Vatican Sourcesdeny Elimination of Declaration on Jews from Agenda

Reports that the Ecumerical Council draft of Catholic-Jewish relations has been dropped or at least severely weakened were categorically denied here today by Vatican sources.

One of these sources was reported to be Archbishop Pericle Fellini, the Council’s secretary-general. Bishop Frances Reh, an American prelate serving in Rome, was quoted as saying that nothing more than minor changes would be made in the declaration, which specifically exonerates the Jewish people, past and present, from the charge of deicide on the crucifixion of Jesus. In that form, the draft declaration received over whelming provisional approval last November at the third Ecumenical Council session.

A press report yesterday said that Pope Paul VI had ordered removal of the draft, as well as a related one on religious freedom, from the agenda of the fourth session of the Ecumenical Council, scheduled to open here in September. According to that report, the declaration on Jews was “under study,” indicating that doctrinal conservatives in the Church and anti-Israel pressures from the Arab states had successfully combined to block consideration of the declaration.

REPORT ON DROPPING OF DECLARATION CONSIDERED MISINTERPRETATION

The report yesterday was said here today to have been possibly based on a misinterpretation of the fact that the Council’s coordination commission had not as yet discussed the two drafts. According to Council procedures, it was pointed out, it is not necessary for the coordination commission to do so. If that commission does take up the drafts, it will be limited to an evaluation of the adequacy of the handling of the scores of amendments proposed in the November 1964 vote.

The only specified authority for consideration of the amendments, according to Council procedures, is the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea, it was pointed out today. The Secretariat formulated the original strong wording of both drafts and performed the function of incorporating proposed amendments at a Secretariat meeting last month. “The removal of the declaration” from the agenda of the coordination commission “is completely different from removal from the Council’s agenda,” the Vatican sources said today.

(Support from American Catholic sources for the denial that the draft declaration on Jews had been dropped came today from New York and Philadelphia. In New York, a Catholic prelate closely acquainted with the work of the Ecumenical Council said he was certain that the declaration would be adopted at the next Council session as it is written. In Philadelphia, a spokesman for Archbishop John Kroll said the prelate had received a copy of the fourth session agenda and that the declaration was included in it.)