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Home > A conversation with > Article
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Catholics ‘must reach out’ to Jews, Muslims
a conversation with Prof Sr Mary Boys, educator on Christian-Jewish relations
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| By Damir Govorcin
11 September, 2005 |
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| RECONCILIATION: Catholics ‘have an obligation’, says Prof Sr Mary Boys. |
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“We can’t afford to stay in our own religious houses and peek out at the other person. We have to engage with each other,” says Sr Prof Mary Boys, an American educator in Christian-Jewish relations.
As Catholics, she said, “we have an obligation due to our history with Jews to take the initiative of reconciling with them”.
Sr Mary, who was in Sydney as part of an Australian visit to conduct a series of workshops for Jewish and Christian teachers to exchange ideas, added: “I think in terms of world peace and, at least in the US and Australia, where the majority of the population are Christians, we need to make overtures to Muslim leaders because the more they are isolated the more problematic it’s going to become.
“Every particular tradition has its own issues, so what lies between Christians and Jews differs from Christians and Muslims and so on.
“I think in all cases we need to learn to draw out and listen to each other. We need to be willing to engage difference, not just to say ‘that’s fine’ but probe and ask what does this mean.
“We need to look at our own tradition in another light. The importance of history can’t be stressed enough, to know what the history is of our relationship. Why are we having tensions today?”
She added: “When we put Jewish and Christian educators together to study the late Middle Ages and the Holocaust – two terrible times in the history of our communities – I experience the shame of our vision as a Church and the treatment of Jews.
“I’m not personally culpable, but it’s my family. We need to acknowledge that.”
Sr Mary is the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of practical theology at the Union Theological Seminary Union in New York and also teaches at the Union Jewish Seminary and the teachers’ college at Columbia University.
She was invited here by the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion to mark the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II document on non-Christian religions which began the process of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Judaism.
Sr Mary is the author of several books, including Has God only one blessing? which traces the history of Christian-Jewish relations.
This year, she was awarded the Sir Sigmund Sternberg medal for Christian-Jewish relations.
Sr Mary grew up in a strong Catholic family in Seattle, Washington, which had a number of close Jewish friends.
She further developed her relationship with Jews during her time teaching in New York and Boston, where she was part of a group of Catholics and Jews who would meet once a month.
For more than 20 years shas been conducting workshops in the US and overseas on inter-faith relations.
She says the September 11 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Centre had made her work seem “more urgent”.
“As an American, the terrorist attacks challenged our relationship with Muslims,” she said.
“There was a lot of hatred towards Muslims in the US, but I think the realisation was that we had to do more dialogue with Muslims.
“The US has become the most religious diverse nation on earth so we have to learn about different customs and cultures which is a real challenge.
“It’s absolutely imperative if we are to have peace in our world that people across religious traditions can talk to each other.”
She continued: “As an American I feel badly about what our government has done with Iraq.
“The government has used September 11 to make people more fearful to justify them doing almost anything.”
She says religious leaders have a tremendous role to play, “particularly to help us understand that terrorists in the name of religion aren’t religious people at all – they just hijack tradition to justify their means”.
Sr Mary says Catholics can’t afford to be too judgmental of other religions when it comes to the abuse of others.
“In our history, Catholics have also used God to justify their treatment of others,” she said.
“If we knew our history - not that we would be approving of Muslim terrorism – but we would be much less condemnatory of Islam.
“Unfortunately sometimes our leaders have been more interested in exploiting our faith, rather than helping us to understand the roots of our fear.”
Sr Mary says the US’ reputation has “suffered considerably” over the war in Iraq, claiming they are now perceived as “a belligerent nation, who struts on the world stage as the only superpower”.
“I think the conflict in the Middle East is an explosive situation and the way in which the violence keeps escalating, God only knows what’s going to happen,” she said.
“From our government officials there’s a lot of arrogance. I heard defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld talk about ‘Old Europe’ in a dismissive fashion. It was an arrogant thing to say.
“The US government is spending billions and billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, meanwhile the divide between rich and poor grows.
“It’s such a tragedy that in 2005 the world is still spending billions of dollars on armaments and people are starving to death.
“I think our religious leaders have to step out more and try and help. Human rights are being trampled on in many countries.
“The affect of Americans torturing Arab prisoners just further escalates tensions with the Arab world.”
Sr Mary’s own perspective has been broadened by the conflicts happening around the world.
“I was recently asked by a rabbinic student: ‘Are you obliged to pray daily’, which I thought was a great question,” she said.
“I would like to think that when Jews get to know me they would understand something about the power of Christianity and see it at work.
“It challenges me to live my faith more explicitly and humbly. To look at my faith through the lens of history and face the very definite challenge that we have of the way we have treated others through religious Catholicism.
“We really need to know the shameful part of our past. I can love Catholicism and at the same time see that there have been some bad things Catholics have done in the name of God. One doesn’t cancel out the other. Honesty is important in regards to inter-faith relations.”
In the US, Sr Mary was outspoken about the portrayal of Jews in Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, receiving hundreds of emails and letters from angry Catholics.
Many of the protesters accused her of “hating the bible”.
Despite the backlash, she still maintains the Jews were portrayed in a negative way.
“When I first saw the script for the movie I read it as a Catholic with Jewish sensitivities,” she said.
“It’s not like it’s a neutral story; this is a story that has been used against Jews for 2000 years. The fact that Mel Gibson didn’t want to recognise that is problematic from the outset.
“I think it’s too bad that many people who were attracted to the figure of Jesus in the film couldn’t also see that no matter how much that appealed to them, the Jews were portrayed in such a negative way, way beyond what is written in the Gospels. The association of the devil with the Jews in a number of scenes was over the top.
“Catholics, in particular, who were moved by the film, got very angry when I criticised it.”
She added: “The thing that disturbs me is that people within my own Catholic and Christian community have absolutely no regard for Christian charity.
“I received an email from someone which read: ‘You are the symbol of everything that’s wrong with the Catholic Church’.
“We have had the sexual abuse crisis in the US and so I’m the symbol of that? What right does anybody have in the name of God to feel so righteous and judge other people?”
Last year, Sr Mary accompanied a Jewish friend to Auschwitz, the death camp which claimed the lives of up to 1.6 million Jews. Nothing, she says, could have prepared her for what she witnessed.
She was so deeply moved that she is writing a book about her experience.
“The displays were so unbelievable – suitcases with names inscribed, human hair, gas ovens, crutches and many other things,” she says.
“A world ended for these people. Having a close Jewish friend with me made it such a moving experience.
“My people were complicit for the most part, while her people were put to death.
“The conditions in the barracks were appalling. They had one set of clothes, coping with the harsh winters, no toilets and dealing with a horrible stench.
“It was a total degradation of the human being. How anyone survived is just incredible.
“Visiting Auschwitz made me more conscious of the real power of evil in the world.
“The Nazis’ plan wasn’t just to expel Jews for the purposes of capitalism, but to degrade and annihilate them.
“It’s hard to imagine that the Nazis were human beings committing this genocide.”
Sr Mary says events such as the Holocaust make us question our own faith.
“The Holocaust raises a few questions about God which is frightening,” she said. “Like ‘Where was he?’ Someone said that God was there suffering with the people, but it still raises these large questions about God we can never answer.
“We can ask though where was the Church, who were much too protective and making alliances to save itself rather than helping the Jews.
“I have virtually never heard on an ordinary Sunday the Holocaust as any part of the sermon. It is a part of our past – tell the stories of our heroes as well as our failures.”
Sr Mary believes the Church in the US remains divided because of fallout from the sexual abuse crisis.
And she feels a renewal of liturgy is desperately needed to re-invigorate the Church.
“Catholics are angry, disillusioned and feel betrayed about the sexual abuse crisis,” she said.
“There’s a lot of anger towards the bishops rather than at the actual perpetrators themselves.
“The bishops allowed these men to go back again and again into positions where they were able to victimise more people.
“The Church also wastes a lot of opportunities to encourage people, particularly youth, to come to Mass.
“We need a renewal of liturgy, rather than being so preoccupied with whether we sit or stand at the Eucharist prayer.”
Since 1965, Sr Mary has been a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
Now 40 years on, she says the mandate of renewal from Vatican II not only breathed new life into her congregation, but the rest of the Church.
“As a result of Vatican II, we’re not waiting for people to tell us what to think and do,” she said.
“A person’s individual gifts are recognised. Before Vatican II our order was a military model.
“You may be teaching in school A and there’s a teaching need in school B, so somebody calls you up and says tomorrow we need you to move to this city to teach.
“We realise we can’t do that to people anymore. There has to be an element of choice and so we have to make conversation. I think we are way ahead of the men in this regard.
“We’re not posted from place to place and are asked what we feel we’re called to.
“We’re not pushed into anything.”
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