In 1263, the great Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) was summoned to Barcelona by King James I of Aragon to engage in a rather stressful form of “interfaith dialogue” with representatives of the Dominican and Franciscan religious orders.
Their debate is known to history as the Disputation of Barcelona. The purpose of those who initiated the event (principally, an apostate Jew) was to compel conversion of Spanish Jewry to Christianity.
Nahmanides was the sole Jewish representative in the proceedings and he was supposedly guaranteed freedom of speech. He gave as good as he got in a free-wheeling rhetorical brawl, in which both sides made clear their disdain for their opponents’ faith.
Though the king gave him a reward for his performance, Nahmanides was eventually forced to flee Spain because of the church’s anger at his courageous defense of Judaism.
Flash forward 745 years and the lessons of the Disputation still stand. Public arguments about faith can be a dangerous game whose outcome often serves those seeking to spread intolerance rather than knowledge.
Though present conditions radically differ from those of medieval Barcelona, many Jews appear to be thinking about interfaith relations with that sad history still in mind.
Prayer for conversion
The latest irritant in Catholic-Jewish relations grew from the church’s revival of an Easter Week devotion in which believers are asked to pray for conversion of the Jews.
As part of an effort to break down divisions within Catholicism that had grown around the abandonment of the Latin Mass, last year Pope Benedict XVI allowed the saying of the Tridentine rite.
The specific prayer, which was dropped by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, spoke of Jewish “blindness” and asked the Almighty to “remove the veil from their hearts.”
Jewish leaders felt shocked by this reversion to language that was part of a long history of Catholic teaching of contempt for Judaism. So the Jewish leaders asked the Vatican to reconsider.
Recently, the Vatican responded by issuing a new version of that prayer. The lines about “blindness” and the “veil” over Jewish hearts were dropped. However, the new prayer did not omit the call for conversion.
The Jewish reaction was anguished. The Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to the pope asking that he further amend the prayer. The Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist rabbinical movements are expected to add their pleas soon.
In response, Cardinal Walter Kasper seemed to express bewilderment.
He told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, “I don’t understand why Jews cannot accept that we can make use of our freedom to formulate our papers.”
His point was that the prayer “reflects the faith of the church, and furthermore Jews have prayers in their liturgical texts that we Catholics don’t like … one must respect differences.”
While the cardinal’s statement illustrates how this sort of dispute can soon lead to hurt feelings on all sides, he is, of course, right. Catholics are free to believe whatever they want.
The same right must also apply to everyone else when it comes to opinions about their own religions and everyone else’s. Problems arise not from believing, but from how we act on those differences.
On that score, Jews should understand that the Catholic Church today has moved light years away from the spirit of medieval Barcelona.
Under the inspired leadership of Pope John XXIII and later Pope John Paul II, the Vatican discarded the teaching of contempt for Judaism, and introduced new curricula in their schools and churches based on respect for Judaism and recognition of past persecutions.
As for proselytizing, unlike many Protestant denominations, the church has dropped campaigns to target Jews specifically for conversion.
Yet Jewish groups still fear that if the Vatican, in seeking to mollify Catholicism’s liturgical conservative wing, moves away from the spirit of Vatican II, it will mean that Catholics no longer embrace John Paul II’s teaching that Catholics should think of Jews and Judaism as their theological older brothers whose legitimacy should not be questioned.
That fear is genuine and is based on the legacy of church-based missionizing rooted in compulsion and oppression of Jews.
But as Kasper told Vatican Radio in another interview, the revised prayer “does not mean we are embarking on a mission” to convert Jews. Rather, it constitutes merely an expression of Catholic faith.
Jews and Catholics may have many things in common, but they do not accept the fundamentals of each other’s religions. No less than in 1263, Christians today believe theirs is the path to salvation. Jews still disagree.
Genuine interfaith dialogue is not rooted in agreement, but on agreement to disagree. The trick is to do so in a civil manner, and to avoid public attacks on each other’s faiths that can lead to discord and prejudice.
Jews certainly may hope that the Catholic Church never chooses to deviate from the path of John Paul II.
But it is not for Jews to tell Catholics what to say in their prayers, any more than it is legitimate for Catholics to go back to trying to censor Jewish liturgy as they once did. Respect is a two-way street.
Today, the greatest challenge to religious freedom doesn’t come from the traditional sources of reaction within Christianity.
That challenge comes from forces within Islam that have already sought to censor Pope Benedict for defending the West. Their goal is to dismantle the edifice of tolerance that Jews and Christians have worked so hard to create.
Given that reality, this is not the time to pick fights over other people’s prayers.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
Loading ...