The new development in recent times, in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews, is the declared desire on both sides to revive a dialogue that had become complicated and sterile, at times conflictual. And how ? Starting from the text of Vatican Council II that marked a crucial turning point in the relationship between Christians and Jews, the declaration “Nostra Aetate,” and the subsequent 2015 explanatory document entitled : “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable.”
The value of these two documents has been recognized by the Jews themselves, particularly in the note “Between Jerusalem and Rome” signed in 2017 by the Conference of European Rabbis, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the Chief Rabbinate of the state of Israel, in which they favorably received above all two key points affirmed by the Catholic Church : “the notion that Jews are participants in God’s salvation” and the pronouncement that it “neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.”
In effect, after centuries of anti-Judaism and forced conversions, these two points are undoubtedly formidable steps forward in the relationship between the Church and the Jews. But they cannot be considered decisive. Even Benedict XVI, the pope most committed to dialogue, in a 2017 reflection collected in a book called them “insufficient to adequately express the greatness of the reality.”
On the first point, the 2015 Vatican document itself halts before the mystery : “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery.”
Regarding the second point, it states : “While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner.”
And it is precisely on both of these points that an authoritative scholar of early Christianity, Professor Leonardo Lugaresi, already appreciated several times by the readers of Settimo Cielo, has launched a stimulating reflection, in a note published on December 29 with the title : “Saint Stephen, the Church, and the Jews.”
Lugaresi takes the book of the Acts of the Apostles as guide for his reflection, from the initial “serious case,” in Jerusalem, of the protomartyr Stephen, to the enigmatic final page with the apostle Paul in Rome.
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From the way the Acts of the Apostles narrate the story of Stephen, Lugaresi begins, there is no doubt that they present it as normative for the Church of all times.
The early Christian community is by no means idealized. Stephen was elected deacon of the tables precisely to resolve a bitter disagreement between Hellenists and Jews over the distribution of food aid to the poor of their respective groups. And there was also division among the Jewish leaders. Those most hostile to Jesus’ followers were the Sadducees and the priestly caste, who, however, were opposed by authoritative Pharisees like Gamaliel.
But “with Stephen, everything changes,” Lugaresi writes. “His missionary work and the judgment that he gives on Israel’s religion and its institutions bring about a qualitative leap in opposition to the Way of the followers of Jesus.”
In Jerusalem, in Stephen’s days, “Christianity properly speaking does not yet exist : Luke is very specific in pointing out that the term ‘Christians’ only begins to be spoken of later, and in Antioch.” Simply put, “there are Jews who believe that Jesus is the Christ, risen from the dead to fulfill the divine promise made to Israel : he is therefore the Way that all the chosen people must take to be saved, because, as Peter declares to the leaders of the people and the elders, ‘there is salvation in no one else ; there is not, in fact, under heaven, another name given among men in which it is established that we are saved.’ This destiny of salvation involves a judgment on the entire religious experience of the people of Israel up to that moment ; a judgment that culminates in the frank recognition of their responsibility for Jesus’ death.”
From the very first moment, therefore, the faith of Jesus’ disciples essentially takes the form of a “krisis” within Judaism : not a judgment of condemnation and rejection, but a demanding call to “metanoia,” to conversion. In his oration before the Sanhedrin, the longest speech in the whole book of Acts, Stephen pushes this “krisis” to its limits, rereading the entire history of the Covenant between God and his people. And a violent rupture ensues, sealed by the stoning of the protomartyr.
Lugaresi writes : “In this way the Acts of the Apostles clearly point out to us the example of a ‘krisis’ of Judaism brought about by the followers of the Way, who, however, never conceive of themselves as an ‘airesis,’ that is, as a part that distinguishes itself and separates from the body of the Jewish nation to form another entity, but rather as a critical conscience within the one people of God.”
And “this leitmotif holds together the narrative of Acts from beginning to end, up to the choice to conclude the book with the account of the ‘definitive’ meeting between Paul and the Jews of Rome.”
“With the sentence pronounced by Paul through the quotation from Isaiah,” Lugaresi notes, “we do indeed find a very harsh judgment on the refusal of the majority of Jews to adhere to the Way, which is offered primarily to them and only secondarily to pagans, but not a closure of the critical relationship between Christians and Jews. In this sense, it is important not to omit verse 29 of the last chapter of Acts, attested by Western tradition, which, describing the farewell of the Roman Jews at the end of the long meeting with Paul, reads as follows : ‘And when he had said these things to them, the Jews went away, discussing animatedly among themselves.’ In this annotation, one can read the indication of a task that the followers of the Way should permanently undertake : that of ensuring that the Jews continue to be provoked to ‘discuss animatedly among themselves’ about Jesus Christ. The ‘parrhesia’ with which the elderly Paul speaks to anyone who comes to visit him, Jew or Gentile, ‘about the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ,’ evoked in the last verse of the book, is the essence of the whole story.”
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The book of Acts therefore records, with the refusal of the majority of Jews to accept the Christian ‘krisis’ of Judaism and to measure themselves by it, an anti-Christian hostility that precedes the subsequent, centuries-old anti-Judaism, “about whose unacceptability we must be clear, without equivocation or mental reservations,” all the more when it is combined with modern anti-Semitism.
Today, for the Catholic Church, anti-Judaism is a thing of the past, except for a few fringe groups. And “replacement theology” has also been substantially repudiated.
However, the Church, Lugaresi writes, “has also rendered itself incapable of developing a theology of ‘krisis,’ that is, it has given up the exercise toward today’s Jews of the same bothersome but indispensable service of charity that the first Christians performed, paying the price at its own expense in hostility and sometimes in blood. Burdened by a sense of guilt, the Church has forbidden itself the ‘parrhesia’ evoked by Acts and has become essentially aphasic, mute.”
In concluding his reflection, Lugaresi therefore maintains that “we cannot avoid addressing a ‘serious case’ in the likeness of the protomartyr Stephen : what of Israel’s faith today ? And what of the faith of Christians in relation to Israel?” Because even with the state of Israel “one cannot interact on an exclusively geopolitical, legal, or humanitarian level without addressing the theological issue that surrounds it.”
For example, how can Zionism be reduced to its sole “secularizing dimension, which replaces, in the aspiration to restore the ‘kingdom of Israel,’ trust in God and his promises with a project based on the work of man’s hands”?
And again, how can one decline to “ask the Jewish people to recognize a disastrous betrayal of faith in the God of Abraham, of Moses – and of Jesus Christ ! – in the attitude of that segment of religious Judaism, often labeled ‘ultra-Orthodox,’ which conceives Israel’s election as an exclusive privilege and racial supremacy over the peoples, with the terrible consequence of a substantial disregard for the life and dignity of the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank”?
Lugaresi merely touches on these two questions, acknowledging his lack of expertise. But it’s worth noting that Benedict XVI also repeatedly expressed sensitivity on the first question, writing that the state of Israel is a secular state and only as such has it been recognized by the Holy See. At the same time, however, “it is not difficult to see that in the formation of this state one can in a mysterious way recognize God’s fidelity to Israel.”
And as for the second question, how can one fail to note that there also exists a “Christian Zionism” very similar to a certain ultra-Orthodox Judaism, present in the Catholic camp but especially widespread among American Evangelicals, in which the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also militates : a Christian Zionism denounced in a recent statement by the patriarchs of the Churches of the Holy Land, with a piqued response from Huckabee himself ?
In short, the path to a renewed dialogue between the Church and Judaism is as challenging as ever. “But it must be done,” Lugaresi concludes, “even at the cost of complicating relations between Christians and Jews, violating a certain interreligious etiquette that prohibits ‘parrhesia.’ I believe, in fact, that among believing Jews there are men and women of faith and good will ready to walk this path with us ; people with whom to ‘discuss animatedly’ our different participation in the one Covenant.”
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.