Correspondence: 'John XXIII,' supersessionism...
Right balance Kudos to Commonweal for your editorial on the sad subject of the handling of pedophilia in the church ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8). It was the best and most thoughtful I've read...
...Washington, D.C...
...The church is the fulfillment of Old Testament promise(s), but it does not exhaust them...
...even in communities not expressly Christian,' it is clear how theologically careless Cahill has become...
...It does not absolve medieval or modern persecutors of their guilt, nor does it dismiss the challenge to Christians presented by the darker aspects of our history...
...Lisa Sowell Cahill's op-ed piece in those pages ("A Crisis of Clergy, Not of Faith," March 6) didn't do half the job Commonweal did...
...Like Jonah's attempt to set aside the Lord's loving concern for the inhabitants of Nineveh (Exodus 43:6, Jonah 4:2,11), supersessionism implies that Judaism is outside divine interest and love...
...I was responding not to the form of supersessionism they rightly deplore, and to the extent that supersessionism means the replacement of the Jews it is of course a wrong and even lethal idea...
...Would it not be better to keep fulfillment and supersessionism separate...
...I fear the present crisis of the priesthood ("Priests & Pedophilia," March 8) tragically confirms that discernment...
...For example, "He dismisses the Assumption as an 'oddball' belief and an 'ecclesiastical "F-you,"' thereby scorning the devotion of Catholics and Orthodox alike...
...Should we term such reworking of another person's words carelessness, or as Pope John called it, the result of "malignant scissors...
...Exclusive heirs...
...So why flaunt a word that is such a red flag to Jews and especially to such a fierce critic as Daniel Goldhagen, who famously rails against "the disparagement of the Jews" by Christianity...
...I was referring to supersessionism as Carroll, and by extension, Goldhagen, seem to understand it, as any claim made that Jesus redeems all human beings, and that the cross was the instrument of that redemption...
...The phrase after the elipses comes from my thumbnail sketch of the French theologians of the post-World War II period and appears on page 146 of Pope John XXIII...
...There are Christians who would advance the idea that Jesus is the redeemer for Christians, but that Jews and others have their own separate paths...
...In the claim that the new covenant "fulfilled" the old, there is always danger of implying that God's relationship with the Jewish people ceased and that Christians are the exclusive heirs of all of God's promises...
...In an avowedly hierarchical church, it is the bishops themselves and Rome who must bear ultimate responsibility for this crisis of moral authority and credibility...
...F. THOMAS LUONGO New Orleans, La...
...Cahill's wording, though, is not as theologically innocent or as historically helpful as he claims...
...and "[Congar] explored the nature of the church, which could be expressed in its plenitude in the church of any locality, in non-Catholic Churches, and even in communities not expressly Christian" (146...
...The earlier part of the quotation comes from a note on page 240, in which I explain why I have capitalized the word Church throughout the book...
...Origen, an early father of the church, once exclaimed: "If Jesus had good reason to weep over Jerusalem, he will have much better reason to weep over the church...
...But I am only writing history-and that the French church so received Pius's definition cannot be disputed...
...and they would no doubt consider me supersessionist for having to say that if Jesus did not redeem all, he did not redeem any...
...I cannot deal with each of Ruddy's distortions without taking up far too much space...
...but that is what Christianity has said, consistent ly, and must say...
...And so it is endlessly frustrating to see the terms of the public debate set by writers who pretend to have discovered this history, but really know very little about it...
...Christus dominus, 11...
...As Christians and Catholics we are bound to confront honestly this history...
...Taken together or separately, his sentences on Congar and the church are demonstrably false...
...The reviewer replies: Thomas Cahill rightly notes that his use of "oddball" and "ecclesiastical 'F- you'" refers to Pius XII's declaration of the Assumption as dogma...
...Anyone intending to publish on these issues ought to engage fully the excellent body of scholarship of the last thirty years or so on medieval Christian-Jewish relations and the problem of medieval anti-Semitism...
...NICHOLAS J. CARROLL Crofton, Md...
...Niren-berg offers an elegant and persuasive argument against the assumption that medieval and twentieth-century anti-Semitism are essentially the same thing, part of a continuous tradition of persecution-an assumption that underlies Goldhagen's argument...
...Ruddy goes on to assert: "When Cahill states that Yves Congar would be 'certainly please[d]' by the idea that the church is 'whole and complete wherever it manifests itself...
...Second, only those communities (like the Orthodox) that preserve a true Eucharist and episcopate are properly called churches (UR, 14-15...
...Goldhagen's superficial and sensational account should be seriously challenged, for example, by David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 1996), a complex treatment that's very accessible to nonspecialists (I assign it to first-year undergraduates...
...They read: "If it leaves the impression that the church is whole and complete wherever it manifests itself, my usage [of church] would certainly please Yves Congar, the principal theologian of Vatican II, and, uti mihi videtur, Pope John himself" (240...
...ROBERT P. IMBELLI Newton Centre, Mass...
...He comes looking for fruit to gather and discovers only a few pitiful bunches of shriveled grapes...
...Indeed, since your editorial appeared, still further damaging evidence has emerged, even implicating a bishop...
...SIDNEY BLANCHET-RUTH South Bend, Ind...
...To say that I further dismiss the Assumption as "an ecclesiastical 'F- you,'" goes beyond simple misreading and approaches calumny...
...If I were to have done so, I would be writing theology...
...Saint Paul pondered the fate of his people in Romans 9-11, and was confronted with mystery, but he recognized that "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29...
...I am thinking of the work of Gavin Langmuir and Jeremy Cohen, just to mention two outstanding historians...
...JOHN GARVEY Episcopal paralysis Some months ago, in a letter to Commonweal (Correspondence, June 15, 2001), I deprecated "the growing paralysis of authority and abdication of responsibility in the postconciliar church...
...While I am not sure that charity is an appropriate virtue to demand of an historian, I do think we should demand truthfulness of a reviewer...
...As Garvey knows, only certain fundamentalists maintain this kind of exclusivism...
...THOMAS CAHILL River dale, N.Y...
...I thought the word "ecclesiastical" suggested as much, but I admit that my wording could have been clearer on that point...
...It was the best and most thoughtful I've read anywhere...
...John Garvey writes that Christianity is "necessarily supersessionist" in believing that it "is the fulfillment of what is looked for in the Old Testament...
...What I say is that Pius's definition of the doctrine came on the heels of Humanae generis, which "solemnly condemned] every theological development of postwar France," and therefore, "was interpreted by the French [emphasis mine] as Pius's deliberately retrograde challenge to their despicable modernity, a sort of ecclesiastical 'F-you.'" Again, I never touch on the substance of the doctrine itself, nor do I scorn anyone's belief...
...F. THOMAS LUONGO New Orleans, La.ut it...
...What I characterize as oddball is Pius XII's decision to define it ex cathedra...
...I only wish it could have been published in the New York Times...
...The two are not the same...
...This is not Catholic or Christian apologetics, but serious and sophisticated scholarship...
...Since this stands as the only ex cathedra definition since the doctrine of papal infallibility (1870) and since it concerns a matter hardly central to Christian faith, to call it "oddball"-that is, atypical and eccentric-is a sensible characterization, and a very long way from "scorning the devotion of Catholics and Orthodox alike...
...I find the usually nuanced columnist incautious in his warm approval of the term "supersessionism," which has become an embarrassment to Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants...
...In the literature, supersessionism (sometimes called displacement theology), is commonly understood to mean replacement of the Jews as God's people, and has been repudiated because it forms the core of anti-Judaism...
...Your reviewer ends by chiding me for lack of charity toward the current pope...
...I hope those I have dealt with may persuade your readers that my book has not been fairly reviewed...
...In fact, the dogma's substance is based not on "pious legends" (page 150), as Cahill claims, but on Scripture, liturgy, and such theologians as John Damascene and Aquinas...
...Confronting history Regarding recent exchanges about the history of Christian anti-Semitism: thank you to Luke Timothy Johnson for pleading that all participants in the debate "do some serious reading" of recent scholarship on Judaism and early Christianity...
...ROLAND E. MURPHY, O. CARM...
...CHRISTOPHER RUDDY Promises kept John Garvey seems to identify the biblical motif of promise /fulfillment with "supersessionism," which he defines as "the belief that Christianity is the fulfillment of what is looked for in the Old Testament ("Facing Anti-Semitism," March 8...
...A writer knows the distinction between denotation and connotation: "oddball" will likely be taken not as "atypical" but as "weird" or "bizarre," with the effect of tainting the substance, not merely the ex cathedra nature, of Pius's declaration...
...Ecumenical dialogue has built and even advanced upon Vatican II, but Cahill clearly errs in attaching positions to those who do not hold them, especially the "principal theologian of Vatican II...
...Sadly, this mentality has prevailed in Christian thinking, and only recently is being corrected...
...The lament seems all too relevant today...
...Well, someone has been careless...
...As I said in my column, the Jews are still God's chosen people...
...As for Cahill's second complaint, I did not distort his meaning by conflating the two quotations in question...
...First, only those validly baptized are properly called Christian and members of the church (Lumen gentium, 11,14,15...
...Carelessness Your reviewer, Christopher Ruddy, has so misread my book, Pope John XXIII, as to attribute to me opinions I do not hold and points of view I have never expressed ("Good Pope, Bad Pope," March 8...
...The writer replies: Both writers make a good point, and Father Murphy is right to speak of fulfillment...
...Third, only Catholicism presently manifests the "plenitude" of the church {LG, 14...
...I, in fact, do not discuss the Assumption itself nor do I give any indication of my position on that doctrine...
...The consequences for the whole church, priests and lay people alike, are simply devastating...
...Uni-tatis redintegratio, 3...
...Christ's coming did not cancel God's covenant...
...As to my other "distortions," I welcome Cahill's evidence...
...LG, 26...
...REV...
...My point remains incontestable: neither Congar nor Vatican II would support either of Cahill's assertions...
...Supersessionism carries with it the nuances of annulment, displacement, banishment, etc...
Vol. 129 • April 2002 • No. 7
