Anti-Semitism revisited

...Columnists, by definition, deal with opinion, but most of us base that opinion on study and research, come to our conclusions with some care, and try to articulate them with real labor and thought...

...In it the Church condemned "hatreds, persecutions, and manifestations of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone...

...And moves on to other things...

...ABIGAIL McCARTHY...

...Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Commission, noted that, although it was nine years since the declaration had pointed the path to follow, there was still "a long road" ahead...

...John T. Pawlikowski, Catholic priest and professor of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, is even more disturbing...

...It was conveniently forgotten by many that only by assuming that awesome responsibility . . . are we as Christians enabled to rise with Him in glory...

...Against this background Pope John Paul II's address to the Jews of Germany in 1982 propounds a beautiful, mysterious, and powerful teaching - a ground for renewal in the brotherhood of Christians and Jews...

...This monstrous crime was committed by baptized Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians, none of them rebuked, let alone excommunicated...

...He said that the old covenant between God and the Jews had never been "retracted by God" and the dialogue with the Jews is always at the same time a dialogue within the church...

...The seminary handbook is a marvelous tool...

...We do not, and cannot, take refuge behind the editorial "we...

...We speak for ourselves...

...It takes a bit of self-control not to spring to a counterattack, thus prolonging a possibly fruitless dialogue, and generating more heat than light...

...The other was the publication of a handbook Seminary Education and Christian-Jewish Relations, issued by the seminary department of the National Catholic Educational Association (1 Dupont Circle 350 Washington, D.C...

...But the renewed teaching of the church on Christian-Jewish relations during the last twenty years, documented in the seminary handbook, makes it clear that anti-Semitism is more clearly our responsibility than other forms of prejudice, not only it's growth in the past but because the mystery of redemption is tied to the mystery of Judaism...

...The pope insists that the church must accept the continuing and permanent election of the Jewish people...

...That Jesus was called Rabbi...

...Jews are called to join in the dialogue - it cannot be a dialogue unless they respond - but, as the handbook states, since the fourth century the Christians, not Jews, have been in the position of power, "and thus in a position to abuse that power...

...that He was born, lived and died under the Law...

...20036), the department now under the direction of Monsignor William Baum-gaertner...

...Over the centuries, as the seminary handbook points out, although it was never official church teaching, the charge of deicide had wide popular appeal because it was a rationalization for what seemed the embarrassing continued existence of the Jews after Christ, and allowed for the projection onto the Jews of our own sinful responsibility for the death of Jesus...

...that He and Peter and Paul worshipped in the Temple - these facts were blurred by the controversy which alienated Christians from the Synagogue...

...That is a strong statement, but the charge of Dr...

...Early in Christian history a de-Judaizing process dulled our awareness of our Jewish beginnings...

...It is we who must walk the extra miles...

...The same statement refers to the erroneous notions of many in the Christian past by which Jewish disasters, and by extension all Jewish suffering, came to be seen as a sign of Christ's triumph: "Much alienation between Christian and Jew found its origins in certain anti-Judaic theology which over the centuries has led not only to social friction with Jews but often to their oppression...

...One was the reunion of the Holocaust survivors held here in Washington...

...In light of such painful acknowledgments the handbook is at the very least a basis for hope and a testimony to the slow and painful progress - but progress all the same - made since the Declaration Nostra Aetate ("On the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions") was issued by the Second Vatican Council in 1965...

...This importance was even more vividly stated in the American bishops' 1975 statement: Christians have not fully appreciated their Jewish roots...

...Each of us works hard to achieve an individual voice - a recognizable style...

...We are freelance commentators on current events...

...The columnist hopes resignedly that the interested reader will turn back and read the column which evoked the letters...

...How else are we to know whether anyone out there is reading what we write...

...Not for the columnist is the privilege of the chaste "editorial note" with which an editor can correct a letter-writer's distortion of a writer's point - not unless that privilege is extended by the editors, as it sometimes is...

...He also insists, repeating the words of the German bishops, "Who meets Jesus Christ, meets Judaism...

...It is a curriculum and resource handbook which is an answer in part to the self-searching of Christians who, faced with the terrible stories told by the survivors, wondered what they could do to prevent another Holocaust, and how they could atone for the past...

...For these reasons, perhaps, attacks on a columnist's opinions tend to be more personal than attacks on the faceless editorialists...

...Franklin Littell, professor of religion at Temple University, commenting on "the American Gathering" said that the Holocaust leads to a credibility crisis both for modern university education which produced "technically competent barbarians" and for Christians...

...Therefore, even in areas where no Jewish communities exist, this remains an important problem for Christians everywhere...

...He said that "traditional, primarily Christian anti-Semitism served as an indispensable seedbed for the popular acceptance of the Nazi genocidal plan...

...In 1974 Pope Paul VI established the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and, in his commentary on the guidelines issued at the time...

...The Jewishness of Jesus, of his mother, of the disciples, of the primitive church, was lost from view...

...The problem of Christian-Jewish relations concerns the church as such, he said, since it is when pondering her own mystery she encounters the mystery of Israel...

...The point of my previous column was that anti-Semitism is an ugly attitude, harmful to the minds which harbor it, and potentially dangerous and explosive within the body politic, - and it is that, even when "relatively mild" (to quote one of my correspondents...

...It can be used for the ongoing work of the faculties and students of Catholic seminaries and in the context of the training for Christian ministry of all the churches, but it can also be used by all those of us who hope to come together in peace and love to right the wrongs of the past and present...

...Two recent events, however, have sent me back to the subject of my column in December - on the danger of resurgent anti-Semitism...