“Qualified sources” at the Vatican today said that the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, which met at the Vatican all of last week to finalize its attitude toward the Ecumenical Council’s declaration on repudiating the charge of deicide as applying to the Jewish people, has made no “material” changes in that document, II Messagero, leading Italian newspaper reports.
The Secretariat, under the presidency of Augustin Cardinal Bea, consists of 30 bishops from around the world. They met to consider 242 amendments to the Declaration on Relations With Non-Christian Religions, adopted by the Ecumenical Council last November by the overwhelming vote of 1,992 to 99. While no word has come from the Bea Secretariat about the discussions of the 30 bishops, it was pointed out here that many of the amendments were of a minor nature, and that a number of the amendments concerned wording in the draft declaration affecting the Moslems, rather than the Jews.
According to some Vatican sources, the Secretariat made an effort to bolster the acceptability of the Declaration by improving some of the terminology in such a way as to reduce Moslem opposition to the principal objective of keeping intact those portions of the document which affect the Jewish people. It was asserted that no dilution of those portions were considered by the assembled bishops.
The draft Declaration will be brought up again before the next session of the Ecumenical Council, to convene September 17. If approved by the Council finally next fall, it will then become official Catholic doctrine, after promulgation by Pope Vaul VI.
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