American Jewish Groups See Far-reaching Effects in Vatican Move

Major American Jewish organizations and community leaders today hailed the decree on the Catholic Church attitude toward Jews, presented to the Ecumenical Council, as a far-reaching augury of improved relations between Christians and Jews.

A.M. Sonnabend, president of the American Jewish Committee, said the statement is “an historic event” and had been put forward “in a spirit that recognizes the historic values of Judaism as a living religion and creed.” Viewing the statement as “a decree conceived out of a sense of Catholic concern for the elimination of centuries-old tensions,” he said it may well “augur a new era in Catholic-Jewish relations.” Predicting that acceptance of the decree will make it impossible “for anyone to instigate hatred for Jews and claim sanction or support in Church dogma or teaching,” Mr. Sonnabend declared:

“By castigating attitudes and beliefs that have perpetrated hostility against Jews, generation after generation; by condemning anti-Semitism in a manner none can misunderstand; by denouncing unequivocally the myth that Jews are a decide people rejected by God –‘Christ-killers’ in the popular epithet–the Church can provide a powerful force for the rooting out of millennia-old evils that have caused incalculable suffering.” The AJC president paid special tribute to Cardinal Bea for having brought to his task “the insight, that contribution of deep religious feeling and humanism.”

The National Conference of Christians and Jews called the decree “a milestone in Jewish-Christian relations.” Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of the NCCJ, said “it is magnificently within the spirit of greater inter religious understanding and goodwill.”

VATICAN DOCUMENT LAUDED BY AMERICAN RABBINICAL LEADERS

Lewis H. Weinstein, chairman of the National Community Relations Advisory Council, declared: “The statement has, we believe, the most significant and far-reaching potentialities for removing an age-old impediment to Christian-Jewish amity and understanding. Its acceptance by the Council, it is to be hoped, will result in profound and extensive changes in teaching and preaching that will, in time, work a beneficent

On behalf of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Dore Schary, ADL president, hailed presentation of the document to the Ecumenical Council as “a magnificent development, presaging a major and positive change in attitudes throughout the world.” As an official Catholic Church statement, he predicted, the decree’s influence “will be world-wide, perhaps the single, most important and decisive step in removing a root cause of prejudice against Jews in all of modern history.”

Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said: “The declaration is a positive step in the direction of better relations among all religions of the world. It demonstrates the new vitality and strength of the religious forces which are determined that religion shall not be used as a means for separating man from man, but rather as an instrument of love of man for God, and man for fellow man.”

Rabbi Irving Miller, first vice-president of the Rabbinical Council of America, representing 850 Orthodox rabbis, expressed his organization’s “gratification” and said that the statement, “if adopted, will mark a giant step forward in the betterment of inter group relationships.” The decree was seen as “an awakening liberalism through church theology” by Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of the Commission on Interfaith Activities of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform).