The Church Repents
Yossi Klein Halevi

While world attention is focused on Bethlehem's first Christmas under Palestinian control, another Jewish-Christian drama is taking place: the wholesale reevaluation of relations between ancient religious enemies

Friday evening, the young men and women in white robes and brown cloth belts and sandals enter the chapel and kneel before a large wooden crucifix. One man approaches a stone altar and lights the candles on a golden, seven-branched candelabrum - a menorah. With exquisite harmony, in a variety of accents, the monks and nuns begin singing the Hebrew psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, the Friday night synagogue service. Shabbat has come to the monastery.

That scene is repeated every week in the 60 centers, from Hungary to the Ivory Coast, run by the Order of the Beatitudes, a monastic community committed, along with its traditional Christian practice, to restoring Jewish roots to the Catholic Church. And while not quite mainstream, the Beatitudes are hardly fringe: Founded in 1973 by four people - eating gefilte fish and singing Shabbat hymns at a Friday night dinner in a town in southern France - they've since grown to a thousand members worldwide, with the active endorsement of leading Church figures.

This Christmas, media attention is riveted on the Israeli withdrawal from Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus. Yet as the Beatitudes illustrate, a far quieter but no less dramatic process in Jewish-Christian relations is now under way: The two ancient religious enemies are drawing together toward unprecedented intimacy.

In the 30 years that have passed since "Nostra Aetate" - the revolutionary document issued by the Vatican II bishops conference repudiating collective Jewish guilt for Jesus' death, and affirming the Jewish roots of Christianity and the ongoing validity of God's covenant with the Jews - the Jewish-Christian dialogue has matured beyond the most optimistic expectations of its founders.

Though many Jews regard the dialogue as a Brotherhood Week-style affair in which clergymen share obscure theological obsessions, the ecumenical movement launched by "Nostra Aetate" (Latin for "In Our Time," the opening words of the document) is one of the most radical events in religious history.

Never before has one religion voluntarily begun reexamining its negative theology toward another religion - an ongoing process that is still far from complete. Just recently, for example, the 5-million-member evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to repudiate the anti-Semitism of its founder, Martin Luther, and begin teaching its seminary students the history of anti-Semitism; and in a symbolic pilgrimage to a suburban Chicago synagogue, church leaders confessed their denomination's sins toward the Jews and asked those present for forgiveness.

Rather than weaken with the waning of Christian guilt over the Holocaust - arguably the prime incentive for "Nostra Aetate" - the dialogue with Jews is in fact gaining momentum. Entire denominations barely touched by the dialogue are now being drawn in. For the first time, some Greek Orthodox theologians, whose Easter liturgy still blames "the Jews" for killing Jesus, are affirming the continued validity of God's covenant with the Jewish people. Even the Russian Orthodox Church - considered among the least receptive to dialogue - is showing signs of an internal struggle over its relations with the Jews: The Russian patriarch, Aleksei II, has just commissioned a translation into Russian of a recently published book on the emerging Jewish-Greek Orthodox dialogue, to counter growing anti-Semitism within his church. In the U.S., Christian evangelicals and Orthodox Jews - two groups with almost no prior interest in dialogue - are exploring an alliance based on shared conservative values and opposition to the Oslo accords. And in cities around the world, from Jerusalem to Yaound, capital of Cameroon, conferences are bringing together Jews, Christians and Muslims in a new "trialogue," a still-awkward attempt to create a theology of a shared "covenant of Abraham."

For most Jews, the ecumenical dialogue raises only one question: How much of the fine church pronouncements against anti-Semitism is filtering down to the world's 900 million Catholics and hundreds of millions of Protestants?

So far, the most tangible achievement of the dialogue is this: Among Western European and American Catholics, and to a lesser extent Protestants, the accusation of deicide - blaming the Jews for Jesus' death - is gradually disappearing. "I thought it would take generations for deicide to be wiped out in the pews," says Father Tom Stransky, who heads the Tantur ecumenical center in Jerusalem and who played a vital behind-the-scenes role in lobbying for "Nostra Aetate" at Vatican II. "But it's happening in a single generation."

Obviously, anti-Semitism hasn't vanished among Western Christians; but the theological basis for Jew-hatred has been drastically discredited.

In the Catholic West, anti-Semitic "passion plays" reenacting the crucifixion have been rewritten, and verses like "the perfidious Jews" have been expunged from the Good Friday liturgy and replaced with a prayer for the Jews, "the first to hear the word of God." A series of Vatican declarations since "Nostra Aetate" has provided detailed guidelines for teaching the Jewish role in Jesus' life and death - emphasizing that Jesus lived a fully Jewish life; that the vilified Pharisees were in some ways theologically close to Jesus and that some tried to warn him of approaching danger; that not the Jews but only some Jewish leaders opposed him; that anti-Semitic language in the New Testament was inserted for polemical motives.

According to a 1992 survey of American Catholic textbooks, those guidelines are being followed in the classrooms. And an earlier survey of American Catholic schoolteachers conducted in the late 80s found that 85 percent agreed with the statement that "the Jewish covenant has never been revoked" and that "the Jews remain people of God" - repudiating the old notion of Christian displacement of the Jews as chosen, the key theological breakthrough of "Nostra Aetate."

At the St. Patrick's Catholic elementary school in Bay Ridge, south Brooklyn, Claire Martin is testing the knowledge of her sixth-grade students - girls in plaid skirts, boys in white shirts and dark blue pants - on Judaism.

Martin: "How many know the `Last Supper' was a Seder?"

Every hand rises.

"What are some differences between Catholics and Jews?"

"Jewish people have bar mitzvahs and Catholics have communion," says one girl.

Adds another: "Jews probably know more stuff than us about the Old Testament. It's like a history of their people."

If God's covenant with the Jews remains valid - as the pope himself has repeatedly reaffirmed - then the inevitable conclusion is that they can achieve salvation even without accepting Jesus as the messiah. And, despite widespread Jewish assumptions to the contrary, that is precisely what post-Vatican II Catholic theology teaches.

Father Georges Cottier is a tall, white-haired man whose soft-spoken manner belies his powerful position as one of the Vatican's key theologians. Among his responsibilities is reading the pope's speeches for theological consistency. During a recent interview with The Jerusalem Report, Cottier responded cautiously to questions about Catholic doctrine, elaborating on subtleties. But when asked whether Jews who don't accept Jesus can be saved through practicing Judaism alone, he replied with a brief and emphatic, "Of course!"

Adds Stransky: "Before Vatican II, we believed that God can save a non-Catholic despite his ignorance. Now the shift is, God works through you because you're a Jew, not despite it."

Still, some simply ignore the new theology created by Vatican II -like the French Catholic publisher that released a 1992 Bible for missionaries in the Third World and whose commentary was replete with old anti-Jewish notions about the crucifixion. (The Vatican withdrew its imprimatur from the work.)

"There's still an enormous amount of work to be done," says Rabbi David Rosen, interfaith director for the Anti-Defamation League's Israel office and a key participant in negotiations which led to Vatican recognition of Israel in 1994.

Large parts of the non-Western Catholic world are still untouched by Vatican II. In Eastern Europe, where communism forbade ecumenical dialogue, belief in Jewish guilt for deicide remains widespread. Some East European bishops, says Rosen, have never even heard of "Nostra Aetate" - which is only now being translated into East European languages.

Still, many Jews would no doubt be surprised to learn that one of the leading forces for dialogue in Eastern Europe is the Polish Catholic Church. In 1991, a bishops letter repudiating the old anti-Semitic theology was read from the pulpit of every Polish church; since then, Jewish studies have been introduced into Polish seminaries. Such positive developments, complain dialogue activists, are scarcely reported in the Western media.

The new theology initially encountered "a lot of negative response" among Poles, says Stanislaw Krajewski, the Jewish co-chairman of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews. "But the big change is that anti-Semites can no longer cite church doctrine to support their racism. One priest told me that for the first time in his life during confession, a person confessed the sin of anti-Semitism."

Both Easter Europe and the Third World have become in-terfaith's new target areas. This past June, David Rosen attended a first-ever conference in South Africa between Jewish and black Christian theologians. After one session in which Rosen spoke about the centrality of family in Jewish spirituality, a professor at a Catholic seminary declared: "You claim that family is so important to Judaism. Yet if the Jewish people is the source of capitalism, isn't that same people responsible for the breakdown of the family structure in Africa?" Rosen responded: "You want to be liberated from Western colonialism, yet you've been poisoned by its anti-Semitism." Dialogue doesn't always resemble Brotherhood Week.

It is far easier to measure the extent of theological change in the highly centralized and obedient Catholic Church than among the plethora of Protestant churches. Still, this generalization can be risked: Contrary to popular Jewish perception, the Catholic Church has made more serious advances in overhauling its anti-Jewish theology - and in filtering the message downward - than have most Protestant denominations.

A 1992 doctoral thesis that studied eight Sunday School textbooks used by an estimated 60 percent of American Protestant churches found that half the curricula were likely to encourage anti-Semitic attitudes. While "the Jews" were no longer blamed for deicide or depicted as eternally cursed, notes the study's author, Stuart Polly, some curricula continued to describe the Pharisees as hypocrites and Jewish law as rigid and outdated. Part of the problem, concludes Polly, is that, unlike the Catholic Church, no American Protestant denomination has issued guidelines to textbook writers on how to treat Jewish themes.

The situation may be no better in Western Europe. "The deicide charge is supposed to have disappeared from the seminaries and Sunday Schools," says Rev. Petra Heldt, a German Lutheran who heads the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel, which researches the Jewish roots of Christianity. "But it hasn't disappeared completely."

Old-fashioned theological anti-Semitism can emerge in the least likely circles. Rev. Simon Schoon, for many years head of the Dutch Council of Christians and Jews, tells of a woman who approached him after Sunday services. Weeping, the woman said: "I risked my life during the war to hide Jews in my home. But I can't help thinking that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves by rejecting Christ." Schoon, whose grandfather was a Resistance member killed in Dachau, asked the woman whether she thought God would reject a Jew who died praying in the gas chambers. The woman, relieved, acknowledged that He wouldn't.

Ironically, it was Protestant groups, rather than the cautious Catholic Church, which began the interfaith dialogue in Western Europe just after the Holocaust. And some Protestant denominations - especially in Holland, Germany and Switzerland - have issued among the best statements repudiating anti-Semitic theology. Still, on the whole, the level of Protestant "reformation" toward the Jews has been disappointing.

One reason is that official theological statements seem to be taken more seriously by grass-roots Catholics than Protestants. And no other pope has done more to communicate a pro-Jewish message to his followers than has John Paul II. He is the first pope to denounce anti-Semitism as a "sin against God and man," the first to visit a synagogue (in Rome in 1986), the first to mark Holocaust Day in the Vatican (with a 1994 memorial concert). The pope's commitment to "Nostra Aetate" has impressed the new theology into Catholic consciousness - while Protestants lack a leader of similar clout to push the dialogue along.

Petra Heldt suggests another reason for the slower pace of Protestant progress: Anti-Zionist "liberation theology," which penetrated the mainstream Protestant churches, has weakened Protestants' ability for an honest reckoning by reinforcing old stereotypes of evil Jews. One extreme example: The New Zealand Anglican Church has excised the words Israel and Zion from its Psalter, so as not to be tainted by Zionism. "Some of the things said about Israel in Protestant churches are so negative that I feel like I'm back in pre-Vatican II days," says Heldt.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), which represents 324 mainstream Protestant and Orthodox churches, has been so hostile to Israel that, in the late 80s, the main organization representing Jews in the dialogue - the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation (IJCIC) - suspended relations with the group. Since the Oslo agreement, though, the WCC has inched toward even-handedness, and the IJCIC and the WCC jointly sponsored the South African theologians dialogue with Jews this past June.

On the opposite side of the Protestant spectrum are the evangelicals, whose pro-Israel theology has inspired a growing movement - especially among the 70 million American evangelicals - of exploring Christianity's Jewish origins. A new evangelical Sunday School curriculum, called "29 AD," stresses the Jewish life of Jesus and his disciples - and teaches students about the Jewish holidays. Many evangelical churches conduct a Seder before Easter; some even build sukkot. The "back-to-Jewish-roots" movement, says Clarence Wagner, head of the pro-Zionist evangelical group, Bridges for Peace, "has touched millions."

Ironically, though, some evangelical groups and leaders - including Christian Coalition founder Rev. Pat Robertson - are among the least sensitive to Jewish abhorrence of missionizing, and actively promote groups like Jews for Jesus. In fact, evangelicals are divided into two theological camps. One believes the conversion of the Jews is a prerequisite for the Second Coming. The second camp - composed of "Christian Zionist" groups like Bridges for Peace and Jerusalem's Christian Embassy - shares the hope that Jews will embrace Jesus but leaves that job to God, insisting that the Christian "mission" today is simply to stand with the Jews.

The Catholic Church, and most non-evangelical Protestant denominations, have quietly dropped missionizing among Jews. Still, no church has formally repudiated proselytizing to Jews. As a missionizing faith, say some Jewish dialogue activists, Christianity can hardly be expected to officially repudiate outreach to any group; others, though, insist there can be no true dialogue if Christians continue to secretly hope that Jews will convert.

The most advanced Christian theologians would unequivocally agree with the latter opinion. "It is absurd for us to think that we, who received our faith from the Jews, have any right to try to convert them," says the Dutch dialogue activist Simon Schoon, whose seminary thesis was a theological refutation of missionizing to the Jews. Others add that if God's covenant with the Jewish people remains active, then there must be Jews in the world to fulfill His plan for redemption.

How would grass-roots Christians respond to those ideas? It depends, suggests Tom Stransky, on how they're presented. "If you ask Catholics, `Do you want Jews to accept Christ?' the answer will be, `Of course, we want everyone to accept Christ.' But if you ask, `Is it good for God and the world and the Church for the Jewish people to disappear?' you'd get a very different answer."

Clearly, Christians are deeply ambivalent over the issue. At a 1994 interfaith conference in Jerusalem, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, angered some present by affirming his right to "witness" to Jews, and invited Jews to witness their truth to him. Yet back in England, he denounced missionizing and refused to serve as patron for the Mission to the Jews - a group once sponsored by the Anglican Church and which, until Carey, had always been headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

David Rosen explains the seeming contradiction as partly a semantic problem. "By `missionizing,' Carey means aggressive proselytizing, which he opposes. But he reserves the right to `witness': `I have something wonderful and can I share it with you?' My problem is that if someone needs to approach me that way it means he doesn't feel that I'm good enough the way I am. He is compromising my religious integrity."

With the Vatican's belated recognition of Israel last year, the major irritant in Catholic-Jewish relations was resolved, disproving Jewish suspicions that the Church hadn't truly overcome its old theology condemning the Jews to eternal wandering and couldn't accept Jewish sovereignty. Still, says Rosen, the Church hasn't yet grappled with the religious meaning of the Jewish return to Zion.

But there are signs that such a process may be beginning. In a recent interview with Parade magazine, the pope said: "It should be understood that for 2,000 years the Jews were dispersed. Now they have decided to return to their ancestral land. This is their right."

No pope has ever spoken so unequivocally in favor of Israel. And, during a recent visit to Israel, Vatican theologian Georges Cottier explained the doctrinal implications of the pope's position: "The covenant between the Jews and this land has never been broken."

Even the Vatican's position on Jerusalem appears to be in flux. When Leah Rabin met with the pope in mid-December, he told her the holy city has a "double role," as capital of Israel and of the three faiths. Though a Vatican spokesman later denied any change in policy, the pope's comment marked the first time the Vatican has even intimated acceptance of Israeli sovereignty in the city.

One potential crisis between Jews and Catholics could emerge over a proposed Vatican declaration on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Catholic Church. While the pope is known to support the document, he may well balk at linking Christian anti-Jewish "teaching of contempt" with the Holocaust - an acknowledgment Jews insist is a prerequisite for genuine Christian penitence. Ironically, the pope has been deeply affected by the Holocaust; in his book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," he repeatedly invokes the genocide as the ultimate example of evil. And yet his own experience under Nazi occupation makes him unable to see the Church as anything but a victim of the Nazis. If that becomes the official Vatican position, notes one Jewish dialogue activist, "we will see it as a whitewash."

An ongoing complaint of Jewish dialogue activists is that most Christians they meet still consider Judaism "legalism," a mere precursor whose vitality was exhausted with the coming of Christianity. With some worthy exceptions, churches haven't yet applied the serious effort they've made to uproot theological anti-Semitism from the pews to the widespread anti-Judaism that remains there.

And yet, for churches to commit themselves to the next, deeper level of "theological reparations" could require a reciprocal gesture from Jews: to reexamine their negative attitudes toward Christianity. Indeed, the future of the dialogue itself may well depend on Jews responding to growing Christian requests for reciprocity.

The dialogue was born in assymetry. The far smaller and weaker partner was in fact the more powerful: For it was Jews who came with demands to Christians, who accepted that relationship as self-evident. After the Holocaust, the Jewish concession to dialogue was simply to show up - a concession many Jews still consider too generous. Partly, that is because the historical wounds are still raw; partly because many Jews don't realize how much Christian theology has changed or else remain skeptical about how deeply those changes have penetrated the grass roots.

Even some of the most committed Jewish ecumenists say it is premature to discuss reciprocity. "Thirty years of dialogue," says David Rosen pointedly, "doesn't compensate for 2,000 years of contempt."

Few on either side of the dialogue would disagree. But what Christians are beginning to say - quietly, in private meetings with Jewish partners - is that the dialogue can't indefinitely continue as a one-way affair. "I feel like I'm spinning wheels," says Tom Stransky. "I need to hear what Jews think of me as a Christian. What place do we have in your theology? What does it mean that we've been your missionaries, bringing the Bible to the world?"

Some Jews acknowledge the need to reexamine Jewish attitudes toward Christianity - often dismissed as a diluted "Judaism for the goyim" and worse. Orthodox rabbi and leading Holocaust theologian Irving Greenberg speaks of the "pluralism" of the covenant, accommodating Christians as partners in God's covenant with Israel. And he takes the unprecedented step of suggesting a Jewish understanding for the Christian belief of God's incarnation as man - one of traditional Judaism's deepest objections to Christianity. Jews, he writes, overlooked "the genuinely Jewish dimension of this Christian attempt to close the gap between the human and the divine... One can conceive of a divine pathos that sent not only words across the gap but life and body itself. I say this not as a Jew who accepts this claim, but as one who has come to see that it is not for me to prescribe to God how God communicates with others."

So far, Greenberg's is a rare voice. And many Jews - certainly many Israelis - are not emotionally ready to rethink their suspicion of and even contempt for Christianity. "Most Israelis still think of Christians as potential pogromists," says Ron Kronish, who heads the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI). "They don't have a clue about the changes that have happened in the Christian world."

For the last three decades, Jews have asked Christians: Who are we to you? Now some Christians are asking the same of Jews. For both religions, it is a dangerous question, challenging long-cherished assumptions each has held about its exclusive centrality in God's plan for redemption. Now that the initial dialogue agenda - deicide, anti-Semitism, Vatican recognition of Israel - is on its way to being resolved, the pioneers of ecumenism are groping toward the next stage of their encounter. And the future of dialogue - some would say of Judaism and Christianity - depends on how far both sides are ready to take the process that began with "Nostra Aetate" and whose implications are perhaps only now beginning to be glimpsed.

With reporting by Vince Beiser in New York