The Catholic world has reacted favorably and “almost unanimously” to the recent Ecumenical Council’s adoption of the declaration absolving Jewry of deicide and condemning anti-Semitism, according to the results of a survey made public here today by Civilta Cattolica. The periodical, issued by the Jesuit fathers, is one of the most authoritative publications in the Catholic world.
Civilta Cattolica also attached great significance to the reactions to the Council declaration by Jews, emphasizing especially the fact that 13 American Jewish organizations–cutting across the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform branches of U.S. Judaism–had joined in endorsing the Ecumenical Council declaration in spite of “the diverse tendencies among these organizations, which at times are opposed one to another.”
The large Ecumenical Council vote in favor of the declaration, exceeding more than two-thirds of all who voted, the journal pointed out, “confuted some of the immediate Arab reactions” to Augustin Cardinal Bea’s presentation of the declaration. Civilta Cattolica noted that some of the Arab bishops had claimed that “only Cardinal Bea sponsors this cause, unsupported by any other Council member.” That view, the Jesuit organ stressed, was “an obvious alteration of the truth.”
In 20 pages of texts, Civilta Cattolica analyzed many of the 35 interventions on this question by prominent bishops, and laid special emphasis on the fact that the majority of the American cardinals and other bishops “were almost unanimous in their decision to support the declarations on Jews and on religious liberty.”
Only some Catholic circles, “among limited sectors,” stated the periodical, failed to approve the declaration on Jews. These were called by the journal “isolated expressions of certain extremist groups whose libels and pamphlets repeat stale anti-Semitic arguments with exasperating monotony, distributed to the counciliary fathers without any respect for their intelligence and common sense.” A footnote identified some of the sources of this hate material as “discordant voices in Orthodox Syrian quarters, whose reasons are well understood.”
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