Church should not pursue conversion of Jews, pope says

I quite understand and agree that there is and ought not be a specific imperative to preach the Gospel to the Jews more than other nation or people per se.

In Matthew Chapter 28 Our Lord's instruction to His disciples was: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost:teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

"All the nations" were to be taught not just Israel. Israel; however, was not excluded from evangelization either.

Before we try to convert Jews, it might be a good idea for Catholics to try to be better Catholics. Our own example is much more powerful than anything we say or try to preach.If you have ever had Jevhovah Witnesses come to your door, trying to convert you, I think you know this is true.

Wow. Pope begins (very tentatively, and not officially) to come to conclusion that most of the practising faith communities came to only...30 or 40 years ago! Startling news, John.

In one sense the idea that the conversion of the Jews is in Gods hands - that is as a whole nation.

On the other sense we should be concerned about individual Jews and try our utmost to convert them to the one true Faith as we should with everyone else.

St Alphonsus Ratisbonne Pray for us.
Our Lady conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

As as reader, though not in agreement with, of the Hebrew Catholic those "Hebrew Catholic" followers of Fr. Elias Friedman O.Carm must be turning blue with this view of Benedict XVI. As for the two covenant theory that will always be the bone of contention between Jews and Catholics. As Franz Rosenzweig said on the verge of his conversion to Protestantism before his return to a committed Jewish life: "I have no need to know the Son when I know the Father directly". or something like that.

I would agree w/ the Pope that the Church should not be targeting Jews for conversion. Indeed she shouldn't be targeting anyone for conversion. However, although the Jews are better placed than any other non-Christian group in terms of salvation since the tradition they hold onto up to the time of Christ is still valid, they will only be saved as individuals because of what Christ did and through his Church.

There is no other way to salvation. In order for this to apply to an individual Jewish person, he or she must have an invincible (without any fault) ignorance of this truth. This is not an easy thing to actually possess. Catholics should be honest in terms of what we really believe about the possibility of Jewish salvation. The idea that after the time of Christ, the Jews have some sort of exemption is completely false.

Although Catholics should not be proselytizing, they should be gracious & welcoming to those who express an interest in our religion. If such a person expresses an interest, they should be open & dialogue with the person but not be agressive in any way. Let the person interested in conversion make all the moves. This is my advice.

Kudos to Dulles!

Also, the question of the the conversion of Israel at some time in the future is completely irrelevant to Jews who die before that special time if indeed such a time actually will exist. This parallels talk of the end times. We do believe that Christ will come in the end but what is the guarantee that all Jews living then will recognize him as the Messias? And how is this relevant to all the Jews who died after the time of Christ & prior to the Second Coming? The Church does teach the reality of a particular judgment for all individuals where the assignment is Heaven, Hell or Purgatory.

The Pope needs to clarify that only those Jews at any time of history who have an invincible (without fault) ignorance of the truth of Christ will have the possibilty of salvation. The basic formula for salvation is belief in the one true God & a request of that God for forgiveness of all sin prior to death. Belief in the one true God carries an implicit belief in Christ. But this implicit belief is not operative for those who actually reject Christ hence the need for an invincible ignorance of the truth of Christ in order for non-Christians to be saved.

Very interesting, though this book in no way is a magisterial statement. He writes as a theologian, not as the Pope here. Isn't that true?

I wonder what Jewish converts to Christianity would say... Edith Stein?

"... pro mUltis"

The "truth" to which Neusner refers is that the Pontiff knows of the tradition of the prophectic necessity of a Jewish Anti-Christ. Pope Benedict recently beatfied John Henry Newman who said: "Hence, considering that Antichrist would pretend to be the Messiah, it was of old the received notion that he was to be of Jewish race and to observe the Jewish rites (Newman, Cardinal John Henry. Lecture 2. The Religion of Antichrist. Copyright © 2004 by The National Institute for Newman Studies)." This same traditional teaching was espoused by various theologians and/or Doctors of Chucrh such as Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose, Saint Irenaeus, Sulpitius Severus, Francisco Suarez et al.

Why is there this talk about converting "the Jews," when we Catholics should be concerned about "this Jew" and "this Moslem" and "this non-believer" and "this Protestant." Jesus said to the Jews: "If you do not believe that I am he, you shall die in your sins." The Pope has no authority to change the Church's mandate from Christ "to teach all nations" and "preach the gospel to every creature." Nor do I think he means to, but his words will be interpreted this way for sure. Is not one Jewish convert of inestimable worth? NOW! I think that Alphonse Ratisbone and Edith Stein and Ven Joseph Libermann would beg to differ with this uncaring attitude. It almost seems to say "Leave the Jews alone, let God take care of them, en masse, in His own time." This is wrong. What about "in the meantime?"

This is as wonderful as it is important. Hopefully it will result in more serious study of Judaism by Catholics. Rabbi Jacob Neusner is one of the most prolific, most insightful writers I have read. Read him if you can. God bless us all.

So is the Pope saying that the apostles blew it? Their first mission was to the Jews before expanding to the Gentiles. St. Paul makes the comment that he (St. Paul) was sent to the Gentiles as Peter was to the Jews. So, basically,
St. Paul was the only guy with a "real" job in evangelization and the rest were sorely mistaken. Doesn't seem quite right that they got it SO wrong immediately after the Ascension.

I think the Pope is more worried about the Jews than he is about me.

This is not a brand new idea. I first read about it in the book titled Judaism Discovered by Hoffman.

I look forward to reading the book for myself, to see whatever is stated there about relations between Catholics and Jews; especially whether it is couched in the form of personal reflections or in that of papal authority.

In the meantime I think the conversion question John addresses here is only a remote question for practicing Catholics. We don't evangelize with the same fervor as others do, but we do live and interact side by side. An elder statesman in the church could give useful advice about what each faith community can learn from the other's faith heritage. We have the examples of the Book of Genesis discussion groups, the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and the pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The author has always cautioned against sharing of prayer and faith experiences on an equal footing. Does he have a more nuanced response here?

What does the author have to say about the continuing use of the Tanach in our liturgies as merely a pre-figuring of Christ? And what about the Christology from below that he has always rejected as an approach to knowing Jesus?

If I love the Jews, then I must seek their salvation, and it is imperative to remember the thrice defined doctrine: Outside the Church there is no salvation.

If it's true that seeking to convert Jews to Christianity is “no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church”, then the Catholic Church has effectively closed itself down.

I'm honestly not sure this is actually a big step forward. It sounds very much like, "Well, you're going to be converted whether or not you like it but we don't have to worry about that because God will do it in His own time." Talk about arrogance! How do we DARE presume to know what God is going to do in the future
with such specificity!

I don't know how Jews will respond to this but it is very offensive to me and I'm already a Roman Catholic.

Unless there is a clarification, this is going to be a disaster. If the book truly says “in the early church, the urgency of evangelization wasn’t based so much on the idea that every human being had to know Christ in order to be saved.” We are headed for troubling times. That goes against the entirety of the Gospel. So, under this interpretation, all Jews until the end times are blinded and condemned, but those alive during the Parousia will re-grafted? If there is salvation in no one else then Jesus, then either the current Jews are not to be saved or the Pope is espousing a dual covenant theory. I think I’ll stick with “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” And therefore it must be brought to the all men.

One more Benedictine gaffe.

The pope's comments should drive many traditionalist rightwingers up the wall of despair.

So much for church teaching on the Jews, limbo, purgatory and many other things. Don't anyone ever blog here again that the "church teachings do not change."

But how valid is the question of the end-times anyway? As Catholics we have to believe in the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time & the General Judgment but that's about it. All talk of an Anti-Christ & 666, etc is not doctrinal as far as I know. The Apocalypse is Revelation but it should not be taken literally.

However, it does teach a truth & this truth needs to be mined by scripture scholars. I don't think much more can be said than that there will be turbulence on the earth at the end of time. This is not surprising since the earth as we know it will end then & will be followed by a cosmic event, namely the Second coming of Christ.

Sounds like a duel covenant theory to me.

So if St. Paul was wrong about converting his fellow Jews, does that also bring into question his teachings in Romans on homosexuality?

I have the utmost respect for the Holy Father. He is a man of true Christian faith and scholarhip. If he means, as other postings have suggested, that Jews should not be specially "targeted" for evangelization by Christians, but certainly not excluded from our international missionary efforts, I would agree. Saint Paul certainly did not allow himself to be diverted from seeking the salvation of his Jewish brothers and sisters, and believed that his gospel was God's power to save both Jew and Gentile alike. I do not lightly dissent from this Pope's teaching, but I cannot interpret Saint Paul's words in a manner that would contradict his actions.

Shouldn't the indignant commentators here first READ the Pope's new book before starting to teach him the p's and q's of the Gospel?

And by the way the Pope is quite correct when he says according to John Allen 'that in the early church, the urgency of evangelization wasn’t based SO MUCH on the idea that every human being had to know Christ in order to be saved, but rather on a “grand conception of history,” according to which the Gospel had to reach all the nations in order for the world to fulfill its destiny.' Perhaps you should also read the famous Anglican scholar, NT Wright, about the meaning of the word Gospel for the first Christians and for St Paul: it was decidedly NOT only or in the first place a message of an insurance package to be grasped for entrance to "heaven"/life after death.

About the Jews and prozelatizing: I am sure the Pope's views refer to aggressive and pesky types of en masse Evangelizing. In other writings by Ratzinger he has mentioned that re: the Jews one should nevertheless never hide one's Christian belief and faith and everyone knows of his high regard for Edith Stein and other Jewish converts to whom he also referred in this regard. No, this Pope is not ashamed of the Gospel. That is one of the reasons he wrote two books on Jesus Christ! It was a tremendous priority for him to finish at least these two books before his death.

I thank him for his couragous and clear faith and the way he engages with the Scriptures in a non-fundamentalist manner where it is necessary and historically authentic to do so.

Can't wait to read the book.

Utter nonsense, proving that this Pope is of marginal depth and seriousness, at best. I cannot imagine how Jewish saints from Peter to Edith Stein must be reacting to this insanity.

It seems that step-by-step the ‘cracks in the structure of Catholicism’ are moving subtly towards the inevitable disintegration of this edifice. We are a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Scientific biblical-historical scholarship and related religious studies’ philosophical discussion have brought to light the problematic issue of revelation in the entire Judeo-Christian tradition. These same academic disciplines have also dislodged the bedrock of this edifice to its core foundation i.e. the credibility of the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. If we cannot consider ourselves a part of a divinely-established-humanly-devised reality anymore, then we are in process of evolving to a new faith and moral directive. We look in blind yet cognitively considered faith to the Origin of our contingent being, the Supreme Being, not the human-imagined God in human-contrived biblical stories. We contingent beings have been given a contingent earth to care for on our cosmic evolutionary journey. We can continue to evolve if we care adequately about this task in every dimension, or we can continue the self-and-others-destruction process right to extinction. We are well into the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, but we can have relative hope if we come together as a species and do what needs to be done.

John 6:54
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

Matthew 18:3
And said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

John 3:5
Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

John 14:6
Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.

I am Catholic; but the Pope is "mistaken". As listed above - Edith Stein, Alphonse Rattisbon, and also Eugenio Zoli -- would not take well with this Vatican II alliance with B'nai B'rith. I pray for the Pope. Many will perish in Hell because they do not follow The Messiah through His One, Holy, Catholic , and Apostolic Church.

That's not what the apostles thought; St. Paul generally went to the synagogue first to try to convert the Jews when he arrived in a city, before trying to convert the Gentiles. All these quotations of medieval Catholic thinkers who say that one ought not to try to convert the Jews, because they are only supposed to be converted in the last days, suppress an essential element of the position of these thinkers. These thinkers all held that the Jews who were not converted were going to go to hell. They were not bothered by this, because they thought that after all they were Jews and deserved to go to hell. This is repugnant, but at least it is consistent with the central Christian teaching that we can only be saved through Jesus Christ. If you say that the Jews don't need to be converted, but do not want to say that they will all go to hell as a result, it is hard to see how this central Christian teaching can be preserved. I underline that haven't read what the pope actually wrote, so am only commenting on the claim attributed to him; his actual view may be different.

So the Apostles were not doing the right thing by trying to convert the Jews? This is an entirely new and false idea as far as I am concerned. Seems like a huge turnaround.I don't say pick out Jews for conversion, but just treat them like anyone else.

Is it possible that most Jews are totally indifferent to the Pope's opinions? After all, many Catholics find his leadership disappointing.

Well, I think that we should not care what any theologian has to say about anything, including Benedict, unless you are aspiring for a degree in theology. We should only believe what is to be taken as the official teachings and dogmas/doctrines of the Church. Everything else is irrelevant, it is not revealed dogma, and can be ignored and dismissed as a mere opinion. Paying attention to theological opinions can do more harm than good.

The modern day Jew is the spiritual descendant of the Pharisee for whom Jesus had harsh words.

It is important to remember that the modern day Jew of the diaspora was the consequence, not of the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East:

http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

The modern day Jew has as much claim to be a descendant of the Old Testament Jew as the Palestinian muslim.

I take it the pope is not speaking "infallibly"?

The question of conversion is moot, since the modern Catholic Church is in a shambles, at least partially because so many of her clergy, theologians, religious and laity don't even believe in her teachings. Prime example: this publication, which regularly distorts true Catholicism beyond recognition to fit its secularized notions of "faith." In order to convert, you must first believe, and be a living example of that belief.

I subscribe to "Magnificat". About once a month we pray that people "will return to the faith of their ancestors." I always wonder if I'm praying that I'll return to paganism. What a joke the politically correct church has become, i.e. how ridiculous that because the pope is a German and former Hitler youth he would declare that we aren't to tell anyone about the wonderful, amazing, totally awesome, son of the most high God, Jesus Christ our Lord! Didn't the apostles convert Jews? Didn't Paul go first to the synagogue? Didn't Jesus go to the Jews? The Jews are Jesus' own people, of course we should convert them. The problem is that the Catholic church, while taking all the people's money and living like the aristocracy, would then send the people to kill and rob the Jews (pogroms)and teach them to blame the Jews for their poverty (instead of the priests and aristocracy) -- now that was wrong. Talking about Jesus? Never!

This is wrong or the Holy Father is being subtle but it will surely be interpreted wrongly. Of course we must treat Jewish people with all respect but that does not mean that when the time comes, we should not tell them the truth and that is that there is no salvation in their religion. The New Testament does supercede the Old. Unless they believe in and accept the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, they will not be saved.

Preach the gospel, by words if necessary. St. Francis of Assisi.

Mercy me. Aren't the theocons in a real snit over this? Who does this pope think he is! Could it be that he isn't a parrot of Mother Angelica's kind of alleged Catholicism?

Well, one thing is for sure. This opinion of the Pope's will never become a Magisterial teaching of the Church. The Holy Spirit still guides the Church in all truth.

John 14:6

Jesus answered him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the Father except through me"...

Acts 4:12 ( St Peter )

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved

from Acts 4:10-12

"Be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, even by him this man standeth here before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

So Jesus trying to convert Jews first and gentiles second was completely wrong ? And Paul's many preachings and conversions of synogogues as well ? Well I choose Jesus and Paul over this Pope any day.

St. Paul tried to convert Jews. St. Peter tried to convert Jews. Our Lord sent His apostles out to try to convert Jews. Clearly those three erred, according to Benedict XVI. Our Lord wept over Jerusalem because the Jews had largely rejected Him...but if there was no point in trying to convert the Jews, then His weeping was pointless...and if our Lord did something pointless in this serious a matter, then He did not know what He was about...and if He didn't know what He was about, then He wasn't God...and the Jews have been right for 2,000 years and we had better hope that they try to convert us.

My theory on the Jew/Christian thing is the Messiah the Jews are waiting for and the one we are waiting for (the second coming) are one and the same. When Jesus comes back, he is not coming back as the poor suffering servant he came to us 2K year ago, but as a 'warrior-king'. That is who the Jewish people are waiting for, that is probably they only way they will finally recognize Jesus, they just haven't been 'awakened' yet, which will happened at a time specified by God.

To me, Pope Benedict's comments seem scandalous. Should Catholics still believe that during a Jew's particular judgment, the Jew will find where his soul will wait for the general resurrection? If that Jew is going to convert on the last day, does his soul need to go to the Limb of the Fathers until throngs of Jews become Catholics on the last day? Benedict XVI says he changed the Traditional Mass's Good Friday prayer because the earlier version was "hurtful to the Jews." How much pain will any Jew feel if he dies outside the Catholic Church because Catholics refuse to evangelize him?

Henry Parker,

Yes, the church's teachings do not change. Reformation in Christianity was always an attempt to return to the early church. The church still teaches purgatory. Limbo was a theological proposition.

How is this different from what's already in the Catechism? The collective conversion of Israel as a nation at the end to time has been predicted by church fathers through the ages.

Church Fathers and Saints on the End-Times Conversion of the Jews

http://www.salvationisfromthejews.com/endtimes.html

The pope can mistakes. The Catholics must defend the church as a representative of God not the mistake opinion of Pope.