{"id":69,"date":"2009-10-06T22:11:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T22:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/bishops-apologize-to-jewish-leaders-for-misunderstandings.html"},"modified":"2009-10-06T22:11:38","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T22:11:38","slug":"bishops-apologize-to-jewish-leaders-for-misunderstandings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/bishops-apologize-to-jewish-leaders-for-misunderstandings.html","title":{"rendered":"Bishops apologize to Jewish leaders for “feelings of hurt”"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few months of simmering tension, the Catholic bishops have offered Jewish leaders an olive branch<\/a>:  <\/p>\n

U.S. Catholic bishops have tried to reassure Jewish leaders that interfaith dialogue will never be used as a means of proselytism or a “disguised invitation to baptism,” after months of interfaith tension.<\/p>\n

The overture from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops comes more than three months after the bishops angered Jewish leaders by seeming to imply that Jews would be targets of evangelism and conversion.<\/p>\n

In two letters sent Friday (Oct. 2) and released Tuesday, the bishops said an attempt to clear up an “insufficiently precise and potentially misleading” statement from 2002 had actually created more problems.<\/p>\n

“We remain deeply committed to dialogue and friendship with the Jewish people, who are, in the words of Pope John Paul II, ‘our elder brothers and sisters in the faith,'” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the bishops conference, wrote in a letter signed by four other bishops.<\/p>\n

George, whose letter was signed by the chairmen of his interfaith relations and doctrine committees, said the “gift” of faith in Jesus Christ is one that “can never be coerced.”
\n
\n“Jewish-Catholic dialogue… has never been, and will never be, used by the Catholic Church as a means of proselytism, nor is it intended as a disguised invitation to baptism.”<\/p>\n

The letter to the Jewish groups is the latest wrinkle in several months of back-and-forth exchanges that had left both sides uncomfortable. It was also an uncommon about-face for the bishops who rarely, if ever, backtrack on previous statements or positions.<\/p>\n

The bishops said they had deleted two troublesome sentences from a statement they issued in June that said, in part, that Catholic partners in interfaith dialogue are “always giving witness to the following of Christ, to which all are invited.”<\/p>\n

George also issued a six-point “statement of principles” on Jewish-Catholic dialogue that apologized for the “misunderstandings and feelings of hurt” that had resulted from their June statement.<\/p>\n

“Because we are dialogue partners, this hurt is ours as well,” the statement said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more at the link<\/a>.  And the USCCB statement is right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a few months of simmering tension, the Catholic bishops have offered Jewish leaders an olive branch:  U.S. Catholic bishops have tried to reassure Jewish leaders that interfaith dialogue will never be used as a means of proselytism or a “disguised invitation to baptism,” after months of interfaith tension. The overture from the U.S. Conference…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\nBishops apologize to Jewish leaders for "feelings of hurt" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/bishops-apologize-to-jewish-leaders-for-misunderstandings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bishops apologize to Jewish leaders for "feelings of hurt" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After a few months of simmering tension, the Catholic bishops have offered Jewish leaders an olive branch:  U.S. Catholic bishops have tried to reassure Jewish leaders that interfaith dialogue will never be used as a means of proselytism or a “disguised invitation to baptism,” after months of interfaith tension. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}