Zenit Interviews Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, on Hebrew Catholicism in Israel

Folks, another post on our cycle of Judaism and Catholicism, this one an interview of Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, patriarchal vicar of Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel. Here's an excerpt:

Praying in Hebrew, living Catholicism in Hebrew, living as a Catholic minority within a Jewish society is all a very new reality for the Church. The pioneers before us put an enormous amount of work into translating the liturgy, developing sacred music in Hebrew, creating a Christian theological vocabulary in Hebrew, and starting to build a Christian presence of reconciliation and mutual familiarity within the Jewish society.

Since those first years, the number of our faithful has decreased, not only because of emigration, but rather because of assimilation. The new generation of Hebrew-speaking Israeli Catholics tends to settle into the secular Jewish society. We do not have educational institutions or institutions of any other kind. Our very small communities do not create a social environment for our young people, who tend to marry Jews and who very often convert to Judaism in order to get married. Our greatest challenge today is to try to transmit the faith to the new generation, for them to find in it not only a matter of interest but also a support for their everyday life.

For the last 20 years or so, these communities have benefitted from the arrival of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These hundreds of thousands of Russian speakers included dozens of thousands of Christians and, among these, some Catholics. Nowadays, we also have an apostolate in Russian, but the children of these immigrants very soon became Hebrew-speaking, and now the great challenge is to preserve the Christian faith of these children and to prepare them for life within a Jewish, Hebrew-speaking society in Israel.

Read it all here.

Commentary. This is all part of what I believe is an ongoing convergence in the Church between Catholics of Gentile and Jewish origin that, consciously or unconsciously, are effecting a reconciliation between our peoples in a Hebrew-speaking Catholic Church.

Father Neuhaus says as much: "Perhaps it is an eschatological sign, a promise of peace and reconciliation that we are present in this episcopal conference, because we believe with all our heart that “He is the peace between us, and has made the two into one entity and broken down the barrier which used to keep them apart, by destroying in his own person the hostility” (Ephesians 2, 14)."

Amen to that. I hope so, in Jesus' Name, Amen.

- Visit the web site of the Hebrew Speaking Vicariate in Israel (H.S.V.I.), a part of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.