U.S. Catholic Organ Voices Charges Against Jews; Lauds Judaism

The charge that “in some instances” Jewish determinations on public issues “seem to be made primarily in terms of Jewish interest, not in terms of the total community, ” is voiced in the current issue of the Catholic weekly “America” by its editor-in-chief, Father Thurston N. Davis.

As an example, the editor of the Catholic organ cites the formal opposition of the American Jewish Congress to the inclusion of the question on religion in the U. S. decennial census for 1960 because the inclusion of this question tends to “divide and classify Americans in categories of religious and non-religious and sub-categories of sect and denomination” which is alien to American traditions.

The editor of “America” also cites the objection of Jewish organizations to the introduction of “even a minimal program of non-sectarian instruction in religious values into the New York City public school system. ” The firm closing of “Jewish ranks on this subject was dramatized December 3, 1955, when every rabbi in the city opposed the program unequivocally in his Sabbath sermon to his congregation,” he writes.

“These incidents,” he continues, “puzzle and at times provoke Catholics. But despite them, we shall continue to look with understanding and even fondness at our historic brother the Jew. We shall go on admiring him for his strong sense of family life, his devotion to learning and scholarship, his ability to work hard, his creative gifts, his love for music and the arts, his burning thirst for justice. In this last trait, at least, we could learn from him and imitate him more closely. For we Catholics, with our serious obligations to practice social justice and to work for the righting of human wrongs — commitments that are spelled out for us in the social encyclicals of recent Popes — are too often sluggards in getting down to business about such vital responsibilities.”

SPEAKS OF DECLINE IN JEWISH AND CATHOLIC RELIGION IN SUBURBS

The article, entitled “Spiritual Semites, ” starts by stating that “beneath those surface phenomena of anti-Semitism that bob up among American Catholics, and underlying whatever animosity American Jews may feel for the Catholic Church, there runs between Jew and Catholic a still current of sympathy and understanding. ” This, the editor of the Catholic organ asserts, may not always be acknowledged, or even recognized, by the Jew or Catholic, but it exists. He explains it with the fact that “both Catholic and Jew have on them the brand mark of history; they may not realize it, but they are both like old trees, with the rings of many years within them.

“But what cuts athwart the solidity of Jewish-Catholic relations in the strictly contemporary sense is the rapidity with which American Jews appear to be losing touch with the ancient religious components of their tradition, ” Fr, Davis writes. “In his concern to become part of American life, the Jew seems to be sacrificing much that used to make him “different,” (No one, it seems, can afford to be ‘different’ any more; we all have to ‘belong, ‘ be ‘adjusted, ‘ be ‘normal’ — normality being an end in itself.) The American-born, college-trained Jewish professional man, now moved to the suburbs, doesn’t see much sense in the traditional concept of ‘galuth’ or exile, even in the sense of spiritual exile. Jewish sociologists tell us that ‘Jewish-ness’ — the activities that Jews perform together without the help of religion — is on the increase; but Judaism, the historic religion of the Jew, they say, is on the decline. Some Jewish leaders say that prayer and worship are a ‘lost art’ in the suburbs.”

Pointing out that the same “drama” is widely being enacted also in the Catholic community where there is a “yielding to the evils of conformity and the suburban yen for adjustedness, the article says: “This is by no means a uniquely Jewish problem. For the Jew, however, it is a sufficiently serious problem to have warranted far more than usual concern among Jewish leaders.”