American Catholic Bishops Warn Passion Plays Must Not Cause Anti-semitism

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops today warned the writers and producers of passion plays during the Lenten season not to permit them to “become a source of anti-Semitic reactions” which are “foreign and injurious to true Christian piety and to the intent of the Sacred Scriptures as well as offensive to our Jewish brothers.”

The warning, probably the strongest ever issued on the subject by the Roman Catholic clergy in America, was signed by six members of the executive committee of the Conference’s Secretariat which has its headquarters for Catholic-Jewish Relations at Seton Hall University, a Catholic sponsored university here. They are the Rt. Revs. Msgr. George G. Higgins and Msgr. John M. Oesterreicher, Rev. Edward H. Flannery, Sister K. Hargrove, Rev. John B. Sheerin and Rev. Bernard J. Law.

The statement issued by the Bishop’s Conference noted that passion plays could become anti-Semitic when carelessly written or produced and when “simplistic and erroneous interpretations of the scared writings have occasioned the accusation that the Jewish people of all time bear unique responsibility for the death of Jesus.” It went on to state that “history is witness to the injustices and hatred experienced (by the Jews) because they have been considered guilty of Christ’s death and thus an accursed people. What we say here, it may be added, is equally applicable to sermons and teachings on the passion of Christ.” It listed five examples of how the role of Jews in the death of Christ could be misrepresented or exaggerated in passion plays so as to create anti-Semitism.

The Bishops went on to cite the statement on the Jews at the second Vatican Council which urged that “all see to it that nothing is taught in catechetical work or in preaching the Word of God that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.” The Council “further has reminded us.” the Bishops Conference statement said, “that what happened in His (Christ’s) passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, or against the Jews of today. The Council Fathers make St. Paul’s assurance their own: ‘Now as before God holds Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers.’ In consequence, ‘the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.'”