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Vatican II changed Catholic school textbooks
by Al de Zutter, The Catholic Key
Catholic religion textbooks underwent a revolutionary change in their treatment of
Jews and Judaism as a result of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
Prominent among the radical changes, according to speakers at a workshop Nov. 18 for
clergy, teachers and staff members of Catholic institutions, are the emphasis on the
unique relationship between Judaism and Catholicism and the assertion that the original
covenant God made with Moses and the Jews on Mt. Sinai is still in effect.
But the fact that prejudiced statements have been largely expunged from textbooks
and official statements does not mean that the subtle seeds of anti-Semitism are not
being nurtured by sarcasm, humor and innuendo, warned Rabbi A. James Rudin of the
American Jewish Committee and Father John T. Pawlikowski, president of the
International Council of Christians and Jews and professor of social ethics at the
Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Abbot Gregory Polan (right) visits with Rabbi James Rudin (left) and Father John Pawlikowski during the event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate.
Photo by Al de Zutter/courtesy of The Catholic Key
The workshop at Temple Ohev Sholom in Prairie Village, Kan., concluded a two-day
commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, chaired by Abbot Gregory
Polan of Conception Abbey. A public lecture was presented Nov. 17 at Our Lady of
Perpetual Help (Redemptorist) Church in Kansas City.
Growing up in Chicago in a Catholic and Jewish neighborhood, Father Pawlikowski said
at the workshop, the only negative thing he heard about Jews was that “God was
crying over the Jews” when it rained in September. Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur
often occur during the month of September, Father Pawlikowski said.
Saying that God was crying over the Jews because “they rejected Jesus”
was “planting seeds of contempt, which in times of tension blossoms into
violence,” and that’s what happened in Nazi Germany. He said that prior to
the era of Hitler, the Jews had felt themselves to be integrated into German society,
but that in the space of nine months those relationships changed dramatically, because
the dormant seeds of contempt were activated.
Rabbi Rudin, formerly of Temple B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City, asked the
Catholic workshop participants to think of their own definitions of six words, and then
think of what those same words might mean to Jews. He suggested possible definitions:
- Roman Catholicism. Could bring to mind a world religion, the pope, priests, religious observances and internal disagreements.
- Israel. Can be thought of as a state that originated in 1948, the people of Israel all over the world, the biblical land of Canaan, the Holy land or the Catholic Church.
- Jesus. How do Jewish teachers present Jesus, Rabbi Rudin wondered. “He is Jewish,” he said. “If Jesus, Mary and Joseph had been living in Germany during the Nazi era, they would have been imprisoned and murdered.”
- Jews. Usually thought of as the Jewish people.
- Holocaust. “The better term for it is the Shoah,” Rabbi Rudin said, “the attempted annihilation of Jews between 1933 and 1945. Can you build a teaching to young Jewish children only on being a persecuted victim? Is that all there is?”
- Crusades. Rabbi Rudin said most writings about the crusades leave out their effect on the Jews. “The very pages of history etched in the Jewish memory bank are pulled out of history as presented by Catholic authors,” he said.
“One of the achievements of Nostra Aetate is that the Catholic community has been able to hold a mirror up to itself and question its teachings,” Rabbi Rudin said. “It affirmed and recognized its participation in the teaching of contempt. There have been enormous positive changes.” But a wink, a word of sarcasm or a joke can revive the contempt, he said.
Echoing Rabbi Rudin, Father Pawlikowski said, “We need to address the planting of the seeds of hatred and contempt and replace them with trust and positive respect.” He said Nostra Aetate attempts to do that.
“That’s why some of us were concerned about Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of Christ.’ It reintroduces classic stereotypes, associating the Jews with the devil and with the snake in the Garden of Gethsemane, and mistakenly portrays the destruction of the temple as being associated with the death of Jesus.
“It was only the veil that was torn,” he said. “The destruction of
the temple occurred years later in the Jewish war with Rome.”
A pre-Vatican II study of Catholic religion textbooks found that most references to Jews were negative. The study, a 1961 St. Louis University doctoral dissertation by Dominican Sister Rose Thering, was taken to the Second Vatican Council by Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum and presented to the American bishops, Father Pawlikowski said. Nostra Aetate almost went down in defeat, he said, but “every American bishop voted for it. They kept it going.” Sister Thering’s contribution to Catholic Jewish relations was recognized in an Oscar-winning documentary last year, “Sister Rose’s Passion.” She now resides in South Orange, N.J.
Father Pawlikowski said Nostra Aetate addressed three important areas of distortion:
- That Jews, collectively, were responsible for the death of Jesus.
- That Jews were expelled from the covenant with God.
- That the Pharisees were the arch-enemies of Jesus.
Jesus was seen as totally disconnected with Judaism,” Father Pawlikowski said.
Nostra Aetate turned those misconceptions on their heads, he said, asserting that:
- There is no basis for the indictment of the Jews as the killers of Jesus.
- Jews are still an integral part of the covenant with God initiated at Mt. Sinai.
- Jesus and his church were fundamentally impacted by Judaism. Jesus was fully
integrated into the Jewish tradition of his time.
In a discussion period following the presentations, Rabbi Rudin emphasized that Jews
of today are not “Old Testament Jews.”
“There are no more sacrificial animals, and we no longer have the death
penalty for sins like adultery,” he said. Jews in the time of Jesus and now, he
said, are very much in the Rabbinic tradition, a living tradition that informs Judaism
much like Catholic tradition continues to inform the church.
He emphasized that Jews prefer to refer to their Bible as the Hebrew Scriptures, or
the “Tanakh.”
An example of the living tradition in action is Hannukah, derived from the Book of
the Maccabees, which is a part of the Catholic canon, but not part of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
Rabbi Rudin said that not enough is taught about Jesus and Christianity in Jewish
schools of religion.
“I think it is important to teach Jewish youngsters about Jesus the Jew.”
He advised teachers who teach about another tradition to imagine a person of that
tradition sitting in the classroom with them. He reminded his listeners that Pope John
Paul II said that the Catholic Church has a relationship with Judaism that it does not have with any other religion.
Al de Zutter is editor of The Catholic Key, newspaper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. This article originally appeared in the November 25 issue.
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