The Catholic Bishops of America are circulating a letter on official Jewish-Catholic dialogue. It makes statements which suppose to invoke interreligious dialogue to create greater understanding between Catholics and Jews. More importantly, there is a concern for the "hurt feelings" of Jews who dislike the idea of being targeted for conversion by Catholics. Despite many scriptural and doctrinal teachings to the contrary, five courageous Bishops have made the following statement, to wit, “Jewish covenantal life endures till the present day as a vital witness to God’s saving will for his people Israel and for all of humanity.”
The implication is that Catholics and Jews don't have a good relationship historically, and that poor relationship has been caused by the active assertion that the Catholic Church maintains the inferiority and ineffectiveness of their religion toward salvation. The Bishops attempt to address that problem in the following six point statement which suggests that Jews will not have to consider this a deliberate or even implicit attempt to Baptize them.[1]
At the end of the day, whatever the actual intentions of these Bishops, whether it is a tit for tat arrangement of some kind, an act of cowardice or possibly an act of complete ignorance, the clarity of these documents and their actual force remain in question, although a good case can be made that these statements either say too little or say too much in obvious contradiction of the Catholic Church's mission in Matthew 28:16-20.
Mr. Robert Sungenis and an interlocutor handle this discussion pretty handily. [2]
There is also a blissfully hopeful article written in NCR. If you look long and hard enough at the article you can see the feeble hand that wrote it is not long for this world. Here
The Bishops who signed this document are:
Cardinal George of Chicago, Cardinal William H. Keeler, retired archbishop of Baltimore, USCCB episcopal moderator of Catholic-Jewish relations; Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y.
At least three of them have enourmous problems controlling the sexual improprieties of their priests and are also guilty of turning a blind eye to dissenters in their Universities.
1 comment:
Even if the Mosaic covenant were still valid (and I'm not arguing this is the case), it doesn't help anyone. The Levitical rites were not salvific and did not provide grace. Furthermore, nobody observes them anymore regardless! The Jews who keep even the few Levitical mandates possible without a temple are such a pitiful minority of their people generally that it's really quite silly to talk about the whole thing. So even if the Jews continue to be party to the Mosaic covenant, they need the Church's grace as much as anyone else.
Post a Comment