Comments

1. ed gleason 10/25/2010 - 5:35 pm

   I saw no mention in the Vatican letter of A/B Vigneron’s call for more married Eastern priests in No. America as noted by John Allen..

   ‘Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, which has a large community of Christians belonging to various Eastern churches from the Middle East, said he would not be opposed if those Eastern churches decided to ordain more married priests in North America’

2. Margaret Steinfels 10/25/2010 - 5:44 pm  subscriber

   Here is one response from the deputy foreign minister of Israel http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/deputy-fm-anti-israel-bishops-have-hijacked-the-vatican-1.320944

   Alayon is deputy to Avigador Lieberman who has previously promoted population “transfers” of Israeli Arabs to the yet non-existent Palestinian state; presumably some of those Arabs are Christians.

   Nonetheless, the Ha’aretz story quotes a Foreign Ministry spokesman, “Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said it was absurd that the Jewish state had been condemned since Israel is the only country in the region where Christians are actually thriving.

   “According to statistics he provided, there were some 151,700 Christians in Israel last year, compared with 132,000 in 1999 and 107,000 two decades ago.”

   John Allan has a story on this that points out that at a press conference after the issuing of the closing statement, other statements were made, which the Vatican spokesman said were the views of the bishops making them and not that of the Synod. http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/acrimony-israel-clouds-close-middle-east-synod

3. David Gibson 10/26/2010 - 11:31 am  subscriber  contributor

   I would like to see some parsing of the statement by Archbishop Cyril Bustros, a native of Lebanon who is currently a Melkite Greek Catholic bishop in Newton, Mass., that went:

   “We Christians cannot speak of the `promised land’ as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people”…

   “This promise was nullified by Christ,” Bustros said at a Vatican press conference marking the end of a two-week session of the Synod of Bishops. “There is no longer a chosen people — all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.”

   That inflamed Israeli public opinion, for obvious reasons, and it has political ramifications. But is that “nullification” theologically correct, or in line with Catholic teaching? It seems like a rather categorical statement, when J. ratzinger among others have spoken to varying degrees (I believe) of a dual covenant of some sort, or at least of the Jewish people’s chosen status not having been superseded — an argument that has been perilous, to say the least, to Jews over the centuries.

4. Joseph Jaglowicz 10/26/2010 - 12:40 pm  subscriber

   “This promise was nullified by Christ.”

   So far as I know, Jesus was and remains a Jew. The Lord was never a Christian. In his earthly ministry, Jesus exemplified the spirit of charity toward all, especially the needy. He was not one who encouraged a focus on earthly possessions.

   The earliest Christians were Jews who embraced the Christian message.

   On the other hand, I’ve seen various Israeli governments attempt over the years to justify their territorial expansion by recourse to arguments of religion (the Promised Land, etc.).

   We can promote peace through charity toward, and genuine dialogue with, our neighbor.

   Which I don’t see at all from the current Israeli government.

5. Joseph A. Komonchak 10/26/2010 - 1:47 pm  contributor

   The archbishop is quoted as saying: “We Christians cannot speak of the `promised land’ as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people.” If one may presume that he chose his words carefully, I don’t know how one could take exception to the sentence. Ir we were to speak in those terms, only Jews would have a right to the Holy Land, and it would be an exclusive right.

   I also note tha ellipsis in the quotation attributed to the archbishop. Can anyone fill it in?

6. David Gibson 10/27/2010 - 10:29 am  subscriber  contributor

   I’ve had no luck finding anything more extensive than what he was quoted as saying. For me, the problematic part is not the rejection of a biblically-based territorial claim but this statement:

   “There is no longer a chosen people — all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.”

   I’m not sure how that squares with Catholic teaching.

   Another bit of context is that the synod fathers apparently complained about the biblical/eschatological claims of many conservative Christians in the US who use that as a basis for defending Israel, and that may have informed the comments by Bustros, who is based in Massachusetts.

7. David Gibson 10/27/2010 - 1:00 pm  subscriber  contributor

   John Allen has posted on the contretemps, with analysis, and the transcripts of the relevant comments:

   http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/thinking-straight-about-israel-jews-and-archbishop

   Question: In the “Message,” number eight talks about the dialogue with the Jews. That’s where you talk about the use and abuse of the Word of God and of faith itself. I would like to know why it’s under relations with the Jews, not relations with everybody — since normally in the West we hear that it’s not the Jews who use the Scriptures to justify their actions.

   Bustros: In number eight of the Message, we say that we cannot resort to theological and Biblical assumptions as a tool to justify injustice. We want to say that the promise of God in the Old Testament, relating to the ‘promised land’ … as Christians, we’re saying that this promise was essentially nullified [in French, “abolished”] by the presence of Jesus Christ, who then brought about the Kingdom of God. As Christians, we cannot talk about a ‘promised land’ for the Jews. We talk about a ‘promised land’ which is the Kingdom of God. That’s the promised land, which encompasses the entire earth with a message of peace and justice and equality for all the children of God. There is no preferred or privileged people. All men and women from every country have become the ‘chosen people.’ This is clear for us. We cannot just refer to the ‘promised land’ to justify the return of the Jews in Israel, and [ignore] the Palestinians who were kicked out of their land. Five million Jews kicked out three or four million Palestinians from their land, and this is not justifiable. There’s no ‘chosen people’ any longer for Christians. Everybody is the ‘chosen people.’ What we say is something political. Sacred scripture should not be used to justify the occupation of Palestinian land on the part of the Israelis.

   I;m not sure that clarifies much.

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