[Apologetics] Catechism Edit 'Troubling,' Jewish Leaders Say

[Dianne Dawson]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203077.html?nav=rss_religion
Catechism Edit
'Troubling,' Jewish Leaders Say
Deletion of Passage on Moses in Catholic
Handbook Questioned
By Daniel Burke
Religion News
Service 
Saturday, September 13, 2008; Page B09 
In catechisms, as
in prisons, there are no insignificant sentences. 
Every word of these
handbooks is meant to clearly express the fundamentals of the faith. The Catholic
Church, especially, places great emphasis on its catechism to help pass
doctrine from one generation to the next. 
So when 200 U.S.
bishops voted this summer to delete a reference to the covenant between God and
Moses in the "United States Catholic Catechism for Adults," some
Jewish leaders were perplexed. 
Pending Vatican
approval, this sentence will be deleted from the text: "Thus the covenant
that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for
them." 
Bishops said too
many Catholics seemed to misunderstand the covenant sentence, believing it
meant Jews do not need Jesus to be saved. 
"There was a
concern that we were trying to say too much in too few words," said
Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who chairs the board that oversaw the new
catechism. "When you get into an area of theological complexity, brevity
doesn't always serve you well." 
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),
which published the catechism in 2006 with the Vatican's approval, says it is
the first change to the new catechism, which took six years and three drafts to
complete. 
Jewish leaders,
some of whom view the change in light of a recent flap over the Latin Mass and
lingering resentments over "The Passion of the Christ," are perplexed
by the excision. 
In addition, a
controversial Catholic apologist -- whose writings have been denounced by his
bishop and whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a "rabid"
anti-Semite -- is taking credit for the change. 
The USCCB says the
statement about the Moses covenant was not wrong, just ambiguous and
misunderstood. The conference decided to replace it with a section from the
older "Catechism of the Catholic Church" that quotes St. Paul's
letter to the Romans: 
"To the Jewish
people, whom God first chose to hear his word, 'belong the sonship, the glory,
the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them
belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the
Christ." 
That passage
puzzles Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
"Why take a very simple sentence and replace it with a very complicated
paragraph?" he asked. "When did the Catholic Church decide that our
covenant was finished?" 
Alan Berger, a
professor of Holocaust studies at Florida Atlantic University, called the change
the latest "in a long line of mixed symbols. It's very troubling." 
Deleting the
sentence allows U.S. bishops to dodge the controversy, said Monsignor Daniel
Kutys, executive director of evangelization and catechesis at the USCCB's
committee on the catechism. 
"Part of the
decision was to skirt the issue rather than explain it," Kutys said. 
The USCCB and
individual bishops began receiving letters about the catechism in 2006, after a
Pennsylvania man, Robert Sungenis, targeted the reference to Moses on the Web
site of his Bellarmine Theological Forum, according to Kutys. 
Sungenis, 53, of
State Line, Pa., said he wrote to the Vatican and met with officials from the
bishops' conference. "I tried all the proper channels and I think it
worked," Sungenis said. 
If the sentence
were not deleted from the catechism, Sungenis said, it would "shake the
faith" of lay Catholics by implying that people can be saved without
believing in Jesus. 
The amateur
apologist -- Sungenis has a doctorate in religious studies from a British
school without U.S. accreditation -- also asserts that "an anti-Christian,
Jewish influence has infiltrated the Catholic Church at the very highest
levels." 
Sungenis's writings
on Jews have been sharply criticized by fellow Catholics, who accuse him of
anti-Semitism. His local bishop, Kevin Rhoades of Harrisburg, has demanded that
Sungenis stop writing about Jews and made him stop using the word
"Catholic" in his organization's name. 
I had hoped that he
would cease from speaking or writing about Judaism and the Jewish people in a
hostile, uncharitable, and un-Christian manner," Rhoades wrote to a former
colleague of Sungenis's in February. 
Sungenis might have
been the first to raise the issue, but he shouldn't be given credit for
revising the catechism, said the USCCB's Kutys. "It was changed, but not
because of what he said," Kutys said. "People were misunderstanding
it, and through that blog spreading that misunderstanding to other
people." 
 
 
Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.
Ps 42:1


      
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