CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Jews & Christians Austin, Texas To the Editors: The Vatican's recently released document "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration 'Nostra Aetate'"...
...The new program's existential character should lead the students to a deeper vision of their own Faith and life and to an understanding and an appreciation of present-day Jews and Judaism...
...few know how to pull it off responsibly...
...Radical changes in life style, which she appreciates, are desired...
...Suburban pastors and teachers who come to appreciate the problems Mrs...
...The pervasive atmosphere in Catholic schools, churches and universities is dull, dull, dull-in liturgy, the arts, theological education...
...The product was a set of 40 remarkable documents, each offering evidence of serious reflection on life history...
...THURSTON DAVIS, S.J...
...Surely there's more life stirring in Old Mother Church ("She's a whore, but she's our Mother") than we're willing to admit...
...Could it be, we are presently caught in the same dilemma as the European Jewish community...
...To the Editors: Dr...
...Joseph T. Skehan referring to Father Decker (Correspondence, Apr...
...Courses, taught by Jewish and Christian scholars, are designed to explore biblical and rabbinic Judaism and the Jewish texture of the Gospels...
...For Christians the important fact is to understand the depth and degree of this hostility...
...CORRESPONDENCE Jews & Christians Austin, Texas To the Editors: The Vatican's recently released document "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration 'Nostra Aetate'" attempts to make further progress towards the reconciliation of Catholics and Jews in particular, and all Christians and Jews in general [Jan...
...It may indeed be the case that the level of anti-Christianism among Jews may be higher than the level of anti-Semitism among Christians...
...Those feckless comments about what a good guy the Pope is and what great help the Church was to us ethnic clods, in pubescence...
...Most of the discussion in recent years has focused on what Christians can do to make up for their past treatment of Jews and to create closer relationships for spiritual as well as societal benefits...
...Perhaps what she heard from those groups she met was in fact a plea for such help...
...and "the good gray Commonweal," as Warren Hinckle calls it, prefers to talk around most of the really hard religious issues...
...To the Editors: Your two articles on the Mid-East by Klare and Gurney [Mar...
...Who's 'E...
...Our religious teachings, therefore, must include these topics...
...There is enough suffering around without asking the Church for more...
...ROBERT L. BARD Visiting Professor of Law The University of Texas at Austin South Orange, N.J...
...anthony f. atkinson...
...To the Editors: Rosemary Haugh-ton's "A British Eye's View" [4/11/75] is a sensitive comment on the contemporary Catholic scene...
...It's enough to make one wish, somehow, that Paul Blanshard were still writing those scurrilous exposes...
...sister) rose thering, O.P...
...they know, too, the difficulty of maintaining their families, raising their children, doing their jobs well, and paying their bills, the last a far more rugged task than a few years ago...
...If teachers and students are to be able to implement the Vatican II Statement on the Jews (Oct., 1965) and to carry out the suggestions outlined in the Vatican Guidelines for Implementation of the Conciliar Declaration "Nostra Aetate" (Jan., 1975), then our textbooks and our teaching and preaching must include a discussion of "the Holocaust" and "What the State of Israel Means to Jews...
...It is programs such as this that teachers and preachers must avail themselves of so an honest appreciation can be had of Jews, Judaism, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel...
...maybe they shouldn't move...
...To the Editors: The new apologetics for the banal state of the Catholic Church in the U.S...
...Haughton raised, find that their own authentic response to the agony leads them to move away from their working-class or middle-class friends...
...One lesson came through clearly, to me at least...
...At the end of the two weekends, they left to spend some time preparing their religious autobiographies...
...the difficulty is having enough energy left, after resistance to suffering, to do something about it...
...Only a few lucky ones in that group had found ministers to help heal their hurt...
...A few weeks ago I had the privilege of offering a course to about 40 middle-aged Christians...
...To care about each other, to listen to each other, to offer not money or liturgical excitement or educational packets but simply some friendship and care, maybe these are the sine qua non of effective Christian renewal in other areas...
...anthony f. atkinsony within that area of choice...
...Could it be that we, the members of the American and Russian political 'ghettos,' are already within that area of choice...
...She touches a nerve in all of us, maybe inducing some of that breast beating she doesn't like...
...I think a lot of us would like to tell Mrs...
...This has developed a highly defensive attitude towards "goyim...
...While it may look easy out there in the suburbs, it's very tough...
...Seton Hall University now offers a graduate degree program in Studies in Judaism and Christianity leading to a Master's degree...
...At the same time there is a great missionary job to be done among the Jews and Christians interested in this problem...
...It all suggests to me that beneath the contemporary concerns of charis-matics and social activists alike, lies the more basic concern of community: koinonia...
...E's a typo, that who.-Ed...
...The successful ones she mentions seem to have a good community base, a group of friends who share their concerns and help each other move...
...the few who do often go off, to their own life style change, perhaps to the "inner city...
...of Education Seton Hall University British Eye's View Worcester, Mass...
...He cared enough to say the very worst, and talked as if the Church were a healthy, rather than deformed child, constantly in need of protections...
...I can see her now, muffled and locked in some rectory closet in Boston-rouged and ready to walk the streets, loud and brassy and fiercely intellectual...
...Teachers' manuals, too, offer suggestions for related materials: books, recordings, films, filmstrips, and various activities...
...Undoubtedly, this we-they approach was necessary for cultural survival during the long dark ages of the diaspora...
...who fixes a passionate intellect on the bamboozling hierarchy as gleefully as he/she does on the pontificating state...
...They know something of the difficulties of living like Christians in our culture...
...The swinging groups of a few years ago are more subdued, more modest, more troubled...
...I thank her for it...
...They could either resist their fate, fighting back and thereby proving the charges made against them, proving their 'anti-social' status, (and also effectively easing the consciences of their enthusiastic executioners) or, they could simply accept the inevitable with quiet dignity...
...The participants were great people covering the whole range of styles, from conservative ethnics to swinging suburbanites...
...Can you name one American Catholic writer who expects and insists upon honesty and openness in the Church...
...Lay people move less easily...
...Associate Prof...
...However, if teachers and preachers do not have the background necessary for implementing the Conciliar Statement on the Jews, they may tend to teach as they have been taught and/ or as they have been informed by the books of yesterday...
...The filmstrip "Christians and Jews: A Troubled Brotherhood," by Suzanne Noffke, O.P., Ph.D (Alba House Communications) is an excellent teaching tool for all teachers...
...I began to feel like that old man when reading your articles...
...Well, really...
...One finds in the printed materials today, for example, at least one chapter devoted to an explanation, in reverent tones, of the liturgies of the Jewish People...
...But they often find it difficult to make the changes they want, alone, back home...
...There are, however, a number of serious omissions as Reverend John Pawlikowski noted in his recent article [Jan...
...MICHAEL TRUE E for Effort New York, N.Y...
...They are invariably alone, even in the midst of loving families and thriving parishes...
...How long, Oh Lord!, before she'll be allowed to practice her ancient profession, in America, with a bit more flourish...
...None of us in the world we live in today can afford these attitudes, no matter how understandable and how strongly based in history...
...fills the religious press these days...
...Unfortunately these attitudes have continued well beyond the time when circumstances warranted them...
...They are angry, fearful, desperately anxious for some understanding and support...
...If the priests and religious who are supposed to serve us will help us heal the hurts within and among us, we could do great things...
...No one since Mary McCarthy, in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, has shown such strong feeling for or against Catholicism...
...Suffice it to say that, grateful as I am for Rosemary Haughton's affectionate critique of American Catholicism, I keep hoping for something more...
...In this regard, finding alternatives to destructive practice, Paul Goodman's essay "On the In-effectuality of Some Intelligent People" provides one clue...
...Mid-East Muddle Martinsburg, W. Va...
...Rosemary Haughton's comment about the "well-developed jargon of political and philosophical analysis" gets close to the Catholic problem-for theologians and Church journalists everything is strictly academic-in a way that her blunted, cautious criticism and her emphasis upon humility and suffering (the traditional jargon again) does not...
...And they should not be surprised when overtures are met with something less than full-throated enthusiasm...
...Otherwise why all the repression from the chancery, the press, the official spokesmen...
...Liberals and conservatives alike have experienced hurts at the hands of the church...
...In fact, there are very few Catholics I know who aren't having their troubles...
...The community responded by ignoring him...
...You have no right to frighten the people...
...david o'brien Worcester, Mass...
...Practical reasoning about what is to be done, as Goodman says, "is an integration of feeling, sensation, and motor behavior...
...This is not only found in one series but in most series of the newly published Catholic religion books now available...
...The recent guidelines state: "Christians must . . . strive to acquire a better knowledge of the basic components of the religious tradition of Judaism...
...Generally speaking, the books of today portray a much more positive picture of Jews and Judaism...
...The Church usually prefers to interrupt that natural process by encouraging everyone to be " 'umble," "to suffer," even before he/she has a chance to make a stupid or glorious mistake...
...In considering this issue, one must keep in mind the highly parochial attitude of Jews towards Christians...
...Through a historical perspective, students will be able to discover Christianity's roots in Judaism and its bond to the Jewish People...
...Obviously, my fellow religionists appropriately see themselves as having been severely injured by 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism...
...they must strive to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience...
...NCR has succumbed completely -honest and direct critiques of the establishment don't sell cassettes, apparently...
...REV...
...31], namely, a treatment of the Holocaust (the murder of 6,000,000 Jews only because they were Jews) and the State of Israel...
...The defensive attitudes of two millennia are not easily dissipated, and the increasing isolation and military threat towards Israel tend to lead toward a higher degree of defensiveness and inner solidity...
...But these attitudes must be resisted...
...To come to a knowledge of how "Jews define themselves" means that Christians must come to understand the meaning of People, Torah, and Land which is basic to a knowledge of Jews and Judaism...
...But these are matters that ask for more space than I'm allowed here...
...These teachers may not even be able to use the newly authorized books and films to their full advantage...
...11) writes: "Hosan-nah...
...E. Courtney Murray yet lives...
...They need help, and those who could help: priests, sisters, bishops, most frequently don't appreciate the need...
...14] reminded me of the story about the man who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp and went about the Warsaw ghetto with the warning "they are killing all the Jews...
...To the Editors: Since I was responsible for the Saint Louis University research of the most widely used Catholic religion textbook materials, I know that the findings reported by Claire Huchet Bishop in her recently published book How Catholics Look At Jews: Inquiries into Italian, Spanish and French Teaching Materials, parallel those which I found in the American religion texts of yesterday...
...But where is this work celebrated in the Church...
...People are very complicated, and are seldom what they seem...
...Most of us know all the types she mentions, but I think the "phony" types are relatively few...
...Haughton that we really do care about the Gospel, we really do share the hope for a better life for all God's people, and we really are trying to change...
...Yes, of course, there are visible signs of renewal-among women's communities, urban ministries, and Catholic-Worker-style resistance groups...
...Wilfrid Sheed, in Three Mobs: Union, Church, and Mafia (1975), is the sole exception I can think of, but he's an Englishman...
...It struck me then, as so often before, that if the church fails it does so most remarkably in the area of its supposed strength: its pastoral sensitivity...
...most had found a lack of responsiveness from their pastors which was staggering...
...Most people, in my experience, yearn for such communities but have not, for one reason or another, been able to build them...
...Those Christians interested in narrowing the gap must consider working directly with leaders of the (Continued on page 188) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 163) Jewish community to reduce anti-Christianism...
...As one of their esteemed elders said to him, "It's a lie...
...We spent two full weekends together, with the help of resource people drawn from all parts of the local church...
Vol. 102 • June 1975 • No. 6
