Dialogue Resource
Bishop Madden's Letter regarding Catholic-Jewish Dialogues (2013)
Letter from Bishop Denis J. Madden, Chairman, Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, January 15, 2013
Dear Members of the USCCB Catholic-Jewish Dialogues:
Last week we all read the widespread media reports about an interview that Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the “Society of St. Pius X” (a traditionalist movement that broke away from the Catholic Church in 1988), gave on December 28, 2012 in New Hamburg, Ontario. In his remarks, Bishop Fellay described Jews as “the enemies of the Church.” Referring to Jewish support for the Second Vatican Council, he then remarked that “Vatican II is their (the Jews’) thing, and not the Church’s.”
These statements come at the end of two years of talks between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X to reconcile the sad division that occurred between them some twenty five years ago. In his role as chief shepherd of the Church, Pope Benedict XVI made every effort to help Bishop Fellay and his followers to accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council as a precondition for full communion with the Catholic Church. Disappointingly, serious divisions in belief and practice remain to prevent reconciliation.
In response to Bishop Fellay, Vatican press spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., said on January 4, 2013: “It is absolutely unacceptable, impossible to define Jews as enemies of the Church.” Fr. Lombardi then commented at length on the many efforts made since the Second Vatican Council – especially by Pope John Paul II and our present Holy Father, Benedict XVI – to extend the teachings of Nostra Aetate throughout the Church and to condemn anti-Semitism as having no place in Christian life. Fr. Lombardi concluded by saying: “The Church is deeply committed to dialogue with Jews.”