Murray Watson, SSL, Ph.D.�Winnipeg – January 2025
(From a hand missal circa 1950)
Oxford English Dictionary:
“Guilty of breaking faith or violating confidence; deliberately faithless; treacherous”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “faithless, false, disloyal, traitorous, treacherous, untrue to what should command one's fidelity or allegiance”
The children of darkness arrive, carrying a light in their hands, to reveal to others the True Light which, in the blindness of their hearts, they themselves could not possess ... Behold this ray of the True Light, still hidden beneath the cloud of His body; He looks out upon the darkness and casts it to the ground. How dare the Jews look upon this Light in its full glory, when they could not even bear this tiny, faint ray?
But everything must be fulfilled; the darkness rises up, He allows it all power, and the darkness seizes hold of the Light, not to follow it, but to annihilate it.
(From: St. Augustine, Sermon to Catechumens: On the Creed, Chapter 5. Œuvres complètes de Saint Augustin, évêque d’Hippone. Librairie de Louis Vivès, 1870, p. 251; my translation from the French)
They call that office ‘Tenebrae’ [Darkness] because it is a sign of the dark hearts of the Jews, who saw that Christ was the Light of all the world and yet would not believe in him.
(From: E.H. Weatherby, ed. Speculum Sacerdotale. Oxford: EETS [Early English Text Society], 1971, pp. 101-2)
“Throughout the centuries, when the nine Good Friday prayers were recited, the congregation knelt and stood at the appropriate time for each prayer. When it came to the prayer for the Jews, the congregation did not kneel.”
(Thomas Alexander Blüger, The De-Judaization of the Image of Jesus of Nazareth (The Virgin Mary) at the Time of the Holocaust: Ensoulment and the Human Ovum. Xlibris US, 2021)
“Here it is not said, 'Let us bend our knees,' when we pray for the Jews, who today bowed their knees in derision before the Lord".
In memory of the Jews who bowed the knee in derision before Jesus, the Church, while praying for them, refrains from bowing the knee as it does for other categories, as if to protest against their impious gesture.”
(Victor Leroquais, Le missel manuscrit de l’église Saint-Gervais à Paris. Église Saint-Gervais, 1930; my translation from the French)
“The Church has no hesitation in offering up a prayer for the descendants of Jesus’ executioners; but in doing so she refrains from genuflecting, because this mark of adoration was turned by the Jews into an insult against our Lord during the Passion.”
(Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B. The Liturgical Year. Vol. VI: Passiontide and Holy Week)
(From a hand missal, 1962)
Men of goodwill take special pains not to insult others just because they disagree with their ideas. A most unusual illustration of this occurred on Good Friday, and in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, in dramatic fashion. The incident consisted in the halting of the prayers at a signal from Pope [John] XXIII in order to repeat one with the omission of a single word.
The word in question was “perfidious” … At the recent Good Friday services, a priest did what a clergyman of any faith is prone to do—he forgot—and inserted the questionable word in the prayer. With a wave of the hand, John XXIII had him stop and pray the line over again.
(The Christian [Disciples of Christ]. Volume 101, Issue 26 [1963])
1963
From the Toronto Globe & Mail (April 13, 1961, p. 1)
The English translation of Jules Isaac’s book, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1971
J. Isaac: “May I at least leave with some hope?”
Pope John: “Trust me: You have reason for more than just hope”
Image above from:
https://x.com/Michaud_rugbu/status/1866781492342382994/photo/2
“Christ Carrying the Cross”�by Hieronymus Bosch (1510-1535?)
Father Thomas Stransky CSP, “The Genesis of Nostra Aetate”:
The large majority of supporters of the text were opposed by a minority coalition that offered three objections. The first was voiced by the patriarchs and bishops of the Eastern Catholic churches in the Middle East. They zealously supported the chapters on ecumenism and on religious freedom, but they articulated serious objections to the chapter on the Jews. Their objections were ecumenical (the Orthodox and Protestants were a very small minority of the populations), interreligious (94 percent of their peoples were Muslim), political (Arab governments were at war with Israel, “a neo-colony in our midst”) and above all pastoral (fear of reprisals upon bishops, clergy and faithful). An Egyptian bishop remarked privately: “If we do not display our opposition, we would not even be able to return to our homes.” Thus the conclusion of Syrian Patriarch Ignatius Tappouni, in the name of the four Middle East patriarchs: De Judaeis “is totally inopportune, and should be completely abandoned from the agenda.”
Image from:
2312 bishops voted in favour, and 88 against = 96.3% approval
“We cannot consider the Jewish religion in the same way we would any of the other religions now existing in the world. Through the people of Israel, faith in the One God was inscribed on the history of humanity, and monotheism became … the common heritage of three great families which claim the heritage of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam”
The Jewish religion is not “extrinsic” to us, but in a certain way is “intrinsic” to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.�(Pope John Paul II at the main synagogue of Rome, April 1986)
“It is wrong to oppose Judaism and Christianity, as a religion of fear versus a religion of love. The fundamental article of Jewish faith, the Shema Israel, begins with: ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ and continues on with the commandment to love one's neighbour (Lev 19:18). This is the starting point of Jesus' preaching, and is thus a teaching common to both Judaism and Christianity.”
Major Catholic Documents on the Jewish-Christian Relationship
(from the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jewish People)
1974: “Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate (#4)”
1985: “Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church”
2002: “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible” (Pontifical Biblical Commission)
2015: “The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable (Rom 11:29)”
The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views. In concrete terms, this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews. While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God’s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah [=the Holocaust].
Jewish-Catholic dialogue, one of the blessed fruits of the Second Vatican Council, has never been and will never be used by the Catholic Church as a means of proselytism—nor is it intended as a disguised invitation to baptism. In sitting at the table, we expect to encounter Jews who are faithful to the Mosaic covenant, just as we insist that only Catholics committed to the teachings of the Church encounter them in our dialogues.
USCCB, “Statement of Principles for Catholic-Jewish Dialogue” (October 2, 2009); online at: https://www.usccb.org/resources/Statement-of-Catholic-Principles-for-Catholic-Jewish-Dialogue-2009.pdf
2002: “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible” (Pontifical Biblical Commission)
The Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Scriptures of the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading, which developed in parallel fashion (no. 22)
Christians can learn a great deal from a Jewish exegesis practised for more than 2000 years; in return, Christians may hope that Jews can profit from Christian exegetical research.