INBOX INSPIRATIONS
April 26, 2023
Christians and Jews – 1
Dear Friends,
Some recent data about anti-Semitism is very unsettling.
The FBI and human rights groups have been warning us about the growing number of hate crimes in the United States. These crimes include anti-Semitism, with one reliable source reporting that antisemitic incidents in our country increased by 36% in 2022. This was the highest level of such crimes since these began to be recorded in 1979. In fact, the data also shows that there has been an increase of 500% in antisemitic incidents over the past decade. These incidents include assaults, harassment, and acts of vandalism. What is especially troubling is the reported increase in the number of these incidents in our education system, with a 40% increase on college campuses and a 50% increase in K-12 schools.
Prejudice against the Jewish people is not new. In the fourth century, one of our leading bishops, Ambrose of Milan, opposed the Roman emperor’s effort to recognize the civil rights of Jews and others as equal to those of Christians. He referred to the Jews as having killed Christ and as people whom God the Father will avenge. A general conviction developed among people that “the Jews had crucified Jesus and their descendants bore hereditary guilt for the deed because they had never repudiated it.” In Europe, Jews began to be expelled from various countries by the seventh century. This prejudice and persecution seemed to derive from religious motives, from xenophobia, and from scapegoating. People looked upon the Jewish people as foreigners, and they also blamed them for other problems, especially economic. Anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic sentiment surfaced its ugly head throughout virtually all of Christian Europe into modern times. It spread to our own country as well.
There is another source of my concern about anti-Semitism: some statements in our Scripture, in the New Testament, even passages read at Mass. I will look at this in next week’s Inbox.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotation above and inspiration for some of the above from Christian Persecution of the Jews over the Centuries by Father Gerard S. Sloyan.
Data from the PBS News Hour.
Christians and Jews – 2
Dear Friends,
There are some passages of Scripture that can be taken the wrong way in terms of our attitude toward the Jewish people. Let’s just look at some passages that are read during these weeks of the Easter Season.
This year, on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 16, the gospel began: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews…” (John 20:19). On the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, Saint Peter in the first reading says of Jesus and the Jews: “This man…you killed” (Acts 2:23). We heard a similar theme this past Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, in the first reading. Peter says: “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:14). There are other similar passages in the New Testament that are read in other liturgical seasons.
These passages seem to blame all Jews and only the Jews for the death of Jesus. They seem to show antipathy of the early disciples, the first Christians, for Jews. They seem anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. This led me to do a bit of reading that has been helpful.
In Jesus’ day, there were many groups, maybe we would call them sects within Judaism. Only some Jews of one or two these groups were responsible for persecuting and putting Jesus to death. “Because of this diversity within Judaism at Jesus’ time, it is unfair to generalize about Pharisees – much less, Jews – in any derogatory way.” “Biblical scholars today have a strong consensus that at best a select number of Jewish leaders collaborated with the Roman imperial government in the decision to execute.” So, not all Jews of Jesus’ day can be blamed for this, and certainly their descendants over the last two thousand years cannot be blamed for this.
Additionally, we may have to give at least some of those who were persecuting Jesus the benefit of the doubt. They may well have been sincere religious people who felt that Jesus was undermining the religious vision of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Finally, the early disciples, including Peter, were enthusiastic about sharing the joy and hope that the way of Jesus brings. They must have grown frustrated when most of their Jewish brothers and sisters resisted this, and that frustration led to some exaggerated, negative statements.
So, with the above insights, we cannot take these expressions in the Acts of the Apostles or in the Gospels as a basis for justifying anti-Semitic behavior or attitudes. Our Church today calls us to respect Judaism as the foundation and origin of our own faith tradition. More on this in next week’s Inbox!
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotations and basis for much of the above is from When Catholics Speak about Jews by John T. Pawlikowski and James A. Wilde.
Christians and Jews – 3
Dear Friends,
In 1965, our Church hit the reset button about attitudes and behaviors toward the Jewish people. After centuries, in fact after 2,000 years of anti-Semitism even and maybe especially in Christian countries, the Second Vatican Council began a re-direction of Catholic-Jewish relationships. The Council taught a new mindset for the Church itself, for all of us Catholics, and in fact, for all Christians and for everyone in the world.
Vatican II issued its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, usually known by its Latin title Nostra Aetate. Here are some of the very significant points in this historic statement.
· The faith of the church of Christ is grounded in the patriarchs, Moses, and prophets of the Old Testament. We have received the revelation of the Old Testament from the people with whom God made the ancient covenant.
· Therefore, Christians and Jews have a common spiritual heritage.
· We need to remember the words of Saint Paul about his fellow Jews: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race according to the flesh, is the Christ” (Romans 9:4-5).
· We are also mindful that the apostles are of Jewish descent.
· Although Jews for the most part did not accept the Gospel, they remain very dear to God.
· Only some Jewish authorities along with Roman imperial officials were responsible for the death of Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus cannot be blamed on all Jews living then and definitely not on the Jews of subsequent generations and of today. The Jewish people should not be thought of as rejected or accursed because of the crucifixion of Christ.
· “Indeed, the church reproves every form of persecution, against whomsoever it may be directed…she deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews.”
So, in one document, Vatican II tried to set a new direction. This document calls upon each of us to examine and to get to the root of anti-Semitic feelings and attitudes within ourselves and also anti-Semitic words and behaviors. It calls us to abandon any form of anti-Semitism, to name it and call it out for what it is, and reject it when we see or hear it in our society.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Quotation and source for the above: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) of the Second Vatican Council, 1965.
Christians and Jews – 4
Dear Friends,
There are at least two significant official Church documents that followed the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, usually known as Nostra Aetate (1965). As shared in the previous editions of Inbox Inspirations, this Declaration condemned any form of anti-Semitism or prejudice against the Jewish people.
In 1975, the Vatican issued Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Conciliar Declaration (Nostra Aetate). Among the significant points of these Guidelines are the following.
· The immediate need for Nostra Aetate came from the tragic persecution and massacre of the Jews in Europe before and during World War II. Six million Jews were put to death by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
· “The urgency for improved relations between Christians and Jews is located at a deep level.” It involves “the return of Christians to the source and origins of their faith.”
· Our vision needs to be one of a “Jewish and Christian tradition founded on the word of God…working willingly together, seeking social justice and peace on every level.”
The Vatican, in 1985, issued some notes for preaching and catechesis about the Jews and Judaism. Here are just a few main points.
· We need to recall that the word Old for Old Testament does not mean out-of-date. Instead, it refers to the age of the Hebrew Scriptures. It calls us to value these Scriptures as a sacred part of our own tradition and of the tradition of our Jewish brothers and sisters.
· We cannot blame all the Jews of Jesus’ day, nor any of those of subsequent generations or of today for Christ’s death. We believe that Christ freely underwent his passion and death out of love for all people and for the reconciliation of all with God.
· We need to understand carefully certain expressions in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John. Some of these expressions may seem hostile to the Jewish people. However, they are situated when the disciples and other early Christians were trying to establish their identity in relation to the Jewish community. Conflicts arose in this period and certain expressions that seem anti-Semitic need to be seen in this context.
I will conclude this series on Christians and Jews in next week’s issue of Inbox Inspirations.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
Christians and Jews – 5
Dear Friends,
It is important to be alert to anti-Semitism. The prejudice against the Jewish people has existed for seventeen hundred years and could raise its ugly head again, even after the horror of the Holocaust.
Christianity became the official or established religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. In the decades and centuries that followed, Jews were forbidden to marry Christians and were prohibited from holding positions in the government. Unfounded fantasies about the “evil” of the Jews arose in Europe, in Christian countries. When the Bubonic Plague spread throughout Europe in the fourteenth century, fear and ignorance led people to find a scapegoat. And that scapegoat was the Jewish people. The Jews were even expelled from some European countries at various times. More could be said about this sad history of prejudice. For now, suffice it to say that the above events and others all contributed to the Nazi scapegoating and massacre of six million Jews before and during World War II.
It is true that others were also victims of the Nazis based on racial or political grounds. This included Catholic priests and Christian pastors who spoke out against the Nazi genocide. It included the physically and mentally disabled, LGBTQ persons, gypsies, Polish and other Slavic peoples. There does not seem to be hard data on the number of non-Jews who were put to death by the Nazis. It does seem clear that it was the Jewish people who were the primary victims, and the term Holocaust refers to the extermination of the European Jews.
On March 12, 1998, Pope John Paul II said this:
“This century has witnessed an unspeakable tragedy, which can never be forgotten – the attempt by the Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish people, with the consequential killing of millions of Jews. Women and men, old and young, children and infants, for the sole reason of their Jewish origin, were persecuted and deported. Some were killed immediately, while others were degraded, ill-treated, tortured and utterly robbed of their human dignity, and then murdered. Very few of those who entered the [concentration] camps survived, and those who did remained scarred for life. This was the Shoah.”
Shoah is the Hebrew word for catastrophe. It is the word for the Holocaust. We must never forget this horror. We must condemn anti-Semitism in any way that it surfaces.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
