Discussion of Amendments to Declaration on Jews Opens in Rome Today

A week’s plenary session of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea, will get under way here tomorrow to study 242 amendments proposed before the Ecumenical Council, last November, in connection with the proposed Catholic Church Declaration which would repudiate the ancient charges of deicide against the Jewish people.

On the session’s agenda is also the proposed schema on religious liberty, which would concede to all peoples their right to practice whatever faith they chose. The latter draft had not even come to a vote at the last session of the Ecumenical Council, while the Declaration dealing with Jews and other non-Christians had been preliminarily adopted by an overwhelming vote of 1,992 to 99. Both drafts are on the agenda for the Council’s fourth session, due to convene at the Vatican next September.

(From London, it was reported today that John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, who is vice-president of the Bea Secretariat, will attend the plenary session and will report on the “disquiet felt in certain Jewish quarters” about reports that the declaration on Jews may be revised drastically. Reports that such revision had been sought by some conservative bishops and Catholic prelates in Arab lands had reached London from Rome.)

POPE PAUL CREATES DEPARTMENT FOR RELATIONS WITH MOSLEMS

Meanwhile, Pope Paul VI created last week, for the first time, a special Department for Relations Between Moslems and Christians, to be conducted by the Rev. Joseph Cuoq, a French-born priest attached to the White Fathers Missionaries in Africa. With the title of Undersecretary, he will function under the Secretariat for non-Christians, headed by Paolo Cardinal Marella.

There was no word from the Vatican as to whether another department, for relations with Jews, may be established. Moslems, as well as Jews and Buddnists, are mentioned in the Declaration on Relations With Non-Christians adopted last November by the Ecumenical Council. It was believed here that, if a separate department is to be formed on relations with Jews, such a step would not be taken until after the next session of the Ecumenical Council makes a final decision on the “Jewish issue.”

Cardinal Marella’s Secretariat is not a counciliary body as is the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, headed by Cardinal Bea, the principal Vatican proponent of the repudiation once and for all of the Jewish responsibility for the killing of Jesus.

Evidently referring to the fact that prelates from Arab countries have been opposing the declaration dealing with the Jewish people, a Catholic newspaper here, Avvenira d’Italia, stated today: “The institution of the Islamic department will dissipate incomprehension manifested in some Islamic environments toward the content of the Declaration on the Jews. Quite to the contrary, there is a unitary and equally fraternal spirit in this new attention which the Church is at present addressing to non-Christians, aiming at a dialogue which would find particularly near to the Church the spiritual families descending from Abraham, Jacob and Israel, that is Israel’s family from whom the Moslems have descended.”