Vatican. [kreuz.net] The President of the Pontifical Council For Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, sees apparent anti-Jewish tendencies in the Church. He told the Jewish weekly magazine 'Tacheles'. The chief Cardinal see anti-Jewish tendencies in Traditionalists or theologians who teach that the Old Testament has been abolished by the New Testament. The teaching criticized by the Cardinal corresponds to the teaching of Jesus Christ, the New Testament and the faith of the Catholic Church.
Edit: He's made other statements regarding Jewish-Catholic relations that are controversial, which points decisively to a powerful incompatibility between those who are in positions of power and those in the periphery or in some cases, out in the cold. Here he implicates the Catholic Church in the German persecution of the Jews during World War II:
On the Catholic side, the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the relationship of the church to the non–Christian religions, “Nostra aetate”, can be considered the beginning of a systematic dialogue with the Jews. Still today it is considered the “foundation document” and the “Magna Charta” of the dialogue of the Roman Catholic Church with Judaism, so my tour d’horizon of the Jewish–Catholic conversation must begin there. It did not develop in a vacuum, since on the Christian side there had already been approaches to Judaism both within and outside the Catholic Church before the Council. But after the unprecedented crime of the Shoah above all, an effort was made in the post–War period towards a theologically reflected re–definition of the relationship with Judaism. Following the mass murder of the European Jews planned and executed by the National Socialists with industrial perfection, a profound examination of conscience was initiated about how such a barbaric scenario was possible in the Christian–oriented West. Must we assume that anti–Jewish tendencies present within Christianity for centuries were complicit in the anti–Semitism of the Nazis, racially motivated and led astray by a godless and neo–pagan ideology, or simply allowing it to run its course? Among Christians too there were both perpetrators and victims; but the broad masses surely consisted of passive spectators who kept their eyes closed in the face of this brutal reality. The Shoah therefore became a question and an accusation against Christianity: Why did Christian resistance against the boundless brutality of the Nazi crimes not demonstrate that measure and that clarity which one should rightfully have expected? Have Christians and Jews today the will and the strength for conciliation and reconciliation on the common foundation of faith in the one and only God of Israel? What significance does Judaism have in the future for churches and ecclesial communities, and in what theological relationship do we stand today in connection with Judaism?
