Theology Today - Vol 24, No. 2 - July 1967 - BOOK REVIEW

234 - The Church and the Jewish People

The Church and the Jewish People
By Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J.
Translated by Philip Loretz, S.J.
172 pp. New York, Harper and Row, 1966. $4.50.

To the overwhelming majority of Jews, this reviewer included, who did not greet the Second Vatican Council's promulgation on October 28, 1965, of its "Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions" with any special jubilation, this explanatory statement by the cardinal chiefly responsible for steering the Declaration through the Council will offer little comfort and no reason for any substantive change of mind.

Cardinal Bea, who was instructed by Pope John XXIII in 1960 to prepare a conciliatory statement on the Catholic Church and the Jewish people as a result of the pope's agonized recognition of the possible role played by religiously motivated anti-Semitism in the over-all success of Hitler's program of exterminating European Jewry, here offers a commentary on the document finally adopted by Vatican II. The commentary is more in the nature of an apologia. Cardinal Bea is obviously reacting to the criticisms directed against the document both by Jews and Christians, including many Catholics, who feel that the long and tortured history of the pronouncement greatly diminished or even totally nullified its value. These criticisms deal mainly with the fact that the final draft represents a very considerable dilution not only of the first schema included in the agenda of the Central Preparatory Commission of the Council in 1962 and withdrawn that year because-as Cardinal Bea admits (p. 23)-of Arab pressure, but also of the draft overwhelmingly approved by the bishops of the Council in November 1964 but then modified as a result of the direct intervention of Pope Paul VI who insisted on the excision of its reference to the Jewish people as blameless of the crime of deicide.

Cardinal Bea is obviously a man of generous spirit. One gets from his commentary, as well as from several of his addresses to the council included in an appendix to the present volume, the distinct impression, despite his disclaimer, that he would himself have been far happier with the original version. Nevertheless, he seems compelled, probably by the nature of his office, to defend the final document as the most effective possible and to minimize the significance of the changes in its wording

235 - The Church and the Jewish People

and the delay in its passage. His attempt, from the point of view of a Jewish reader, is far from successful. A case in point is the cardinal's effort to explain that the substitution, in connection with the repudiation of anti-semitism, of the verb deplorat ("decries") in the final declaration for the verb damnat ("condemns") which appeared in the November, 1964 version is without genuine significance. He himself acknowledges that damnat is "the stronger word which better expressed the execration which every honest man must feel for the recent and terrible crimes committed in the name of anti-semitism in Nazi Germany" (p. 118, note).

One also misses in the cardinal's statement any real answer to many other criticisms that have been leveled against the final declaration-e.g., that there is not in it a single word of atonement or repentance for the heinous blood accusation so often laid upon the Jewish people in the past by church authorities; that the section on Judaism is markedly condescending in comparison with the section on Islam, containing as it does a fairly explicit rebuke to the Jews for not accepting the gospel and a very strong implication that the church has superseded the synagogue of the People of God (granted that the first is a matter of fact and the second a long-standing dogma of the church, what place do recriminations and invidious comparisons have in a statement that is supposed to be an instrument of reconciliation?); that the document, while asserting that the crucifixion of Jesus "cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today," nevertheless attributes the guilt for it entirely to "the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead" without the slightest reference to the role, substantiated by so many sober historical studies, of the Roman authorities in the tragedy; or the implication of the declaration that it is the church which is really the aggrieved party and which, out of the fullness of its generosity and forgiveness, is now removing an ancient accusation and issuing a kind of pardon to the Jewish people.

Much of the declaration (and of Cardinal Bea's commentary) reflects, of course, a struggle with the clearly anti-Jewish bias of many passages in the New Testament. The church is obviously not yet prepared to repudiate these passages. May it be hoped that some day it will embark on an exegesis and hermeneutics of the New Testament that will make possible genuine dialogue with the synagogue?

In the meantime, the declaration of Vatican II, defended with so much eloquence and nobility of spirit by Cardinal Bea, will be judged, as far as Jews are concerned, not by its words but by its fruits in deeds.

Bernard Martin
Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio