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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, January 9,1975
Vatican Seeks Better
Catholic-Jewish
BY JERRY FILTEAU
WASHINGTON (NC) - The Vatican
has issued a far-reaching call for deeper
understanding and closer relationships
in dialogue, prayer and action between
Catholics and Jews.
The new document, which condemns
“all forms of anti-Semitism and
discrimination” as “opposed to the very
spirit of Christianity,” is entitled
“Guidelines and Suggestions for
Implementing the Conciliar Declaration
‘Nostra Aetate’ (no. 4).
“Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Age”) is
the Second Vatican Council’s
Declaration on the Relationship of the
Church to Non-Christian Religions.
Number 4 of the declaration deals with
the Church’s relationship with the Jews.
The new document came from the
Vatican’s newly formed Commission for
Religious Relations with the Jews and
was signed by Cardinal Jan Willebrands,
president of the new commission. The
document was dated Dec. 1 but not
released publicly until Jan. 3. It was
released in English in the United States
by the National Catholic Office for
Information in Washington, D.C.
The new statement is intended
primarily to set practical guidelines for
Christian-Jewish relations. It calls for:
- Dialogue and shared prayer
between Christians and Jews, both at
the grassroots level and in the scholarly
community;
- Careful attention in the liturgy to
the common elements of Christian and
Jewish liturgy, to unprejudiced and
sensitive interpretation of biblical
passages that have been interpreted in
the past as unfavorable to the Jews, and
to careful translation of liturgical
“phrases and passages which Christians,
if not well informed, might
misunderstand because of prejudice;”
- The elimination of anti-Judaic or
anti-Semitic tones in Christian religious
and historical education and in the mass
media, and the establishment of “chairs
of Jewish studies” wherever possible in
Catholic institutions of higher learning
and research;
- Collaboration between Christians
and Jews “in seeking social justice and
peace at every level - local, national and
international.”
- The establishment by bishops of
“some suitable commissions or
secretariats on a national or regional
level” to foster relations between
Catholics and Jews.
An introductory note released by the
Vatican explained that the document
“does not propose a theology of
Judaism. Such a theology certainly has
an interest for specialist research and
reflection, but it still needs considerable
study. The new Commission for
Religious Relations with the Jews
should be able to play a part in the
gradual fruition of this endeavor.”
Observers have noted, however, that
some of the theological content of an
earlier working document has been
omitted from the official statement.
The working document -- made
public in 1969 by Cardinal Lawrence.
Shehan of Baltimore - included explicit
references to the part Christians played
in 2,000 years of persecution of the
Jews and to the place of the land of
Israel in the Jewish faith.
The working document also explicitly
denied any intent to proselytize (make
converts) in opening up dialogue.
In the final document Christian
responsibility for the persecution of
Jews is implied only indirectly and there
is no mention of the religious
significance of the promised land for the
Jews.
The denial of any intent to
proselytize is not included. In its place
is a declaration of the Church’s mission
to evangelize, modified only by an
affirmation of religious liberty. The
final document says:
“In virtue of her divine mission, and
her very nature, the Church must preach
Jesus Christ to the world. Lest the
witness of Catholics to Jesus Christ
should give offense to Jews, they must
take care to live and spread their
Christian faith while maintaining the
strictest respect for religious
liberty . . .”
The Vatican’s introductory
explanation to the new document,
calling for more research and dialogue
on theological questions, suggests that
the Vatican did not think these areas are
sufficiently resolved to make an official
statement on them.
Nevertheless the document marks a
significant practical advance in
Catholic-Jewish relations by giving
official approval and impetus to
developments that have been taking
place at a lower level in various parts of
the world.
In several countries, most notably the
United States, Canada, and several
European nations, studies of
anti-Semitic prejudice in Catholic school
texts have resulted in numerous
revisions that show more sensitivity to
Jewish religion, culture and history.
The Second Vatican Council’s
teaching, that the Jews as a people were
not responsible for Christ’s death and
that they should not be presented as a
Ties
people repudiated or cursed by God, has
resulted in widespread changes in
Catholic attitudes toward Jews and
Judaism. The new document gives
added impetus to spreading a more
positive attitude toward Judaism
through research, education, liturgy,
prayer, dialogue and collaboration.
In most parts of Western Europe,
North America and Latin America,
Catholic bishops have already
established secretariats for
Catholic-Jewish relations. The new
guidelines and the establishment of the
new Vatican commission give these
secretariats a stronger status and should
promote international communication
and cooperation in these areas.
The ongoing exchange of lecturers
and professors between Catholic and
Jewish institutions of learhing in this
country and elsewhere may well be
intensified as a result of the Vatican’s
call for more scholarly collaboration.
The past 2,000 years, the document
remarks, were “too often marked by
mutual ignorance and mutual
confrontation .. . the spiritual bonds
and historical links binding the Church
to Judaism condemn (as opposed to the
very spirit of Christianity) all forms of
anti-Semitism and discrimination, which
in any case the dignity of the human
person alone would suffice to
condemn ... On the practical level in
particular, Christians must therefore
strive to acquire a better knowledge of
the basic components of the religious
tradition of Judaism; they must strive to
learn by what essential traits the Jews
define themselves in the light of their
own religious experience.”
Document Text Page 7
CHRISTMAS STORY - Third Graders of Augusta’s St. Mary’s School
presented “A Christmas Story” just prior to the Christmas break. The play
was organized and directed by Miss Catherine Fulmer. Third Grade
Teacher.
Indian Activists Seize Former Alexian Novitiate
ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST PARISH,
VALDOSTA. Twenty-six children received the
Sacrament of Penance for the first time in a
Reconciliation Service at St. John’s School on
Tuesday, December 10. Shown with children are (back
row 1. to r.) Father Brendan Timmins, Pastor of Queen
of Peace Church, Lakeland; Miss Nadine Bailey,
Program Co-ordinator of CCD; Sister Mary Carol
C.S.J., Program Co-ordinator of St. John’s School;
Father Gerard Murphy, Pastor St. John’s Chruch;
Father Emilio Falcone, U.S.A.F., Moody A.F.B.,
Valdosta.
JANUARY 18-25
Ecumenical Prayer Week Set
GRESHAM, Wis. (NC) - The seizure
early New Year’s Day of the former
novitiate of the Alexian Brothers here
by about 50 armed Menominee Indians
was another in a series of such incidents
involving American Indian activists
around the country in recent years.
Shortly after midnight on Jan. 1,
Indians armed with rifles and shotguns
and calling themselves the Menominee
Warrior Society took over the 64-room
mansion formerly used as a novitiate on
a 175-acre estate in east central
Wisconsin.
Two days later, Mike Sturdevant,
who called himself the leader of the
Menominee Warrior Society, told NC
News that they wanted the property
relinquished to the Menominee tribe for
use as a hospital.
He claimed that the land once
belonged to the tribe, whose reservation
is located a few miles away.
Don Kechon, another member of the
occupying group, said U.S. law provides
that lands turned over to religious
groups should revert to Indian
ownership once they are no longer used
as missions or schools.
Neither Sturdevant nor Kechon could
say when the property last belonged to
the Menominees, but estimated that it
was early in the 19th century.
The Alexian Brothers, a Religious
community dedicated to caring for the
sick, closed the novitiate -- which had
once housed about 40 novices and
postulants and a faculty of six - in 1968
because of a decline in vocations and a
change in training policy, Alexian
Brother Florian Eberle, provincial of the
Alexians in the United States, told NC
News.
The property had been willed to the
Brothers in 1950 by Mrs. Jenny Peters,
a wealthy former New Yorker. Brother
Eberle said the Brothers have been
trying to sell the property for the past
five years and have been negotiating
recently with Adam Webster, an Oneida
Indian who wants to set up a health
facility there. The Menominee Warrior
Society, Brother Eberle said, opposes
transfer of the property to Webster.
On Jan. 3, representatives of the
Alexian Brothers presented a statement
to those occupying the novitiate.
That statement acknowledged that
the Alexian Brothes’ plans for a health
care facility at the former novitiate had
not been adequately communicated to
those occupying the property and that
“complete representation was not
obtained.” .
The statement continued:
“It is our position that the health
care facility established at Gresham
should be for all Indians who have a
health need and that with its location
near the Menominee reservation the
Menominee Indians would receive the
care they so desperately need. We,
therefore, propose that an advisory
council to the Wisconsin Indian Task
Force be developed which would
include adequate representation of the
Menominee reservation.”
Pledging efforts to “see that a health
care facility operated by the Indians is
located at the novitate,” the statement
said that to obtain the goal, the Indians
occupying the novitiate must vacate it
peacefully, but “reasonable controlled
access” to it would be permitted.
Alexian Brother Maurice Wilson said
the occupying group rejected the
statement. He said the Alexian
negotiators were ready to return to
Gresham from the order’s Chicago
headquarters for “meaningful
negotiations.”
He said local law enforcement
authorities are not permitting food to
be brought to the occupiers and the
electricity has been shut off, but there is
water available and there may be heat in
the building.
After a meeting scheduled for Jan. 5
fell through, exchanges of gunfire took
place between the occupying Indians
and about 200 state and local law
enforcement officers surrounding the
novitiate. There were no reports of
injuries.
The seizure of the property occurred
little more than a month after the
Thanksgiving Day slaying of Franciscan-
Father Marcellus Cabo, 61, pastor for
20 years of St. Anthony’s parish in
Neopit on the Menominee reservation,
who was stabbed to death. John Mark
LaTender, a Menominee, turned himself
in and has been charged with the killing.
Franciscan Father Loran Fuchs,
temporary pastor of St. Anthony’s in
Neopit, said he had heard that LaTender
and his brother had had difficulties with
Father Cabo for some time. Father
Fuchs said he had heard that LaTender,
a Catholic, wanted to be
excommunicated in order to participate
in a movement to restore Indian
religion.
Father Fuchs said “it seems”
LaTender was a member of the
Menominee Warrior Society, which the
priest described as a “more radical
element” among the Menominees. “The
older people detest them,” the priest
said, adding that “some Indians fear for
their lives.”
Asked about LaTender, Sturdevant,
the Menominee Warrior Society leader,
said, “I imagine at one time he was” a
member of the society. Sturdevant
refused further comment.
Father Fuchs said more than 90
percent of the Menominees are baptized
Catholics, but a smaller percentage are
churchgoers.
The Menominee reservation of about
250 square miles has about 2,100
Menominee residents. In 1961, the
federal government terminated the
reservation and Menominee County was
set up as a county of the state of
Wisconsin. The government’s aim was to
hasten the assimilation of the
Menominees to the dominant U.S. way
of life, to break down the tribal and
cultural bonds distinguishing them from
other citizens.
Ralph Reeser, acting deputy
commissioner of the federal Bureau of
Indian Affairs, said that in December
1973, at the request of the Menominees,
Congress passed the Restoration Act,
providing for a return to reservation
status. The Menominees, he said, were
“in bad straits financially and were
losing their land base because land had
been sold to non-Indians.”
Ada Deer, chairperson of the
Menominee Restoration Committee, the
interim governing body during the
transistion back to reservation status,
said she had not heard of the warrior
society until it occupied the Alexian
Brothers’ property. She said she thought
the group was one that had been
defeated for control of tribal
government last month.
“Ada Deer does not represent me,”
Sturdevant commented, calling tribal
leadership “fragmented.”
Vince Lovett, public information
director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) said that BIA personnel could
find no language, in the early 19th
century series of treaties between the
United States and the Menominees,
providing for giving back property to
the Menominees.
Noting that the aboriginal land of the
Menominees included about 9.5 million
acres in Michigan and Wisconsin prior to
the coming of white people, he pointed
out that any claim that land still
belonged to the Menominees would be
contested.
GRAYMOOR, N.Y. - For one week
beginning Saturday, January 18th,
Christian churches throughout the
country and throughout the world will
come together in a variety of ways to
pray for that unity in belief and practice
which has eluded them for so many
generations.
It will be the 67th consecutive
observance of the annual Week of
Prayer for Christian Unity when
Christians will consciously lay aside
denominational differences in prayerful
anticipation of the day when, according
to the prayer of Christ, “all will be
one.”
The theme for the 1975 observance,
“Reconciled by the Christ who renews,
frees and unites,” is based on the
opening verses of St. Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians and recalls the basic Christian
belief that unity and harmony are
possible because of Jesus Christ.
The theme, selected by the Graymoor
Ecumenical Institute and the Faith and
Order Commission of the National
Council of Churches, coincides with the
focus of both the Roman Catholic Holy
Year and the Fifth Assembly of the
World Council of Churches, both of
which take place in 1975.
“Reconciliation is not only a key
theme for Christians in 1975,” said the
Rev. Arthur F. Gouthro, SA, director of
the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute, “It
is also at the heart of contemporary
efforts to renew the Christian church.”
Begun here in 1908 as the Church
Unity Octave by the Rev. Paul Wattson,
SA, an Episcopalian priest who became
a Roman Catholic one year later,
the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
has continued as “a permanent dialogue
of spirituality” which, according to one
observer, expresses “what should
happen during the whole year.”
“Those who have taken the initiative
for a Week of Prayer for Christian
Unity,” Jan Cardinal Willebrands,
president of the Vatican’s Secretariat
for Promoting Christian Unity, said
recently, “never have considered it as a
week which would suffice in itself or
which would be an alibi for further
prayer and other activities in and for the
service of Christian Unity.”
RECONCILED
BY THE CHRIST WHO
RENEWS, FREES
AND UNITES
WEEK OF PRAYER
FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
JAN. 18-25
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