A Catholic bishop preached the Sabbath-sermon Friday night at Temple Sinai when Richard Cardinal Cashing was unable to appear because bad weather grounded his plane in Boston.
The Cardinal told Rabbi Samuel Silver by telephone that he would come to Stamford when another date could be arranged. He also invited the Reform rabbi to come to Boston’s Cathedral and share the pulpit with the Cardinal at a service. The Cardinal called the invitation unique.
Rev. Walter Curtis of Bridgeport gave the sermon to 750 at the service. Bishop Curtis called the Ecumenical Council’s declaration on Jews, later promulgated as formal Catholic doctrine, an expression of the “profound feeling” of the Church that anti-Semitism was a moral wrong and said that the Church was determined to fight it.
In addition to the invitation to the Reform rabbi, Cardinal Cushing dictated by telephone an address to a Stamford radio station which recorded the talk on tape which was later run off in the synagogue. Explaining why he had accepted the invitation, he said it was not “because I wanted to make Catholics out of Jews. ” The reason, he said, was “to bring a message of goodwill and see to it that the Jewish program of brotherhood should receive our strong endorsement.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
