The Jewish People and the Unity of the Church Peter Hocken

Abstract. — In this essay, we look at the developments in the last seventy years that are restoring to Catholic reflection on the Church an awareness of the importance of a distinctively Jewish component. It examines the pre-conciliar stirrings, the debates and texts of the Second Vatican Council, post-conciliar developments, official and unofficial, including the rise of explicity Jewish confessions of faith in Jesus, the Messiah and Lord. The essay argues for the necessity of the universal Church becoming once again the Church from the Jews and the Church from the nations.

The issue of the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people, often described in terms of “Church and Synagogue,” has slowly been receiving clarification in the fifty years since the calling of the Sec- ond Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII in 1959. As is well-known, the Council’s declaration in the decree Nostra Aetate was the first time in the history of the Church that a magisterial teaching had been given on the Jewish people. The declaration was positively received by the Jewish community, who knew better than anyone else what a dramatic transformation it represented by comparison with traditional Catholic attitudes and preaching. The most obvious consequences of this statement in Nostra Aetate can be seen in the opening up of communications with the Jewish community, in particular through the development of Jewish – Catholic dialogue. This has been most marked in the United States, no doubt because of the size and resources of the North American Jewish community.1 Once the Catholic Church had repudiated the long-held conviction that God had rejected the Jewish people, seen as replaced by the Church as the chosen covenant people, the new theological issue neces- sarily arose of the relationship between the covenant with Israel and the

1. The Journal of Ecumenical Studies has for many years given prominence to the issues of Jewish – Catholic dialogue.

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new covenant in Jesus. This issue has dominated the theological debate concerning Israel and the Church since the Council. For the Jewish community it was naturally of great importance that the Church recog- nised the ongoing validity of the covenant with the people of Israel. As a result, the interests and concerns of the Jewish community have tended to dominate this theological debate, so that the significance of the Jewish people for the life of the Church, and particularly for the unity of the Church, has received much less attention. However, it was not so at the time of the Council. There were several signs that the preparations for the Council had stimulated a discussion concerning the relationship of the Church and Israel.2 Of the three requests made to Pope John XXIII that the Council should address the issue of the Jewish people, one from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome specifically urged that the Israel question belongs within the treatment of ecumenism.3 While the focus of all three requests was the necessary repudiation of all negative attitudes and statements concerning the Jews, in view of the long Christian history of rejection and contempt, the Roman request sought a fuller treatment that would be solidly- grounded, both biblically and theologically. The tension between a moral opposition to all forms of anti-Semitism and a theological recognition of the Church’s intrinsic relationship to Israel would run right through the conciliar debate. The fierce opposition of the Arab prelates to any statement on the Jews particularly objected to any theological component. This opposition would lead to the removal of the teaching on the Jewish people from the Decree on Ecumenism.

Background Theological Reflection

The understanding that Israel as ongoing covenant people belongs in some way within the mystery of the Church was advanced by a few scholars before the Council and during its preparation. In a remarkable book, published in the middle of World War II, an Orthodox monk, Lev Gillet, then teaching in the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham,

2. In this essay, I am using the term “Israel” in a theological sense to refer to the Jewish people as the chosen covenant people of God. This theological usage, which embraces the chosen people from the time of the patriarchs, to whom the foundational promises were given, is preferable to the terms “Jewish people” and “Judaism.” The former has primarily a sociological and ethnic reference while the latter refers particularly to the religion that developed following the destruction of the Temple and the exclusion of believers in Jesus from the synagogue.

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wrote of Israel as a corpus mysticum,4 arguing that “the theology of the Body of Christ should be linked with a theology of the mystical Body of Israel.”5 For the visionary Gillet, the restoration of a “Jewish Christi- anity” was necessary for the restoration of the Church’s unity, but he insisted that he was “not pleading for any particular form of Jewish Christianity.”6 But, Gillet argued, “without the Jewish seed, the oecumenical organism will not grow, and, isolated from an oecumenical Christianity, Jewish Christianity will remain a sect.”7 In 1953, in an article entitled “Israel et l’Unité de l’Église” Paul Démann situated the process towards Christian Unity in the perspective of the ingathering of the Israelite exiles and of the nations foretold by the Old Testament prophets.8 The original separation between the synagogue and the early Church was a schism within Israel, that helped to make possible the later divisions in the Church.9 Démann notes that the question of Israel had been almost entirely absent from the ecumenical discussion.10 Another seminal study appeared in 1955 in a symposium commem- orating the ninth centenary of the schism between the Eastern and the Western Church.11 The author, Dom Emmanuel Lanne, OSB from the

3. The other two requests were those of the French Jewish historian, Jules Isaac, and a submission from the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies in New Jersey, USA. For all three petitions see John M. Oesterreicher, “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. III (London/New York: Burns & Oates/Herder and Herder, 1968) 2-4, 8-12. 4. “The mystical body of Israel is the true olive tree on which the wild olive branches, i.e. the Gentile Christians, have been grafted, so that they partake ‘of the root and fatness of the olive tree’ ([Rom] xi. 17).” Lev Gillet, Communion in the Messiah: Studies in the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity (London/Redhill: Lutter- worth Press, 1942) 215. 5. Ibid., 215. 6. Ibid., 209. 7. Ibid., 210. 8. Paul Démann, “Israel et l’Unité de l’Église,” Cahiers Sioniens 7 (1953) 1-24. 9. “Une réflexion attentive sur l’histoire suggère fortement l’existence d’un lien entre le schisme initial et les grands déchirements ultérieurs de l’Unité de l’Église” (“Israel et l’Unité de l’Église,” 13). [A careful reflection on the history strongly suggests that there is a link between the initial schism and the subsequent great rendings of the unity of the Church.]. Where no published English translation is indicated, the translations are those of the author. 10. Interestingly, Démann reports a meeting with the Abbé Paul Couturier, the ecumenical pioneer from Lyon, just two months before Couturier’s death, when Cou- turier fully affirmed Démann’s perspective. (see “Israel et l’Unité de l’Église,” 16, note 34). However, I have been unable to find any reference in Couturier’s writings to Israel in relation to Christian unity. 11. 1054-1954: L’Église et les Églises: Neuf siècles de douloureuse séparation entre l’Orient et l’Occident. Études et travaux sur l’Unité chrétienne offerts à Dom Lambert Beau- duin (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1955).

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unity monastery of Chevetogne, Belgium, wrote an article on the situation of Israel in relation to Christian divisions.12 Lanne outlines three possible ways of understanding the relation of Israel to the Church: the first, that there is no connection between the two; the second that the relationship was merely one of causality in the origins; the third, which he clearly favours, “situates the problem of Israel within the theology of the Church.”13 The Church has its roots in Old Testament Israel and is formed by Jesus within Israel. The Church of the origins is wholly Jewish, and the rejection of Jesus by the majority of the Jewish people was subsequent to her beginnings. Lanne ends his article with some reflections on the “imbalance” (déséquilibre) produced by the Church becoming in effect the Ecclesia ex Gentibus. “What characterised the Jewish culture, fashioned by God during the wandering in the desert, her refusal of installation in this world, her eschatological tension in view of the Kingdom of God, was what was lacking in the cultures that encountered the Gospel… From this tension between the Gospel and the cultures were born the dissensions and the schisms in the Church.”14 Thus Démann and Lanne are among the first Catholic theologians to see that Israel is intrinsic to Christian ecumenism and that the divisions between the churches have their roots in the proto-schism of Church and synagogue. In 1962, on the eve of the Council, a major study on ecumenism was published in French, under the title Le Problème Oecuménique, by the Dominican theologian, Bernard Lambert.15 In the first part of a 50-page chapter on “Israel and the Reunion of Christians: The Church of Jews and Gentiles,”16 Lambert answers negatively the question: “Is Israel an extra-ecumenical problem?”17 He locates the first schism within Israel: “Thus, in Christ, Jews and Gentiles have become one. But unbelieving Israel has become separated from believing Israel and has

12. “Notes sur la situation d’Israel par rapport aux schismes dans l’Église chréti- enne,” ibid., vol. II, 67-86. 13. “La troisième option situe le problème d’Israel à l’intérieur même de la théo- logie de l’Église” (“Notes sur la situation d’Israel,” 69). 14. “Ce qui faisait la caractéristique de la culture juive, façonnée par Dieu dans la pérégrination du désert, son refus d’installation dans le terrestre, sa tension eschatologique vers le Royaume de Dieu, était proprement ce qui manquait aux cultures que rencontrait l’Évangile … De cette tension entre l’Évangile et les cultures sont nés les dissensions et les schismes dans l’Église” (“Notes sur la situation d’Israel,” 82). 15. Bernard Lambert, Le Problème Oecuménique, 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cen- turion, 1962). The English translation Ecumenism: Theology & History (New York/ London: Herder & Herder/Burns & Oates) only followed after the Council (1967). 16. Ibid., vol. II, 595-652. 17. “Israel est-il un problème extra-oecuménique?” (ibid., 597-603: English trans., 445-450).

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repudiated it.”18 A later part addresses “the role of Judaism in the exit from the impasse among Christians.”19 Later, in a presentation of the second session of the Council, the French theologian-journalist, l’Abbé René Laurentin, has a page on this question, which concludes: “If ecumenism seeks to promote a universal communion in the fullness of Christian values, it cannot ignore the calling of Israel, so tightly impli- cated in that of the Church, so that St Paul could not conceive of its eschatological fulfilment without Israel (Rom 11:15, 24).”20

The Conciliar Developments

The Debates The most significant theological debate on this subject took place during the third session of the Council, by which time the statement on the Jewish people, originally intended as Chapter Four of the Decree on Ecumenism, had become an Appendix to the same decree. Most of the speakers, especially several from the USA, focused on the need to deal with all forms of anti-Semitism in the Church. Two German bishops found it regrettable that “that most beautiful and magnificent theology” of the Epistle to the Ephesians was completely absent in the draft.21 Several bishops mentioned the teaching of St Paul in Romans 11 that the ultimate destiny of Israel is their eventual inclusion in Christ, even if we cannot imagine how this can happen.22 Even though this last point only received a very oblique mention in the conciliar declaration,23 it has since been

18. “Ainsi, dans le Christ, Juifs et Gentils sont-ils devenus un. Mais l’Israel incré- dule s’est séparé de l’Israel croyant et l’a repoussé” (ibid., 603). “So, in Christ, Jews and Gentiles have become one … The Israel which does not believe is separated from the Israel which does, and has rejected it” (450). 19. “Le rôle du judaisme dans la sortie de l’impasse où sont engagés les chrétiens” (ibid., 627-633); “Judaism’s part in the emergence of Christianity from its present impasse” (469-474). 20. “Si l’œcuménisme entend susciter une communion universelle dans la pléni- tude des valeurs chrétiennes, il ne peut rester étranger à la vocation d’Israel, si étroite- ment impliqué dans celle de l’Église, que saint Paul ne peut concevoir son accomplisse- ment eschatologique sans Israel (Rm. 11, 15 et 24).” René Laurentin, L’Enjeu du Concile: Bilan de la Deuxième Session (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1964) 150. 21. Cardinal Frings (Cologne) and Bishop Hengsbach (Essen): see Oesterreicher, “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” 73. 22. For example, Cardinal Lercaro (Bologna), Archbishop Elchinger (Strasbourg), Bishop Daem (Antwerp). 23. The relevant wording of Nostra Aetate, 4 reads: “the Church awaits the day, known to God alone, when all people will call on God with one voice and ‘serve him shoulder to shoulder’ (Zeph 3:9; cf. Is 66:23; Ps 65:4; Rom 11:11-32).”

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clearly affirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.24 Cardinal Lercaro gave what was probably the deepest expression of the essential links that bind the Church to Israel by his comments on the Liturgy. He saw the new understanding of the Jewish people as “a result of the self-examination whose outcome is to be found in the Constitution on the Church and, especially, in that on the Holy Liturgy.”25 He continued: “It [the liturgy] is the culminating point of her action and the source of her strength. It is that upon which the Church is daily fed and lives – the Holy Scripture in the service of the word of God, and the Lamb of God offered in sacrifice. But these two blessings, this precious inheritance of the Church, come from the heritage of Israel … In addition, the word of God and the Eucha- rist (‘Behold the Lamb of God …’) effect even now a certain union between the liturgical assembly, the Church, at the moment of her supreme action on earth, and the holy Kahal, the assembly of the sons of Israel.”26

The Texts After a tempestuous history, the Council’s teaching on the Jewish people finally became paragraph 4 in Nostra Aetate, the short Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, published in 1965. The removal of this teaching from the Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated a year before Nostra Aetate, resulted in the absence of the Jewish people and indeed of the Old Testament from the teaching on ecumenism. However, the relevant paragraph in Nostra Aetate begins with the important theological affirmation: “As this Sacred Synod searches into the mystery of the Church it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.” In this way, in the words of Laurentin, the declaration “deepened the intrinsic character of the links between the Church and the people of the Old Testament.”27 He then remarked, “This is very important for manifesting that the Jews truly belong to the ecumenical issue.”28

24. “The ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles,’ will enable the People of God to achieve ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’ in which ‘God may be all in all’” (para. 674). 25. Cited in Oesterreicher, “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” 74. 26. Ibid., 74. 27. “La déclaration approfondit le caractère intrinsèque des liens entre l’Église et le peuple de l’Ancien Testament.” René Laurentin, Bilan du Concile (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966) 301. 28. “Et cela est très important pour manifester l’authentique appartenance des juifs à l’oecuménisme” (ibid., 301).

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This opening sentence in Nostra Aetate will later serve as a spring-board for further reflections by John Paul II. Of particular importance for the relevance of the Jewish people for the unity of the Church are the following sentences of the Declaration: “Nor can she [the Church] forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ Our Peace reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.” These citations are no doubt more allusive than explanatory, for the thrust of the Declaration is the honouring of the Jewish people and their heritage rather than any ecclesiological concern.

Post-Conciliar Developments

Jew and Gentile in some Post-Conciliar Writings The significance of the Jewish people, and particularly of the Jesus- believing minority, for the unity of the Church, has been given little attention in Catholic ecclesiology since the Council. Hans Küng’s The Church (1967) contains an important section on “The Church and the Jews.”29 His focus is on the need for dialogue in the light of the Church’s “heavy … weight of guilt” in regard to the Jewish people. “The Church that stood between Israel and Jesus prevented Israel from recog- nizing its Messiah.”30 The task of the Church is “making Israel jeal- ous”,31 in order to provoke the eschatological fulfilment. But Küng does not address the relationship of the Jewish people to the unity of the Church. In the 1970s Fr Louis Bouyer wrote: “Judeo-Christianity, as Peter and Paul recognized and proclaimed, remains forever the mother form of Christianity, to which all other forms must always have recourse. It is therefore a weakness for the Church that Judeo-Christianity, from which it was born and from which it cannot free itself, no longer subsists in her except in tracings. It can be believed that she will not reach the ultimate stage of her development except by rediscovering it – fully liv- ing in her.”32

29. Hans Küng, The Church (London: Burns & Oates, 1967) 132-150. 30. Ibid., 137. 31. Ibid., 149. 32. Louis Bouyer, cited under the heading, “The Church and the Jewish People,” The Hebrew Catholic 73 (Winter 2000-2001) 13.

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Fr. Jean-Miguel Garrigues from France has addressed this topic on a number of occasions. In a book, L’Unique Israel de Dieu, to which Garrigues made the most contributions, he has a chapter whose title clearly expresses the ecumenical relevance of Israel: “Un Seul Peuple en deux Assemblées: la Synagogue et l’Église.”33 Garrigues is in full agree- ment with Cardinal Lustiger34 in insisting that, “Paul never abandons this perspective of integration into the one people of Israel in the course of his evangelisation of the pagans.”35 He then adds, “It continued in this way during the New Testament period of the apostolic Church, which always remains the revealed norm for the Tradition, whatever may have been the historic attitudes of Christians in later times.”36 In his major work Église d’Églises the late Fr. Jean Tillard, op, like several others, treats of the place of the Jewish disciples in the origins of the Church.37 He remarks first that the concept of the People of God is not as ecumenical as we like to think, when Jews and Christians mutu- ally exclude each other.38 He asserts that the great schism between the Synagogue and the Church was far more serious in its effects than the later schisms within either tradition.39 But perhaps Tillard’s most original contribution lies in his comments on the eucharist: “À la synaxe eucharistique, l’Église atteste qu’elle attend encore ce Jour du Messie, communiant ainsi à l’espérance d’Israel.”40 “L’Eucharistie apparaît ainsi, disions-nous, comme le moment sacramentel de la communion avec Israel, jamais totalement rompue [author’s italics], communion d’où l’Église tire son origine dans le Dessein de Dieu.”41

33. “One People in Two Assemblies: The Synagogue and the Church”, in Jean- Miguel Garrigues, et al., L’Unique Israel de Dieu (Limoges: Criterion, 1987) 59-72. 34. See below. 35. “Jamais Paul n’abandonnera cette perspective d’intégration dans l’unique Peu- ple d’Israel au cours de son évangélisation des paiens” (ibid., 70). 36. “Il en est allé ainsi pendant la période néo-testamentaire de l’Église apos- tolique qui garde une normativité révélée permanente pour la Tradition, quelles qu’aient pu être les attitudes historiques des chrétiens dans les périodes postérieures” (ibid., 72). 37. “La continuité est d’ailleurs réalisée, au sens le plus strict, par le ‘Reste’ d’Israel.” J.-M.-R. Tillard, Église d’Églises: L’écclésiologie de communion (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987) 121. “The continuity is effected, in the strictest sense, by the ‘Remnant’ of Israel.” 38. Ibid., 127. 39. “Et durant ce temps s’achevait le grand schisme entre la Synagogue et l’Église, beaucoup plus grave en ses conséquences que les ruptures internes à chacun de ces groupes” (ibid., 132). 40. Ibid., 137. “In the eucharistic assembly, the Church affirms that she is still awaiting that Day of the Messiah, thus sharing in the Hope of Israel.” 41. Ibid., 139. “The eucharist thus appears, we might say, as the sacramental moment of communion with Israel, that was never totally broken, the communion from which the Church draws her origin in the design of God.”

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Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, ofm cap., the preacher to the papal household, has also touched on this topic: “What is required is that the Israel according to the flesh enter into and become part of the Israel according to the Spirit, without for this having to cease being Israel also according to the flesh which is its only prerogative … the rejoining of Israel with the Church will involve a rearrangement in the Church; it will mean a conversion on both sides.”42 Here Cantalamessa is touching on the highly sensitive issue as to how any modern expression of faith in Jesus Christ by Jewish people can be authentically Jewish.43

The Contribution of John Paul II Two of the most important statements of John Paul II concerning the relationship between the Jewish people and the Church were given to Jewish audiences: one at Mainz, Germany, in November 1980 and the other at the Synagogue in Rome in April 1986. In Mainz the Pope endorsed the statement of the German bishops that “Whoever meets Jesus Christ, meets Judaism.”44 He stated: “The first dimension of this dialogue, that is, the meeting between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God [cf. Rom 11:29], and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and the second part of her Bible.”45 In his visit to the Roman synagogue, John Paul II took up the introduction to Nostra Aetate: “the Church of Christ discovers her ‘bond’ with Judaism by ‘searching into her own mystery’ [cf. Nostra Aetate, ibid.]. The Jew- ish religion is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain way is ‘intrinsic’ to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”46 Finally, in the Apostolic Exhortation concerning the Church in Europe (2003), John Paul II made a reference to Christian unity in

42. Raniero Cantalamessa, The Mystery of Christmas: A Commentary on The Mag- nificat, Gloria, Nunc Dimittis (Slough: St Paul Publications, 1988) 100-101. 43. By “modern,” I mean post-fourth century CE, when the Christian oppression of the Jewish people began. 44. Pope John Paul II, Spiritual Pilgrimage: Texts on Jews and Judaism 1979-1995, ed. Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Klenicki (New York: Crossroad, 1996) 14. The German original uses the term “Judentum,” which has a slightly different resonance to “Juda- ism”. 45. Ibid., 15. 46. Ibid., 63.

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urging dialogue and friendship with the Jewish people: “Consequently it is necessary to encourage dialogue with Judaism, knowing that it is fundamentally important for the self-knowledge of Christians and for the transcending of divisions between the Churches [author’s italics], and to work for the flowering of a new springtime in mutual relations.”47

The Emergence of Jewish Expressions of Faith in Jesus the Christ

Developments within the Catholic Church The teaching of John Paul II has no doubt contributed to the emergence of a Jewish consciousness among Catholics of Jewish origin. How- ever, the Association of St James the Apostle for Hebrew-speaking Cath- olics in Israel dates back to the mid-1950s. But this work remained small, and was little known in the wider Church. Two developments in the pontificate of John Paul II have served to focus new attention on the place of Jewish believers within the body of Christ. First, in 1981 the promotion of Mgr. Jean-Marie Lustiger to be Archbishop of Paris. Sec- ond, the beatification (1987) and the canonisation (1998) of Edith Stein, Sr. Theresa-Benedicta of the Cross. Both Edith Stein and Cardinal Lust- iger always affirmed that they were still Jews after their baptism. At the beatification of Edith Stein, the Pope said, “Today the Church is honor- ing a daughter of Israel who remained faithful, as a Jew, to the Jewish people, and, as a Catholic, to our crucified Lord Jesus Christ.”48 How- ever, at her canonisation, the Pope said, “Through the experience of the cross, Edith Stein was able to open up a way towards a new encounter with the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and cross were inseparable in her eyes… She understood that it was very important for her to be a daughter of the chosen people and to belong to Christ not just spiritually but also by blood.”49 In 2002, in a book La Promesse, Cardinal Lustiger finally published the text of some retreat talks he had given in 1979, that touch directly on the Jewish understanding of being in Christ.50 There are two recurring themes in La Promesse of major significance for this reflection: first, the repeated assertion that through faith and baptism, Christians become

47. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa, para. 56. 48. Spiritual Pilgrimage, 90. 49. My translation from a French version. 50. J.-M. Lustiger, La Promesse (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2002).

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part of Israel;51 second, the warning that when Christians forget or deny their roots in Israel, they are in danger of turning God and Jesus into a “pagan deity.” For Lustiger, anti-Semitism in the Church is not just an evil like any other evil; it produces an ecclesial disfigurement, a distor- tion in the very nature of the Church, for the Christ being affirmed is no longer simply Jesus, the Messiah of Israel.52 He suggests that “one of the possible sources for the present crisis of faith in the West is that, at least partly, the god being rejected is only the god of the pagans dis- guised as the God of the Christians.”53 In the years since the Second Vatican Council, many Catholics with Jewish roots have sensed the need to affirm their Jewishness within the communion of the Church. This tendency has led to the foundation of the Association of Hebrew Catholics, as well as a more local groupings, such as “L’association de Marie, fille de Sion” in Paris. These people prefer to call themselves “Hebrew Catholics.” The Association of Hebrew Catholics was founded by Fr. Elias Friedman, ocd, a convert Jew from South Africa, who lived in Israel from 1954 until his death in 1999.54

The Encounter with the Messianic Jews A further dimension to this question appears with the rise of the Messianic Jewish movement. As a movement, this phenomenon dates from post-1967. It is best understood, not just as Jews affirming their Jewishness as believers in Jesus, but as a congregational movement of those Jewish believers in Jesus, who affirm the need for a corporate life of faith in the Messiah Jesus precisely as Jewish disciples. Largely because of Evan- gelical Protestant connections and influences, the Messianic Jewish movement did not quickly attract the attention of Catholics. One of the first Catholic scholars to pay attention to the Messianic Jews was Francesco

51. E.g. when Lustiger wrote that baptism is incorporation into Christ, he insisted: “But it is also, at the same time and indissolubly … an incorporation into Israel” (La Promesse, 99). [Mais il est aussi, en même temps et indissolublement, sans quoi il n’a pas de sens, une incorporation à Israel.] See in particular Ch. 10, “Accès par le Christ à toutes les richesses d’Israel” [Access through Christ to all the riches of Israel], 141-158. 52. “Et de même, on peut dire que l’attitude des pagano-chrétiens à l’égard du peuple d’Israel est le symptôme de leur infidélité réelle au Christ ou de leur mensonge dans leur pseudo-fidélité au Christ. C’est l’aveu involontaire de leur paganisme et de leur péché” (ibid., 74). 53. “L’une des sources possibles de la crise actuelle de la foi en Occident est, pour une part, que le dieu récusé n’est que le dieu des paiens déguisé en Dieu des chrétiens.” (ibid., 101). 54. Fr. Friedman’s understanding is expressed in his book, Jewish Identity (New York: The Miriam Press, 1987).

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Rossi de Gasperis, SJ, who in 1987 wrote a biblical- theological reflection on “A new judeo-christianity and its possible ecclesial relevance.”55 Cur- rently, the Messianic Jewish movement is strongest in the USA, in Israel, and in the Western part of the former Soviet Union; but there is significant growth also in Germany, in Brazil and in Argentina.56 A major step forward in Catholic relations with the Messianic Jews took place in 1997, when two Jewish brothers from Jerusalem, Benjamin and Reuven Berger, met Fr Georges Cottier, op, then the theologian to the papal household, which led to a private audience with John Paul II the following year. Out of these meetings came the proposal from Fr (later Cardinal) Cottier to begin an informal Catholic – Messianic Jewish dialogue. This dialogue group has met annually since September 2000.57 A recurring issue in this dialogue is the unanimous desire of the Messianic Jewish participants for some kind of church recognition of their existence and legitimacy. An initiative from the Messianic Jews more directly affecting the unity of the Church is Toward Jerusalem Council II (TJCII), begun in the USA in 1996.58 TJCII is a vision for the reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ, both personally and corporately. The vision is that one day there will be a second Council of Jerusalem that will complete the work initiated by the first Council, described in Acts 15. Whereas the first Council, totally Jewish in make-up, addressed the issue of Gentile admittance to the Church, a second Council would address the issue of full Jewish participation in the Church. This vision is inherently an ecumenical vision, for it expresses the conviction that the full unity of the Church is only possible following the model of Ephesians 2:15-16 and 3:4-6. TJCII is led by a committee, half Jewish, half Gentile, with the Gentile members coming from a range of Christian traditions, from the free churches to the Anglican,59 the Catholic,60 and the Orthodox.61

55. “Un nuovo giudeocristianesimo e la sua possibile rilevanza ecclesiale,” in Co minciando da Gerusalemme: La sorgente della fede e dell’esistenza cristiana (Casale Monferrato: Edizioni Piemme, 1997) 140-183. 56. For an account of the Messianic Jewish movement worldwide, see Daniel Juster and Peter Hocken, The Messianic Jewish Movement: An Introduction (Dallas, TX: Toward Jerusalem Council II, 2004). For further information, see www.tjcii.org. 57. The present author is a participant in this dialogue. 58. See Peter Hocken, “Toward Jerusalem Council,” Journal of Pentecostal Theol- ogy 16, no. 1 (2007) 3-17. 59. Canon Brian Cox from Santa Barbara, California. 60. There are currently two Catholic members, the present author and deacon Johannes Fichtenbauer of Vienna, Austria, representing Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, op, Archbishop of Vienna. 61. Professor Fr. Vasile Mihoc of Sibiu, Romania.

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The encounter with the Messianic Jews faces Christians forcefully with the place of the Jews within the mystery of the Church. Although the place of the Messianic Jews today is sociologically on the fringes of the visible Church, they will insist that theologically their place cannot be other than foundational for the right order and for the unity of the Church. For they see themselves as simply doing what the first disciples of Jesus did. Although they frequently underestimate the difficulties and problems inherent in affirming a continuity following a gap of seventeen or more centuries, this claim cannot be dismissed as merely naive or as lacking in substance. Significantly, at a meeting of nine members of the TJCII committee with the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in September 1998, after listening to the personal stories of the five Messianic Jewish leaders present, the Cardinal remarked that the Church is composed of the Ecclesia ex Judaeis and the Ecclesia ex Gentibus, and the Church is not complete without both.62

The Challenge to Ecumenism in the Catholic Church and to Its Ecclesiological Foundation

As has been noted, the removal of the material on the Jewish people from the Decree on Ecumenism to a Decree on Non-Christian Religions had the unfortunate effect of removing any foundation in the Old Tes- tament and in the unity of Israel from the theological foundation pro- vided for ecumenism in the Catholic Church. This absence has persisted in the Ecumenical Directories subsequently issued from the Vatican.63 Despite the acknowledged depth and creativity of John Paul II’s encyc- lical on unity, this dimension also finds no place in Ut Unum Sint. Because of the sufferings of the Jewish community at the hands of Christians and the Church, the issue of Jewish believers in Jesus is a highly sensitive one for the Jewish community. This is no doubt another reason why the standard presentations of Catholic ecclesiology in recent years have no reference to the Jewish issue in their presentations on the unity of the Church. While there are references to the Jewish context in which Jesus ministered and chose the Twelve, and there is discussion of the relationship between the two covenants, there is generally no mention of the place of the Judeo-Christians within the unity of the Church. Thus, for example, the veteran Catholic ecumenist, George Tavard, does

62. This citation is based on the author’s personal memory of this meeting. 63. Both in the Ecumenical Directory of 1967/70 and that of 1993.

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not see a place for a Jewish witness within the body of Christ, acknowl- edging that “individual Jews should be welcome in the Church when they come to see Jesus as the Messiah in the Christian sense of the term.”64 The same is true, for example, of the sections on ecclesiology and unity in two major German Catholic handbooks of Catholic theology, issued in the last fifteen years.65 One of them has a section on the eschatological fulfilment of the Church, but with no mention of the Jewish people, despite being published and further revised since the pub- lication of the Catechism.66 One exception is the German Jesuit theologian Medard Kehl, who has a short section “Israel und die Kirche” Israel and the Church in a work on Catholic ecclesiology.67 For Kehl, despite her origins in Israel, the Church became in effect a Church of the “heathen” from the nations, leading to a growing enmity between the Church and Israel, so much so that “the rift of the beginning became so deep as to be almost beyond healing.”68 Mehl clearly regrets the exclusion of this question from the Decree on Ecumenism, and suggests that its proper place would have been in the Constitution on the Church.69 The evidence presented in this short article indicates that the time has come for Catholic ecclesiology, and for Catholic formulations of the theological basis for ecumenical work, to address this dimension of the place of Jewish believers in Jesus, or Judeo-Christians, whatever terminol- ogy is used, in the divine plan for the unity of the Church. Such an ecumenical formulation will need to integrate the eschatological dimension. One can say that an opportunity was missed during the Second Vatican Council, but perhaps the time was not then ripe for this development. The significant developments of the last forty years concerning Jewish expressions of faith in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, suggest that this time has now come. Perhaps it is one of the prayers of the late Cardinal Lustiger since his transition from the pilgrim Church to take his place “at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 8:11).

64. George H. Tavard, The Church, Community of Salvation: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992) 205. 65. E.g. Handbuch der Dogmatik, ed. Theodor Schneider, vol. II (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 21995) and Katholische Dogmatik: Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie, ed. Gerhard Ludwig Müller (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1995/2005). 66. “Die eschatologische Vollendung der Kirche”, Katholische Dogmatik, 626. 67. Medard Kehl, Die Kirche: Eine katholische Ekklesiologie (Würzburg: Echter, 1992) 299-301. 68. “So daß der Riss des Anfangs fast unheilbar vertieft wurde” (ibid., 299). 69. “Ob es wirklich hier und nicht eher in der Kirchenkonstitution seinen genu- inen Platz hat, läßt sich mit Recht fragen” (ibid., 301).

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Rev. Dr. Peter Hocken was Lecturer in moral theology at Oscott College, Bir- mingham, England from 1971-1976, and served as Chaplain to the Bishop of Northampton (1997-2001). He is a historian of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Pentecostal movement in the twentieth century and served as Executive Secretary of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (1988-1997). His many writings include The Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic and Messianic Jewish Movements (Ashgate, 2009). He now resides in Vienna, Austria. Address: Wienerstrasse 15, A-2410 Hainburg an der Donau, Austria. E-mail: [email protected].

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