Needed: a Catholic initiative

Catholic New Times, Feb 8, 2004 by Dow Marmur

Though Christian-Jewish relations have become part of the religious scene in Canada and elsewhere, very few exponents of churches and synagogues are actively involved. Apart from officials, it's usually only a few liberal priests and rabbis who are active. They rarely represent the mainstream of their respective communities.

Nevertheless, most Christian and Jewish leaders seem to be supportive of the enterprise. Catholics have often been in the forefront. Thus the pope has met many Jewish leaders, including an Israeli Orthodox chief rabbi. Even if such meetings may be more about ritual than substance, the fact that they take place has helped to set the tone and create a climate of mutual respect, even trust.

It seems that it's the internal changes on each side in the last half-century that have created the favorable conditions for dialogue. With the establishment of the State of Israel and full emancipation in the countries where they live, Jews have gained self-confidence. At the same time, Christians have had to accept that the church is no longer dominant. As the relationship between Jews and Christians has become more symmetrical, the conditions for dialogue have greatly improved.

Ironically, however, as the opportunities have increased, so the dialogue has become less urgent, perhaps even less relevant. Jews no longer need Christians to establish their rights as citizens and Christians no longer need Jews to demonstrate the superiority of the New Covenant. The loss of Christian power and the shock of the Holocaust have resulted in a drastic reorientation of Christian theology. Many Christians now speak of Judaism and Christianity as the elder and the younger brothers and assert that the Covenant which God made with the Jewish people has never been abrogated.

It seems, therefore, that the more Christians and Jews talk to each other the less important it is what they say. The greatest urgency now is to establish opportunities for Muslim-Jewish dialogue. The State of Israel will soon have the majority of the world's twelve or thirteen million Jews. It's a small enclave among countless millions of Muslims. It must come to terms with its Palestinian neighbors for both to live in peace with each other. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are Muslims. Encounters between representatives of the two faiths could become important conduits in the normalization of relations.

Yet Muslim-Jewish dialogue is hardly on the map. One of the reasons given is that, unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islam hasn't (yet?) adapted to modernity. Muslims and Jews don't seem to have a common language that would give meaning to encounters. Representatives of Islam would probably get along best with exponents of Orthodox Judaism, but the latter are dead set against dialogue of any kind, internal or external.

The political situation further contributes to making dialogue both urgent and difficult. When Jews lived as minorities in Muslim countries, they were often tolerated there. Today, when Jews appear to be strong in their sovereign state, which most Muslim Arabs consider to have been unjustly taken from them, they find it difficult to relate to Jews. In the same way as the Jews' emergence from powerlessness in the ghettos of Christian Europe made Christian-Jewish encounters possible, so the emergence of the Jewish state makes Muslim-Jewish dialogue seemingly impossible.

Would non-Arab Muslims be more open to dialogue? Perhaps, but in countries with large Muslim populations- e.g., Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria--there are no Jews. The only image of the contemporary Jew known there is the negative one that the Arab world projects.

The situation is somewhat different in Europe where for the last quarter-century or so there have been groups of Jews and Muslims who have come together for discussions including theological differences. JCM (Jews-Christians-Muslims) in continental Europe and the Three Faiths Forum in Britain and elsewhere come to mind. But these groups involve only a small number of individuals. They are important in themselves yet quite insufficient for a breakthrough.

Therefore, some of us hope that a concerted Christian effort could break the stalemate. The church could act as an honest broker between Mosque and Synagogue. But it now seems clear that Protestants are incapable of acting in this matter. The liberals among them are often vociferous in their criticism of Israel and its policies thus alienating Jews. Conservative evangelical Protestants tend to support the Jewish state unconditionally and be very critical of Islam thus alienating Muslims.

The Catholic Church, both globally and locally, stands a much better chance to act as a catalyst in this process as it, mercifully, shows fewer signs of partisanship. If it got more involved, it might make an important contribution to the peace process in the Middle East at a time when politicians seem to be getting nowhere. And it could all start here in Canada with its reputation as the world's honest broker.