Leading Catholic Prelate Says Jews and Catholics ‘can Today Work and Dialogue Together As Never Befo

A leading

American Catholic prelate declared here that “Catholics and Jews can today work and dialogue as never before in all the ages of our often troubled and yet still common history.”

The Most Reverend John Roach, newly-elected president of the National Conference of Bishops, U.S. Catholic Conference, also stated in remarks prepared for delivery tonight to the Synagogue Council of America that “today, through dialogue, Christians are coming to realize that many of our previous assumptions about the nature of Judaism were, to put it kindly, wrong.”

Roach, who is Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, told the Synagogue Council, the first Jewish group be addressed since his election as president of the National Conference of Bishops, “It must be admitted, in deep sorrow, that what the Second Vatican Council called the ‘spiritual bond’ linking our two peoples tended to slip from our awareness for long periods in centuries past. Often it was honored more in the breach then in the proper spirit of love.”

“Yet,” he continued, “since we believe the link to be divinely forged, out of the very election of our two peoples to serve God’s will, the Christian must proclaim that it is a link which can never be wholly broken.”

Roach, in addressing the executive committee and Patron Society of the Synagogue Council at their meeting held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, observed that Catholic-Jewish relations “have progressed remarkably in the years that have elapsed since the Second Vatican Council” was convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962.

Continuing, he said: “Not only is America blessed by being able to count the world’s largest Jewish community among its citizens, but its history of pluralism has provided a fit setting for contacts and cooperation all through our shared history on these shores.”