THE Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has launched a document highlighting Christianity’s unique relationship with Judaism and celebrating the positive relationship the two faiths enjoy in Australia.
“Walking Together: Catholics and Jews in the Australian Context” comes 30 years after the Bishops Conference published a set of guidelines and recommendations to enhance Catholic-Jewish relations.
That document had built on the foundations of “Nostra Aetate”, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
Bishop Michael McKenna, chair of the Bishops Commission for Christian Unity and Inter-Religious Dialogue, said “the new document Walking Together” “aims to help Catholics understand more deeply the uniqueness of our relationship with Judaism, our elder sisters and brothers in faith”.
Jillian Segal, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the document “bears eloquent testimony to the intimacy of the connection between Judaism and Christianity”.
She said it affirms “the essential Jewishness of Jesus and the fact that he prayed and worshipped as a Jew; the ongoing, irrevocable nature of the covenant between God and the Jewish people; and the fact that Jesus and the Pharisees were in alignment, not in opposition, to one another”.
Bishop McKenna said the document’s launch, followed by a kosher lunch, allowed for a deepening of the Catholic-Jewish relationship, which he says has “a long and good history”.
“Since Vatican II, which renewed and clarified the Catholic understanding of our relationship, our friendship and mutual help has grown,” he said.
The document acknowledges some of the challenges in Catholic-Jewish relations in the past, but also proposes ways to continue to heal the wounds that were created.
Download Walking Together at this link: https://bit.ly/ACBCWalkingTogether
