Correspondence
Correspondence Regretting & not Bronx, N.Y. To the Editors: Rabbi Mittleman and Judith Banki ["Jews & Catholics: Taking Stock," September 6] demand from the church too little historically...
...There is, more significantly, the matter of diplomatic recognition for Israel...
...As Jews we read history more uncertainly, having already learned from several destructions that God's salvations are not wrought as promised, that God delays, that God's being and effects remain a mystery...
...Christians had to learn this from the beginning as a newfactum of their theological life: Jesus did not return after his death, and the church is constructed for the duration of "the between-times...
...For instance, after vandals deface a town synagogue, the bishop should be on the scene expressing outrage and offering condolence...
...Copyright © 1985Coramonweal Foundation...
...Jews ought not trust the institutional church until Rome owns up fully to Catholic complicity in, and cowardice toward, anti-Semitism...
...The surprising thing, in this view, for example, is not that the State of Israel is given "short shrift," but that it is mentioned, not only positively, but as an essential reality or sign of the times that needs to be taken into account in Catholic catechesis as such...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi...
...The Simon Wiesenthal Center has noted the absence of local episcopacy in such situations...
...History pulls us up short and we are obliged to retract what amounts to eschatological dreaming (our wish to believe that the nations learn and reform themselves) to the more predictable ambivalences that are implicit in such massive structures of power as the church...
...kevin m. doyle No final word Washington, D.C...
...It makes us Catholics...
...Such tangible commitments, and not doctrinal fudging, will anchor religious tolerance in the Catholic tradition...
...Those who do not admit their past are bound to repeat it...
...This is important since the "Notes" themselves call for just such further dialogue with Jews and further reflection within the Catholic community on the issues (e.g...
...600 & 602, Paul Valerry, Frankfurt...
...To the Editors: Rabbi Mittleman and Judith Banki ["Jews & Catholics: Taking Stock," September 6] demand from the church too little historically and politically, and perhaps, too much theologically...
...Commonweal: 596...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...Illustrations: Cover and pp...
...Banki and Mittleman cannot reasonably complain that Catholics are called "to witness to Christ as the redeemer of all...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...So while I am more positive in interpreting the "Notes," I am by no means satisfied that they are the final word on the subject — nor, I suspect, is the Holy See's Commission...
...I have argued unpleasantly in The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Harper & Row, 1970) that there is a fundamental and ineffaceable JewishChristian enmity that arises out of the historic refusal of the Jewish People to cave in to the promises of Christian salvation...
...Concession is not confession...
...601 & 607, Religious News Service photographs...
...Forget lip service to Israel's permanence...
...I believe they have done an excellent job of pointing out the areas in the "Notes" which have occasioned quite legitimate concern in the Jewish community...
...To the Editors: The Vatican equivocation on the Jews set forth in the recent document "Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism," should really not cause undue surprise, much less alarm, among Jews...
...Once we honestly confront our past sins, moreover, some present imperatives become clear...
...Let Rome put its nuncio where its mouth is...
...We have frequently made such mistakes in interpreting the intention of the nations, most lamentably in our optimistic reading of the promises of the Emancipation and latterly in our self-persuasion that we could find security by the dissimulations of national assimilation...
...Vague regrets for past wrongs, unspecified, are not enough...
...This is what we believe, believe fulltime, even if those we've wronged are within earshot...
...EUGENE J. FISHER The hidden persuasion New York, N.Y...
...Because of this belief, and not despite it, we Catholics feel shame for twenty centuries of injustice...
...Again, while the document does present the Exodus as "an experience of salvation and liberation that is not complete in itself," it says much the same thing of the church, which' 'yet awaits its definitive perfecting as the Body of Christ" in the eschaton...
...48106 and on Microfiche from BeU A Howell, Wooster Ohio 44691...
...the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the theology of the relationship) that they themselves raise...
...What Catholics need to contemplate, in the wake of the "Notes," is how rabbinic Judaism may be said to be itself a "fulfillment" of biblical Judaism, and how the Jewish witness to the world — including its attachment to the Land and its differing but "comparable hope" in the Messiah — can be assisted by the church...
...And yet, from my perspective, I would wish (no, hope is more precise) that (Continued on page 623) Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-330...
...What they are is another step in the process begun by Vatican II...
...p. 609, Cork...
...To the Editors: As one who welcomed the appearance of the Holy See's recent "Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism," while realizing their limitations, I would like to respond, at least in part, to the thoughtful article on the "Notes" by my good friends Judith Banki and Alan Mittleman...
...Hence, I do not look on the "Notes" as "schizoid," but rather as, first, a consolidation of progress already made and, second, a call to further efforts by Catholic educators...
...Given the fact that God did not accommodate the nascent community of Christian faithful by turning the hearts of the Jews or returning the Messiah in glory, it could not be otherwise than that the church would place upon the Jews its own disappointment...
...More, they do this within the spirit of the dialogue itself...
Vol. 112 • November 1985 • No. 19
