Making a case for the Catholic faith has been made all the more difficult by “Reflections on Covenant and Mission,” a joint Catholic-Jewish document that says that Catholics should not evangelize Jews. (See our cover story, starting on page 10). Issued in August by the American bishops’ Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Committee in cooperation with the National Council of Synagogues, the document-which has not been approved by the bishops as a whole and which has no binding force-is an example of how the desire not to offend can result in bad theology.
The unidentified Catholic authors say that “A deepening appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people . . . lead[s] to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church.” There should be no mission to Jews because “mission” means trying to convert those who believe in “false gods and idols.” Since Jews worship “the true and one God,” they are not proper objects of conversion.
Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Religious Relations with the Jews, is quoted by the document as saying that “the Church believes that Judaism . . . is salvific for [the Jews] because God is faithful to his promises.” Catholics contributors to “Reflections on Covenant and Mission” argue that “while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all,” Jews do not need that saving act because they “already dwell in a saving covenant with God.”
This makes no sense. While Jews remain the Chosen People, their covenant, although tending toward salvation, is not sufficient for salvation. If it were, then the patriarchs and prophets would have been in heaven before the Resurrection. That they were not (they were in what often is termed the Limbo of the Fathers; see 1 Peter 3:19) demonstrates that mankind had to wait for the Messiah and his new covenant for redemption to be fulfilled. Heaven was opened only after the Resurrection. Everyone who has achieved heaven-that is, everyone who has been saved-has been saved through the new covenant. No one has gotten there through the old covenant alone.
The basic error in “Reflections on Covenant and Mission” is this notion that the permanence of God’s covenant with the Jews implies that they do not need Christ to be saved, that their covenant is sufficient and the Christian covenant superfluous-for them. From this false premise comes the conclusion that, while it is proper to evangelize people of other faiths or of no faith, Jews need not (and should not) be evangelized because they have their own path to heaven, one that does not include Christ.
The document opposes any organized attempt to invite Jews to join the Catholic Church. In doing this it plays the guilt card repeatedly. One ends up with the triumph of sensitivity over charity. The desire not to injure feelings trumps clear thinking and does a disservice to Jews, who, like everyone else in the world, need Christ.