SCJR 15, no. 1 (2020): 1-14 Gavin D’Costa Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People After Vatican II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), hardcover, 240 pp. + xiv PHILIP A. CUNNINGHAM
[email protected] Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA 19131 This review was adapted from an invited panel presentation “Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People After Vatican II: A Panel Discussion with Gavin D'Costa” at the Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology Annual Meeting (November 2020). I would like to frame my discussion of Gavin D’Costa’s book Catholic Doc- trines on the Jewish People after Vatican II by recalling an iconic moment that occurred twenty years ago. During the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope John Paul II publicly offered a memorable prayer twice in the month of March. The first occa- sion was on March 12, the First Sunday of Lent, during a “Mass of Pardon” at Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. This unprecedented liturgy, the pope said in his homily, was an opportunity “for the Church, gathered spiritually round the Succes- sor of Peter, to implore divine forgiveness for the sins of all believers … based on the objective responsibility which Christians share as members of the Mystical Body, and which spurs today's faithful to recognize, along with their own sins, the sins of yesterday's Christians, in the light of careful historical and theological dis- cernment.”1 Among the misdeeds that the pope and curial leaders confessed were “sins against the People of Israel.” Two weeks later, on March 26, in Jerusalem the pontiff prayed in Jewish fash- ion by inserting a written text of the same prayer into the crevices of the Western Wall.