Approval by Vatican of Declaration on Jews Seen by Catholic Primate

The Catholic primate of Britain, Dr. John Heenan, Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, expressed “confidence” here today that the recent Ecumenical Council’s declaration on relations with Jews, removing the ancient charge of deicide from the Jewish people, would be approved an would be promulgated by Pope Paul VI before the end of this year. Such promulgation would make the views expressed in the Council’s declaration official Catholic Church doctrine.

Reviewing the “strange adventure” of the declaration in the Ecumenical Council, Dr. Heenan noted that Augustin Cardinal Bea, who had drafted the document presented to the first session of the Council, had intended that Church “make reparation to the Jewish people” and break down any anti-Semitism existing among Catholics today.

Dr. Heenan pointed out that “the barrage from the Middle Eastern camp,” led by Arabs, saw the Bea draft as a political document, rather than as a religious treatise. The second session of the Council, he recalled, received a draft which “once again condemned the Jews as a people for the death of Christ.” “These alterations,” he continued, “were distasteful to the majority of the Council fathers.” But the final document, approved by the third Council, said the archbishop, “should be satisfactory to the Jews and, with its supplement on other non-Christian peoples, also to people of all creeds.”

While discussing the Jewish question, Dr. Heenan also said that the Council declaration “seeks to prevent further persecution of Jews” and alluded to the situation of the Jews in the USSR. “In the Soviet Union,” he said, “they (the Jews) share with Christian brethren restrictions and hostility of a still bitterly anti-religious state. There is less religious liberty in Russia today than in the last days of Stalin. In our prayers, we should remember the persecuted Jews in the Soviet Union.”