Circles close to the Vatican said this weekend that it was “unthinkable” that the draft declaration on Catholic relations with the Jews, which was approved at the last session of the Ecumenical Council, would be profoundly modified before its submission to the next session of the Council, which opens Tuesday, it was reported here today by the Ansa Italian News Agency.
Commenting on recent reports that the Vatican had yielded to pressure by bishops in Arab countries, by profoundly altering and watering down the declaration exonerating the Jews of the charge of deicide, the Ansa dispatch recalled that, on more than one occasion, Augustin Cardinal Bea, president of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, which is the responsible Conciliar body for the declaration, had stated that no substantial changes had been introduced into the text.
The Vatican circles cited by the news agency reported, however, that, among the amendments which the Secretariat would submit to the Conciliar Fathers, would be one to substitute another word of phrase for the term “deicide” which was used in the version of the declaration overwhelmingly approved at last year’s session of the Council.
This substitution, according to the news agency’s sources, would not modify or distort the meaning of the original version. The agency noted that some bishops were determined to retain the terminology previously approved and that, therefore, any decision on this textual change would have to be by vote of the Council.
The Secretariat decided to submit this change to the Council in deference to suggestions made by some of the bishops who supported the declaration at the last session with reservations attached to their votes. Another reason for the substitution, the Vatican source stated, was to avoid “confusion and misunderstanding,” particularly because of the “different interpretations given to the issue by Arabs and Jews.”
Ansa also indicated that the declaration on relations with non-Christians, including the Jews, as well as the proposed declaration on religious freedom, may not be included in the Schema de Ecclesia (On the Church) or attached as an appendix to it as originally planned, but may be issued independently. The motivation for this was said to be the desire to underline more strongly the religious nature of the declaration on the Jews, and to rule out any possible politic an interpretations.
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