Shocked, shocked to discover Christians want converts

Recently newspapers reported the death of the Rev. “Ike” Eikerenkoetter, a roguish televangelist who preached a prosperity gospel and sold $19.95 prayer rugs guaranteed to help you pray for money. Because my student digs near Columbia were in a zip code that included parts of Harlem, I used to get his mailings. “The best thing you can do for poor people,” Rev. Ike used to say, ” is, don’t be one of them.” That’s the same advice I would give Jews regarding Christians. As Franz Rosenzweig observed, the actual, physical existence of the Jewish people stands surety to Christians for the reliability of God’s promise.  Without our actual presence, he added, the Bible easily can be reduced to a Gnostic document.

Now we have another flair-up between Jewish organizations and America’s Catholic Bishops over whether the Church wants to try to proselytize us. As the AP reported (via Haaretz):

Major Jewish groups and rabbis from the three largest branches of American Judaism said Thursday that their relationship with Roman Catholic leaders is at risk because of a recent U.S. bishops’ statement on salvation.

Jewish groups said they interpret the new document to mean that the bishops view interfaith dialogue as a chance to invite Jews to become Catholic. The Jewish leaders said they “pose no objection” to Christians sharing their faith, but said dialogue with Jews becomes “untenable” if the goal is to persuade Jews to accept Christ as their savior.

“A declaration of this sort is antithetical to the very essence of Jewish-Christian dialogue as we have understood it,” Jewish leaders said in a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The signers were the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and rabbis representing the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements.

The statement fueling the tension was issued by the bishops in June to clarify a 2002 document called “Covenant and Mission.” The bishops said the earlier document mistakenly played down the importance of sharing the Gospel and was therefore misleading.

“While the Catholic Church does not proselytize the Jewish people, neither does she fail to witness to them her faith in Christ, nor to welcome them to share in that same faith whenever appropriate,” said Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of a bishops’ committee on doctrine. He had said the revisions affirmed statements from the Holy See.

I can’t find anything new in this “reconsideration.” It reiterates the standard Catholic view that the Church expects the conversion of the Jews in the End Times. A summary of the issues is available on the Nicene Truth blog.

There are several strands in the discussion that are tricky to disentangle. 1) When John Paul II announced during his 1982 visit to the Mainz synagogue that the “old covenant never had been revoked,” the statement hit the Church like a thunderbolt. There was little preparation for it. A substantial body of Church opinion rankles at the idea, and slips in the following piece of sophistry: “Of course the old covenant wasn’t revoked—God doesn’t revoke his covenants—but it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ,” i.e. the Jewish people no longer is the Israel of the Bible.

2) The pro-Palestinian, anti-colonial left in the Church bears the same hatred of Israel that Third Worldists do in general and tend to seize on substitution theology to justify it.

3) The real liberals in the Church don’t propose to proselytize anyone, but simply “bear witness” to everyone through charitable acts. That is more or less the Jesuit position. But these lassitudinarian elements converge on the Third Worldists and tend to hate Israel. Catholics who care enough to think about Israel’s eventual conversion are more likely to support Israel.

4) The evangelicals never promised not to proselytize Jews (as the Catholics did at Vatican II), and they are Israel’s best friends.

The fact is that Jews who convert do not do so because crafty missionaries get hold of them but because their understanding of Judaism is profoundly inadequate. One finds very few religious Jews converting to Christianity. It’s the secular ones like Edith Stein, a neo-Kantian philosopher from non-religious families, who do so. Franz Rosenzweig came from an entirely secular family and thought he needed to be a Christian to respond to God’s love.  Then he spent Yom Kippur with pious Eastern European Jews and learned that Jews did not need to come to the Father via the Son, because they already are there.

Should Christians object to dialogue with us because we recite the Aleinu prayer each day, which hopes that one day all the world will call on God with one unique name (not three)? I’m all for the occasional dust-up with Christians. I began this blog with a call for impassioned dialogue.  But the present fight seems like a waste of time.