UAHC Urges Reform Jews to Implement Vatican Guidelines

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations announced today it was distributing to its 715 Reform synagogues an action summary calling on its 1.1 million congregants to implement the recently-issued Vatican guidelines on Catholic-Jewish cooperation. Announcement of the distribution was accompanied by a statement by Rabbi Balfour Brickner, director of the UAHC Interreligious Affairs Department, declaring that the failure of the guidelines to mention Israel, while “unfortunate and regrettable,” did not necessarily represent an anti-Israel posture by the Vatican.

The UAHC urged Reform congregants to implement the guidelines by activating joint programs with local Catholic churches, such as study seminars, and to engage in joint social action efforts in such areas as housing, integration, revenue sharing and national health insurance legislation. Rabbi Brickner also said that the failure to mention Israel was “understandable” in the context of the existence of Catholic churches in Moslem countries and criticized Yitzhak Rafael, Israel’s Religious Affairs Minister, for his severe condemnation of the guidelines.

Rabbi Brickner contended it would be “most unfortunate” if criticism of the guidelines, which emphasized only the absence of a specific reference to Israel, created a “negative atmosphere which could prohibit Jews and Catholics in America from working together.” He said “those who help to shape public opinion ought not to use this omission in the guidelines as a pretext to avoid seeing the positive values and opportunities that the guidelines offered to open new doors to greater Catholic-Jewish contacts in our society.”

In calling the omission understandable, Rabbi Brickner said that “de jure recognition” of Israel by the Catholic church “might jeopardize the life of churches and Catholics in those countries” in the Middle East and in “Third World” countries “at war with or hostile to Israel.” He said Jewish critics of the guidelines “ought to be sensitive” to such political problems and “not expect more than is realistically possible at the present time.”

VATICAN EXTENDED HAND OF FRIENDSHIP

Rabbi Brickner said he disagreed with Rafael’s statement that the guidelines proved that “the church is still far from recognizing the religious and historical connections between the people of Israel, the land of Israel and their right to live in it.” He also rejected Rafael’s assertion there is “no extended hand to the Jews” in the guidelines.

The Reform leader said the issuance of the guidelines, the creation of the Vatican Commission on Relations with Jews, and the remark by Pope Paul in receiving a Jewish delegation in connection with issuance of the guidelines that he hoped “a true dialogue may be established between Judaism and Christianity,” demonstrated an “extended hand of friendship.”

Rabbi Brickner also contended that the statement in the guidelines about the need for Christians “to learn by what essential traits the Jews define themselves in the light of their own religious experience” indicated that the Vatican “perhaps too subtly for some,” acknowledged “by implication the place Israel plays in the Jewish self-definition.”