Sydney
7 September 2003
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Own faith is vital to dialogue – cardinal
A new relationship has been forged between Catholics and Jews over the past 36 years, since the Second Vatican Council, says Cardinal Edward Cassidy (pictured).
“Much, indeed, has been accomplished,” he said.
“We must – both Jews and Christians – bring the great news of Jewish-Christian reconciliation to the members of our communities if we wish to ensure that we are building on a solid foundation.”
The cardinal said Catholics and Jews must not dialogue with the expectation that they will agree on everything.
“It would be naive of us to think so,” he said.
“We are two distinct faith communities with common roots and a great deal that we can affirm together. Still, there are essential differences that must be respected.
“The process of dialogue requires both a clear understanding of one’s own faith tradition and openness to the experience of others.
“We must not be surprised or disturbed when, on one or other matter that touches our faith or history, we have different opinions or understandings.”
Cardinal Cassidy said two events symbolised the new relationship between Catholics and Jews.
“On March 12, 2000, Pope John Paul II called for and presided over a special penitential service in St Peter’s Basilica,” he said, “during which, in the name of the Catholic Church throughout the world, the following prayer was offered:
‘God of our Fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants To bring your name to the nations:
We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history Have caused these children of yours to suffer,
And asking your forgiveness
We wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood
With the people of the covenant.’
“Then, on March 26, 2000, just two weeks later, Pope John Paul II placed this prayer of pardon, with his signature on it, in the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem.”
Three days earlier, the Pope had laid a wreath in the mausoleum of Yad Vashem in Israel, re-kindled the flame that recalls the six million victims of the Shoah (Holocaust) and stated “in continuation, as it were, of the prayer offered in St Peter’s”:
‘Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women and children cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can we fail to hear their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one can diminish its scale. We wish to remember. But we wish to remember for a purpose – namely, to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of innocent victims of Nazism.’
The cardinal, former head of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and, later of the Vatican Council for Christian Unity, was delivering the 2003 Polding Lecture at St John’s College, Sydney University.