Dialogue Document
A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflections on Covenant and Mission (2009)
A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Reflections on Covenant and Mission by the Committee on Doctrine and Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued June 18, 2009; revised October 13, 2009
On August 12, 2002, Jewish and Catholic scholars made public a document they had composed entitled Reflections on Covenant and Mission, consisting of two parts, one presenting the "reflections" of the Catholic and another presenting those of the Jewish participants.1 The original initiative for the document came from the ongoing consultation between the National Council of Synagogues and the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Catholic part of the document was written by scholars who made up an advisory group to the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. When the document was originally published on the USCCB website, it was mislabeled as a statement of the "Bishops' Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Committee and the National Council of Synagogues." On August 16, 2002, Cardinal William H. Keeler, the USCCB Moderator for Catholic-Jewish Relations, explained that Reflections on Covenant and Mission "does not represent a formal position taken by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs." Instead, Cardinal Keeler stated, the document "represents the state of thought among the participants of a dialogue that has been going on for a number of years between the U.S. Catholic Church and the Jewish community in this country." He added that the document was published in order "to encourage serious reflection on these matters by Jews and Catholics in the U.S."