St. Louis Jewish Leaders Decry Ecclessiastical Support to Association of Hebrew Catholics

Folks, this is an excerpt of an article published at CatholicCulture.org:

Local Jewish leaders are disturbed by the Archdiocese of St. Louis’s support for the Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC), an organization that works to preserve the identity and heritage of Catholics of Jewish origin within the Church. The association was welcomed into the archdiocese by Archbishop Raymond Burke in 2006; Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann and the rector of the cathedral basilica will offer Mass at the group’s October conference.

“One of the things that the Jewish community knows, or should know, with confidence is that the Catholic church does not proselytize, particularly to Jews,” said Karen Aroesty, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Please, continue reading here.

Also, Mr. David P. Goldman, esteemed contributor to First Things, had this to say in reference to the same article:

If a Jew converts to Christianity, as a handful do, he or she nonetheless is obligated to perform the commandments of the Torah, including dietary and marital-purity laws, Sabbath observance, phylacteries and so forth. For a Jew not to perform these commandments is to be in a state of grievous sin. The Torah states that anyone who rejects God’s commandments “with a high hand,” that is, wittingly and deliberately, “shall be cut off from his people.” There is no retroactive exemption from the mitzvot. This remains an issue between us and Jewish converts to Christianity. Michael Wyschogrod write an open letter to the late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, perhaps the most prominent Jewish convert in the Catholic hierarchy, informing him that he was required to perform the mitzvot. (Wyschogrod addresses these issues in essays in the collection Abraham’s Promise).

Gentiles of course are not required to perform the mitzvot, except for the basic rules of behavior grouped under the so-called Noahide laws. St. Paul argued that Gentiles should be exempt from the mitzvot, but never once did he argue that he himself, who was born a Jew, should stop performing the mitzvot.

From the Jewish theological reading, by acknowledging an Association of Hebrew Catholics without encouraging its members to remain Torah-obedient, the Church is reinforcing sinfulness in its ranks. That is why observant Jews must feel profoundly uncomfortable with the action of the St. Louis Archdiocese. Proselytism, schmoselytism–we know that Catholics would prefer that everybody convert. But all Jews have a responsibility to discourage other Jews from sinning.

Please, read the entire piece here.

Commentary. Obviously, I don't intend to "solve" the issue of the proper relationship between the Catholic Church and our Jewish elder brethren in one blog post - may be in two. (LOL!)

This is the thing: as far as I can tell, The Association of Hebrew Catholics is a pious association of the faithful of the kind that Catholic canon law allows to exist formally or informally (I don't know which one are they). In their own words:

We are Catholic. We have freely chosen to enter the Church established by the Messiah, in which He has established a teaching authority, the Magisterium, responsible for guarding and handing on the deposit of faith given to the Apostles. That deposit is reflected in the doctrines of the Church. Thus, our efforts and mission must be in keeping with the teaching and discipline of the Church. (Source)

Furthermore, it was Fr. Elias Friedman, OCD, who lived as a Carmelite friar for approximately 50 years in Israel, launched the AHC to preserve the People Israel within the Church.

That's the rub. Many of our Jewish brethren either deny the possibility that the People of Israel can subsist as such within the confines of the Church, specially if Jewish ritual practices within the Church are no longer mandatory, but strictly voluntary, devoid of the onus they had within Jewish halakha. But, will our Jewish brethren be mollified if somehow the Church were to say that the keeping of the Jewish Ritual Law be mandatory or at least highly recommended for Catholics of Jewish descent? Assuming that they were observant in the first place, of course. No, that's not what the critics are driving at.

Jewish religious law explicitly states that accepting Jesus as the Messiah of Israel places the prospective Jewish "convert" outside their community, no matter if the "convert" were to keep all other observances. Therefore, our Jewish elders who speak for their community in various ways object to anything Christian that can be remotely connected to their ancient faith. Jews can't exist in the Catholic Church as Jews, they say. They must be considered Catholic and referred to as such.

But they are, as they are not called "Jewish Catholics" but "Hebrew Catholics." To objectors this is a "bait and switch" terminology but for me, and I guess for many in the Church, this is simply a recognition of the fact that not all Hebrews are Jews and that the accidental distinction poses no insurmountable theological obstacle, from the Catholic viewpoint, for Hebrew Catholics to belong to the historical People of Israel. The objections do not come from the Magisterium of individual bishops or from the Pope, the objections comes from the Jewish camp.

Like the Russian Orthodox in their "canonical" territory, Jewish identity organizations see any type of "outreach" as an invasion of their turf. In their view, Jews should not become Catholic and should not be allowed to form groups, movements, or apostolates of a "proselytizing" bent. And they, not us, get to say what, and what isn't a "proselytizing" effort aimed at them.

The Church should minister to them as individual Catholics, they say, but should not allow them to organize themselves into a group with special pastoral needs, in their case, the continuation of their Hebrew identity. If catechumens of Jewish ancestry and identity wish to claim and continue their adherence to their ancestral identity, in the view of the ADL and Mr. Goldman, the Church should send them back to the Synagogue, "less they sin".

Our reply is similar to the one we give the Russian Orthodox: we cannot do that. Thirsting people of every background will keep coming to us for respite and we are not about to close our doors to them. If we were to do that, we would be sinning ourselves!

We have to be conscious of all sensitivities regarding the issue of a Hebrew way of life in the Catholic Church, but we cannot turn our backs to their pastoral needs. In the case of an observant Jewish candidate for baptism this becomes critical, because we firmly believe that Jesus of Nazareth came first to be Messiah of Israel, and that a Jew should find that his or her identity becomes complete by that recognition and not undermined in any way. However, the odds are high that their historical community, their families even, will shun them. After sacrificing and losing so much after accepting Jesus as Messiah, who are we to say that they can no longer observe their Sabbath and their holy days? We must accommodate them and I think the AHC is the Catholic Apostolate better suited to tend to this need.

The nature of the objections and the vehemence of the proponents show how far we still have to go on the road of dialogue, and mutual understanding.