By Leon Cohen
I once read a science fiction story set in a future society, and one denizen of that society characterized the time he lived in as, in effect, “a golden age in some ways; a nightmare in others.” Then he added something like, “But wasn’t it always thus?”
I had occasion to remember this after “Reflections on Nostra Aetate: The Catalyst for Conversation” this past Sunday at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue, one of the best and most stimulating events of its kind that I have ever attended.
This was the first program in the Milwaukee Catholic-Jewish Conference’s yearlong celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II statement “Nostra Aetate,” which helped inaugurate a process of transformation of Catholic-Jewish relations, and of Christian-Jewish relations generally.
The words “Nostra Aetate” mean “In Our Age,” and one of the featured speakers, Rev. Richard J. Sklba, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, did an excellent riff on this phrase: Because at any given time the “spirit of the age is taken for granted,” Sklba wondered how we can know the time boundaries or the cultural characteristics of “our age” until it is over.
If I may put one cautious toe into this treacherous intellectual surf, it seems to me that the “spirit” of any age is multifaceted; that any particular facet has positive and negative sides; and that the event at Beth El displayed one facet of our age’s spirit at its best.
That facet is the still powerful influence of religion and religiosity “in our age.” This is something that many members of the Euro-American intellectual elite in the late 19th to mid-20th century anticipated would not exist by the 20th century’s end.
From philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead” on, many if not most intellectuals — including many Jewish ones, like psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud — predicted that religion would decline in influence, that the warming influence of science would melt it down like an Ice Age glacier until it nearly vanished.
Yet in the late 1900s, religion bounced back, and in the year 2005, it remains a powerful facet of the “spirit of our age.” In much of the world, including the United States, that influence is powerful enough to inspire passionate conflicts fought at ballot boxes and school boards to courtrooms and military battlefields.
But along with that negative potential for conflict is the positive potential for open discussion and cooperation and mutual appreciation. And that is what the some 300 attendees saw at Beth El on Sunday.
Sklba, who is a top official of the Catholic Church in Milwaukee, declared that “the foundation of our Christian existence is the faith of Israel, for which we say thank you”; that “it is clear to me as a Catholic and as a bishop that even God can’t imagine a world without the Jewish community”; that “the doctrine of Christianity succeeding and replacing Judaism is not acceptable and must not be taught”; that “the scriptures of Israel deserve respect and the opportunity to speak in their own voice, not as a prelude to Christianity”; and that Jews and Christians “must be partners for peace and justice” in the world. What Catholic official of Sklba’s rank could ever have publicly expressed such thoughts before Vatican II?
Then there was the Jewish speaker. Amy-Jill Levine, Ph.D., called for Jews to participate in interfaith dialogues not only to learn about Christianity and understand Christians but also as “a way in” to learn about Judaism.
In fact, she said the faiths have much in common; both were “conceived in the womb of a first century Judaism that no longer exists,” and most of what Jesus is recording as having said were “good Jewish words.”
Moreover, as she said to me afterward, “in the Diaspora, it is important that Jews know what their neighbors believe and why. If we want respect, we owe the same courtesy.”
These thoughts may not be so unusual or new in the Jewish community, at least its more liberal branches. But Levine’s very existence could be considered a sign of the “spirit of the age.” She is a Jewish woman and a feminist who worships in a modern Orthodox synagogue and who is also a scholar of the Christian Bible, teaches it at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and is a member of the executive board of the Catholic Biblical Association of America. Could any Jew, much less a Jewish woman, have done any such things before Vatican II?
Both journalists and historians sometimes are accused of focusing on the negative aspects of life, but that is not because we are such negative people; it is because in fact as well as fiction, conflict makes for more interesting stories. (“Peace is poor reading,”
said British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy.) Only occasionally does something positive and creative appear to be as striking and memorable as conflict.
Sunday’s event was one such instance, and not only got the planned celebration off to a splendid start, but also made a statement that “our age” may not be too bad time if things like this can happen in it.
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