Revision of Charta Oecumenica

7. Strengthening Community with Judaism

We are bound up in a unique community with the people of Israel. Jewish-Christian relations remain an important part of every Christian’s identity. Our Jewish sisters and brothers are the people of the Covenant which God has never terminated. Our faith teaches us that they are still “beloved” and chosen; “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:28-29). “And from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ” (Rom 9:5). The Jewish people have never been replaced by the Church, the Hebrew Bible has never been replaced by the New Testament, and the first Covenant has not been replaced by the new one. They have never been replaced but fulfilled. As we search into the mystery of the Church, we remember the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.

We acknowledge as a gift of the Holy Spirit the growing awareness of the deep familial bond existing between the Christian faith and Judaism. In this Spirit, the Jews are our parents in faith and our living and sustaining root (Rom 11:18). We can worship God and pray together, share not only the same Scriptures but also their understanding. We not only share a significant part of the Scriptures but we receive mutual nourishment from their interpretation. We hope that genuine dialogue will bring us to know each other, and this knowledge will be followed by true love and common activity. It will also help us in our ecumenical dialogue.

In the same Spirit, we deplore and condemn all past and present manifestations of anti-Semitism, all outbreaks of hatred and persecution. We ask God for forgiveness for anti-Jewish attitudes among Christians, and we ask our Jewish sisters and brothers for reconciliation. Together with Jews, Christians must become guardians of the memory of Jewish presence and heritage in Europe, broken and nearly finished in most places by the Shoah. To forget it means to agree with its perpetrators and to allow for its reoccurrence.

It is important nowadays to recognize the living and active presence of Judaism throughout Europe.

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We would suggest to remove the word “still” (highlighted) because it can suggest “for now” but not always “they are beloved and chosen”. And this is not what the Charta should communicate. On the contrary the Charta should suggest nothing but “they are beloved and chosen”.

The word “fulfilled” can create problems for the questions that from that concept can be raised (for a full explanation see note n. 1). We would suggest to replace the banned sentence in red with the one in bold type.

We think that the Charta should be accurate and it is not correct to say that “we share the same Scriptures and also their understanding”. In fact we do not share the same Scriptures, but a part of them. Also we don’t share their understanding because we don’t share the same hermeneutics. Christians read the Scriptures starting from the revelation of Christ.

With this in mind, we would suggest to replace the banned sentence in red with the one in bold type. 

From the teachings of Bruno Segre we learned that Jews should not be relegate to just guardians of the memory. The real challenge nowadays is to recognize the living and active presence of Judaism. Otherwise the risk is to relegate Judaism only in the past.

To explain this topic, we would suggest to add the sentence highlighted in bold type.

P.S.

That "to fulfilled" means to realize, execute and satisfy. So the Jewish people is (or was) missing? Is the Hebrew Bible defective? Is the First Covenant unfinished? That “to fulfilled” unifies the Tanakh and the First Testament which instead derive from two different stories and two different interpretative approaches to the Scriptures. Even if God is and remains only one, the wars against the Romans, the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, the reconstruction of Jewish life in the 1st-2nd century have opened a path for Israel that is different from the path followed by believers in Jesus Christ . Nostra Aetate rightly speaks of a bond between the Abraham’s stock and the people of the New Covenant. A first step towards a new ecclesiology which is still (almost?) yet to be built.