The Catholic Church does not support organisations which aim to convert Jews. Nor should it, argues the associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the Church believes that Judaism is salvific for Jews.

EDWARD Kessler?s summary of the current state of Jewish-Christian relations is itself a remarkable example of the level of mature dialogue for which he calls. There is much to ponder constructively in it.

He quite rightly points to mission as a major unfinished item on the present agenda. Today, Edward Kessler says, Christian understanding envisages mission with Israel rather than mission to Israel. There should be Christian-Jewish partnership in mission to the world, he concludes. What is the position on this question within Catholic tradition today?

Perhaps the best statement of how it appeared to Catholics at the beginning of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II was given by Tommaso Federici, of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, in his study paper, Mission and Witness of the Church, with which he addressed the 1977 meeting in Venice of the ILC (International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee). Federici emphasised the irreversible nature in the change of understanding of the Church?s relationship to the Jewish people brought about by the Second Vatican Council. On the basis of a vast array of scriptural and magisterial sources, he argued that none of the inspired Christian sources justifies the notion that the Old Covenant of the Lord with his people has been abrogated or in any sense nullified . . . The Church recognises that in God?s revealed plan, Israel plays a fundamental role of her own: the sanctification of the Name in the world . . . Christ did not nullify God?s plan . . . Therefore, Christian witness must take into account the permanent place of the Jewish people according to God?s plan.

While this does not settle all the biblical and theological issues raised by mission, it lays a solid theological groundwork. On the pastoral level, unwarranted proselytism is already precluded, as Edward Kessler notes, by the principles of religious freedom. Federici concludes, on historical and demographic grounds, that included in the prohibition of proselytism of Jews are any sort of organisations set up for the ?conversion of Jews? . The reason, Federici says, is that these have led in the past and will almost inevitably lead in the future to the psychological and spiritual impairment of the freedom of faith of the Jewish people. Missionary activities aimed at Jews which might have been theoretically justifiable are precluded today and in the future by reason of the centuries of collective mistreatment of Jews by Christians.

Such reasoning, I have found, is overwhelmingly understood and accepted by Catholic leaders. The result is that there exist today absolutely no Church-sanctioned organisations designed to convert Jews. Federici?s suggestion, repeated and reaffirmed time and again by the present Pope, is that the Church needs today to concentrate what might be its mission with the Jews, not to the Jews: the joint proclamation of the One God of Israel to the world, of the moral centre of human destiny revealed in the Ten Commandments, of the saving warning of remembrance of the Holocaust, and of the ultimate necessity for both Jews and Christians to prepare the way for the Kingdom of God by working together for Tikkun Olam (Mending the World).

But, many Jews would say, though the Church has abandoned any formal attempts to convert Jews, and understands itself to be with and not over against the Jews, don?t Catholics still in their hearts long for their conversion? Might not that longing, frustrated, pop out again one day as it has so often over the centuries?

This might be true of some individual Catholics (and even a small minority of a billion people, of course, adds up to many). But is it true of the heart of the Church as a whole? To test that, one needs to look at what Catholics pray for.

There is actually only one official prayer for the Jews in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. This is the traditional Good Friday prayer. It was (and is) in the middle of a threefold prayer first for the Church (fideles, believers), then for the conversion of the Jews (perfideles, half-believers), and for the conversion of unbelievers (infideles). Over the centuries, the Christian teaching of contempt for the Jews burdened the original theological category of perfideles with so much opprobrium that the modern term perfidious took on a far more insidious and sinister meaning than perhaps first intended by the ancient liturgy. Thus, Pope Pius XII in the early 1950s instructed that perfideles should no longer be translated as perfidious in liturgical books such as missals, but rather as unbelieving or unfaithful. John XXIII decided that the Latin term should be deleted from the prayer altogether, though it remained a prayer for the conversion of Jews. The reform of the liturgy mandated by the Second Vatican Council, however, rethought and rewrote the prayer entirely.

It now reads: Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his Name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption.

The phrase, fullness of redemption, here, is not historical but looks to the Last Things. Like St Paul in Romans 11, it consigns the issue to God?s mercy, to be revealed at the end of time. I believe this was intentional as a way of resolving the question in the present dispensation. So, no, the Church does not wish the conversion of the Jews as a people to Christianity. Otherwise Catholics would at least pray for it. This does not, of course, preclude the acceptance into the Church of individual Jews whose own personal spiritual lives have led them to the Catholic faith. To exclude these would in my opinion be itself a travesty of the principles of religious freedom.

EDWARD Kessler is very critical of the Vatican document Dominus Iesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith last year. Its hard-line approach to other religions and other Churches serves only to confuse rather than clarify, he declares. He and I debated the interpretation of Dominus Iesus in The Tablet of 18 November 2000. Perhaps ironically, it is a statement recently made by Cardinal Kasper of the Holy See?s Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews that I find most promising in this context of mission. How are Catholics to proclaim the Good News universally while at the same time acknowledging the profound particularity of their unique relationship with God?s People, Israel? It needs to be understood here that Kasper?s declaration, while not quite on the order of the statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which it interprets, is nonetheless not simply another opinion. It was issued on a formal occasion when the cardinal was speaking for the Catholic Church to the Jewish people.

So it represents the definitive statement by the Holy See itself of the meaning of Dominus Iesus for Catholic-Jewish relations. Kasper affirms unequivocally that the document Dominus Iesus does not state that everybody needs to become a Catholic in order to be saved by God. On the contrary, it declares that God?s grace, which is the grace of Jesus Christ according to our faith, is available to all. Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, i.e. the faithful response of the Jewish people to God?s irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises.

Embedded in this statement of the Church?s official teaching on Judaism is a distinction that many who have read Dominus Iesus, even knowledgeably, have missed. Edward Kessler states, for example, that the Christian belief that salvation can come only through Jesus or through the Church relegates not only Judaism but all other faiths to a position of inferiority. But belief that salvation comes, ultimately and in a way known only to God, somehow through the divine act of Christ?s incarnation, death and resurrection, is a far different thing from an assertion that salvation can only come through joining the Church. The former statement is no more (and no less) exclusivist and particularist than Judaism?s own affirmation that the One God is Lord and Redeemer of all humanity, while the latter leads to the (false, from the point of view of Catholicism) notion that anyone not baptised cannot be saved. The former, in other words, is simply a logical application of the doctrine that Jesus is, indeed, one and the same as the God of Israel, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Now, since the God with whom Jesus is thus identified is none other than the One God of Israel, this in no way reduces Judaism, which is the response of God?s people to God?s initiative, to an inferior position. God cannot be inferior to himself. Thus, the Christian affirmation of the definitive nature of the Christ event ? an event which is not just of historical significance but, again, looks toward the Last Things ? does not in itself foresee the conversion of all to Christianity any more than Judaism?s affirmation that all humanity at the end of time will acknowledge the superiority and sovereignty of the God of Israel. Both statements at heart testify to the oneness of the same God who alone is creator and redeemer of all humanity. Indeed, I would argue, the two affirmations are very much on the same order of universalism/particularism.

Kasper then attempts to add some clarity to Catholic language that definitely, in my opinion, needs clarifying. He argues so cogently that much that the Church does as Church (good works, prayer, liturgy) has absolutely nothing to do with bringing non-believers to join the Church, but rather with converting Catholics to a deeper relationship with God through Christ. Dialogue is, like good works, something engaged in for its own sake (mutual understanding and reconciliation), not for the sake of converting other believers to our faith.

One of the many evangelising actions of the Church, of course, is mission in the narrower sense. Kasper rightly defines it as converting people from false gods and idols to the true and one God. Again, this is an entrenched biblical concept which has its roots especially in the prophetic tradition of Israel. But, of course, the Church acknowledges that Judaism is already the worship of the true and one God, so there is no need for this type of mission to the Jews. Jews are already with the Father in a permanent relationship of covenant. Thus, Kasper concludes, mission in this strict sense cannot be used with regard to Jews, who believe in the true and one God. Therefore ? and this is characteristic ? there does not exist any Catholic missionary organisation for Jews. There is dialogue with Jews; there is no mission in this proper sense of the word toward them . . . In today?s world, we, Jews and Christians, have a common mission: together we should give an orientation. Together we must be ambassadors of peace.

I must candidly admit that not all of the documents that have been issued by various dicasteries in the Holy See over the past decades since the Second Vatican Council have been this clear in their language. Which is why we Catholics have much to do to render our speech, both unofficially and officially, much more consistent and clear than it now is. But I believe just as deeply that the doctrinal understanding outlined by Cardinal Kasper represents the agenda for the future of Catholic teaching. We simply need time to work through the complexities of our own language and settle on a better way to articulate our beliefs.