For January 17 last, the Italian bishops' conference announced a "Day for the exploration and development of dialogue between Catholics and Jews."This day has been held every year since 1990.
Since 2001 the Italian Jewish community has been promoting it together with the bishops, and in 2005 both sides agreed on a ten-year program of reflection on the Ten Commandments. But this time, the Catholic Church is alone.
Elia Enrico Richetti, chief rabbi of Venice, said Italian-Jews would boycott the annual Church celebration of Judaism, partly because of the reintroduction last year of a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.
He wrote in the Jesuit journal, Popoli, "If we add the Pope's recent statements on dialogue being useless because the Christian faith is superior, it is clear that we are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history."
This was the latest sign of the turbulence in Catholic-Jewish dialogue, which has been tested over everything from reaction to Israel's siege of Gaza to renewed debate over wartime Pope Pius XII's role helping Jews during the Holocaust.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official in charge of relations with Jews, said he was surprised by Richetti's remarks and defended the Pope's record of pursuing dialogue.
He suggested troubles with Jews appeared to be mostly limited to Italy. "Unfortunately, here in Italy we have a few problems, a special susceptibility that we don't find either in France or in Germany or in North America," he told La Stampa newspaper.
However, Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni (pictured) agreed dialogue "must move ahead despite difficulties" and acknowledged that the Pope had made some contributions.
The Italian bishops' conference responded by holding the conference and publishing for the occasion a document that summarizes the stages in the dialogue between Jews and Christians over the past half century, beginning with the removal, decided by Pope John XXIII in 1959, of the Latin adjective "perfidi" (which properly means "unbelieving") as applied to the Jews in the prayers for Good Friday in use at the time.
The document emphasizes the importance of the Vatican text published by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2001, with the title The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible.
This text, in effect, is recognized by authoritative Catholic and Jewish representatives as the highest and most constructive point reached so far in the dialogue between the two faith.
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(Source: CIN)