Church Teaching on Judaism Needs to Be Reiterated

By John Goldstein

For the past several years, as Holy Week approached, Msgr. Guy Massie, chairperson of the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission of the Brooklyn Diocese, sent to The Tablet a statement concerning the depiction of Jews in the scriptural readings of Holy Week.

The purpose was to encourage homilists to correct the false and unjust picture of Jews and Judaism contained in the readings, and to alert the faithful to the existence of this false picture.

Many Catholics use a literal understanding of Scripture as their only source of information about Jews and Judaism at the time of Jesus. As a result, they are unaware of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on this matter and of the findings of modern Catholic biblical scholarship. Consequently, they continue to hold views that have been officially rejected by the Church.

Teaching of the Time

When I attended a Catholic college in the mid-1950s, the religious Brothers who taught me for all four years of religion taught the views that had been accepted since the time of the Church Fathers – that the Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus and were under divine punishment because of their culpability.
The Brothers explained that the Jewish high priest, Joseph Caiaphas, had acted in his capacity as supreme religious leader of the Jewish people when he conspired with Pontius Pilate to put Jesus to death. As supreme religious leader, Caiaphas represented all the Jewish people then living and throughout history.

The Brothers explained further that the Jewish people themselves had invited divine punishment by imposing a curse on themselves when they proclaimed in Matthew 27:25, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.” As evidence of the divine punishment, the Brothers pointed to the subsequent loss by the Jews of their Temple, their holy city of Jerusalem, and their homeland.

Just 10 years after I had been taught these views, the Second Vatican Council, the highest teaching authority in the Catholic Church, officially and authoritatively rejected them. A declaration of the Council, “Nostra Aetate” officially declared on Oct. 28, 1965, “Nevertheless, according to the apostle (Paul) the Jews still remain most dear to God because of their fathers, for he does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues (cf. Rom 11:28-29). ...what happened in his (Jesus’) passion cannot be blamed on all Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. ...the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy scripture.”

Later, instructions from the Vatican (1974, 1985) and the National (now United States) Conference of Catholic Bishops (1986, 1988) would direct homilists to explain to the faithful the historical and polemical context of those passages in Scripture that seemed to show the Jewish people in an unfavorable light.

Such an explanation is so important that the late Father Raymond Brown, one of the foremost Catholic biblical scholars of our time and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, said: “To include the passages that have an anti-Jewish import and not to comment on them is an irresponsible proclamation that will detract from a mature understanding of our Lord’s death.”
Why the change between what I learned in school and what the Church is now teaching? For one thing, modern biblical scholarship has shown that the old views were rooted in the polemics the infant Church waged against the Judaism of its time. These views were also rooted in the apologetics of a Church seeking acceptance in the wider Greco-Roman world. Both the polemics and apologetics of the nascent Church influenced the picture of Jews and Judaism found in the Gospels.

While modern biblical scholarship has changed our understanding of this picture, the scholarship has not changed the essential Gospel message of salvation and redemption through the Passion and death of Jesus.

The changes may be confusing to many. Nevertheless, the changes are the official teachings of the Church. To make the changes more understandable, it helps to think about them under the categories of rejection, correction, and affirmation. The Church has rejected the ancient charges of deicide (“Christ killers”), divine punishment (“a people cursed”), and broken covenant (abrogated by God because of Jewish “misdeeds”).

Additionally, the Church has tried to correct the negative stereotypes of Jews that arise from an uncritical reading of Scripture. Such stereotypes picture the Jews as being “hardhearted,” “spiritually blind,” “legalistic,” and “materialistic.”

Finally, the Church has attempted to affirm the Jewish faithfulness to their ongoing covenant with God, God’s love for the Jewish people, and the roots of Christian liturgy and ethics in the Judaism of Jesus’ time. The Mass, for example, is modeled on Jewish liturgy. The first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word, resembles the Scripture reading and commentary of the synagogue. The second part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, has elements of a Passover Seder.

Further Reading

The magisterium of the Catholic Church has used modern biblical scholarship to help it define Church teaching about the nature of Judaism during the time of Jesus and about the Church’s relationship to Judaism and the Jewish people. Those wishing to investigate further the methods and fruits of modern biblical scholarship should consult Father Brown’s “An Introduction to the New Testament,” (Doubleday 1997) and his “A Crucified Christ in Holy Week” (The Liturgical Press 1986). This latter work, written by Brown as an outlet from work on his “The Death of the Messiah” (Doubleday 1994) is both inspirational and educational.

back to top