the point of view of both sides. Thus began the history
of the International Liaison Committee between the Catholic
Church and the IJCIC, whose meetings then continued more or less
regularly until the latest (the 18th), which took place in Buenos Aires
in July of the present year (2004). Cf. Information Service
1971/2, p. 11.
[10]
The organisations represented within the IJCIC have a certain
continuity, but they were never the same. Of significance, however,
has always been the World Jewish Congress, whose president at the
time,
Dr. Nahum Goldman, Cardinal Bea had already encountered privately on
Oct. 26, 1960, immediately after receiving from Pope John XXIII the
task of handling the relations with Judaism (cf. S. Schmidt, Il
Cardinale Agostino Bea (quoted in note ii), pp. 355-356, with the
reference to the autobiography of Dr. Goldman himself).
[11]
Cf. the text quoted in note i, with the comment of the same
Information Service, pp. 22-23.
[12]
Cf. Pastor Bonus,
art. 162, as well as the text quoted in note i.
[13]
Cf. for this the Information Service 1967/3, p. 24, with all its
necessary clarifications, of which the most important is the following
(explicitly theological) remark: 3) theologically,
since the Church still considers the Old Testament as a sacred work
inspired by God and forming part of the basis of her faith, this forms
an essential link between her and Judaism which recognises the Old
Testament as the ground for its existence. One could thus say that,
from the theological point of view, the two religions are tied
together at the
very level of their religious identity.
[14]
The terms are repeated in the Annuario
Pontificio for the year 2004, p. 1718, where the Commission is
presented. The text quoted in note i said The two Commissions (for
Judaism and for Islam) come under respectively, the Secretariat for
the Promotion of Christian Unity and the Secretariat for
Non-Christians.
[15]
Cf. number 25 of the 1985 Notes.".