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Vatican Role Deplored by Protestant, Catholic Leaders
(Continued from Page 1)
the crime of deicide in the death
Citing the vacillations which took
place at the close of the Council's
third session and the many hints
between sessions that any hope for
aggiornamento (updating) are fad-
ing fast, the magazine declares:
"Pope Paul has seriously weak-
ened Vatican II as a council of true
renewal and reform. But not all of
the blame can be laid at his feet.
Much of it falls on the conserva-
tives, led by the Curia cardinals
. . . It might not be inaccurate to
place the heaviest responsibility
\, the great majority of those
/-\_,ihops who either lacked the cour-
age of their convictions by failing
to stand up to the Pope (as the
Curialists did) or, like a large seg-
ment of the American bishops,
those who had no firm convictions
in advance."
The report of the deletion of the
term "deicide" from the planned
Vatican declaration already was
made in a front page story in The
Jewish News on Sept. 17.
In the same issue, The Jewish
News published a statement by
Prof. Solomon Zeitlin of Dropsie
,
College severely criticizing Jewish
/-- individuals and organizations who
ran to the Vatican to plead for "ex-
oneration" and "forgiveness." He
declared: "It is not the Jews but
the Christians who have to atone
for the libelous accusations against
the Jewish people."
In his statement, Cardinal Hee-
nan said he was even barred from
saying whether he was satisfied
with the present wording of the
draft on Jews.
The Cardinal added that he had
assured Jewish friends in London
several weeks ago that everything
\, would be done to work out a docu-
• ment satisfactory to them and
that he could only repeat the same
statement at the press conference.
In the article in Harpers Cartus
also asserted that the draft decla-
ration on Jews had been "sub-
jected to a severe revision" by
June of this year. He did not de-
tail the nature of the alleged re-
• visions in the draft which is un-
derstood, in the version now before
the fourth C6uncil session, to de-
nounce anti-Semitism and to re-
pudiate the charge 'of deicide
against Jews, past and present, in
the crucifixion of Jesus.
(On Wednesday it became ap-
,
parent that there will be no Jew-
•
ish official participation in the
welcome to be extended to the
Pope at the United Nations on
Monday. 0 n 1 y organizations
with consultative status at the
UN will be represented at such
sessions).
Meanwhile, repeated assurance
> of positive action on the proposed
declaration came again, on
Wednesday, in the following spe-
cial cable via JTA from Rome to
The Jewish News:
The Vatican published Wednes-
day the text of a statement by Au-
L---- - 'tin Cardinal Bea, president of
' Secretariat for the Promotion
of Christian Unity, dealing with
the Catholic Church's attitude to-
ward the Jews, as the Ecumenical
Council neared consideration of
the much debated draft declara-
tion on that question.
Cardinal Bea, whose secretariat
drafted the original strong state-
ment rejecting charges of Jewish
responsibility whether past or pres-
ent, for the crucifixion of Jesus,
made his statement at a confer-
ence given Tuesday to the Brazil-
ian Episcopate which was also at-
tended by many other bishops and
councillary experts. The public
and press were not represented at
the conference.
The Cardinal flatly rejected
the position of conservatives
among the 2,000 prelates attend.
ing the fourth and final session
of the council, holding that
Christian doctrine held Jews re-
sponsible. He presented an ex-
haustive examination of texts
from the New Testament and
held that one could not speak of
the guilt of the Jewish people of
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, October 1, 1965-3
■
of Jesus and that it was wrong
even to accuse the leaders of the
Jewish people of that time of the
crucifixion "because it can be
doubted that they understood
sufficiently the human divine na-
ture of Jesus."
The cardinal declared that when
the New Testament speaks ex
plicitly of the responsibility for th e
crucifixion it refers to the San
hedrin or "in a certain way" to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But
the cardinal stressed that such a
reproach is never expressed
against Jewish inhabitants of oth-
er towns whether inside or outside
of Palestine. He emphasized that
the "punishments threatened or
prophesied by Jesus do not signify
that God rejected the Jewish peo-
ple."
The cardinal added that God
sent his preachers first to the sons
of Israel.
Not even the great judgment
on Jerusalem proves a collec-
tive guilt of the Jewish people
for the crucifixion, the less so
can the people be considered
"deicide or reprobate," Cardinal
Bea told the conference.
The cardinal began his state-
ment with the proposal that the
point of departure for understand-
ing the Catholic Church's stand on
the issue was already contained
in the councilary constitution, he
pointed out, it was solemnly con-
firmed that the church had been
conceived since the beginning of
the world and prepared by the his-
tory of the people of Israel and by
the old covenant and realized by
the new covenant in Christ. He
conceded that many Christians did
not take into sufficient considera-
tion these "obviously special links"
between Jews and Christians. He
added that if "we look at history—
without intending to accuse any-
body—we find that so many times
Christians were blinded to the
point of pretending to be entitled
—arbitrarily—to avenging Jesus
by submitting members of that
people to discriminations and per-
secutions and by calling the Jew-
ish people reprobate and cursed
by God."
for a lifetim e
proud
possession
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