Vatican Denies New Ecumenical Draft Aims at Converting Jews

A high Vatican source asserted yesterday that the revised draft of the Ecumenical Council statement on Catholic-Jewish relations had been erroneously interpreted as containing an appeal to Jews to convert to Catholicism.

The comment, stressing that the new draft was to be considered a proposal for discussion, and thus subject to change, was made in reply to the publication in New York last week part of the revised draft which evoked sharp and widespread criticism from Jewish leaders in many countries. Observers here said the reply had been made with remarkable speed, and with obvious surprise at the strong negative reaction from Jewish sources.

The source asserted that the new text deviated only in form, and little in substance, from the original text proposed at the second session of the Council, The source insisted that the controversial paragraphs on conversion were “only” a reminder that, according to Paul, the reunion of the Jewish people with the Catholic church constituted part of the “Christian hope,” and that the Church therefore waited “with confidence” for the “adhesion” of the Jewish people.

The source compared the statement on the Jews and the crucifixion in the original and revised drafts, and said the revision made it clear that the new text held it was “unjust to call this people deicide, or to consider it cursed by God. Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans assured us that God never abandoned his elected people.” For these reasons, the source said, “this time it had been preferred not to speak even of deicide.” The source referred to the fact that the word deicide, which appeared in the original version, does not appear in the revised draft.

A source close to the Secretariat for the promotion of Christian unity added that publication of the full text would prove useful because many criticisms were made without knowledge of the entire text.