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Anti-semitism

28/10/2018

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Today the world is reeling from another gun massacre in the United States. This time is was at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a Synagogue service where eleven people were killed, including a 93 year old woman. The perpetrator was explicit in his desire to kill all Jews and a former rabbi at the synagogue said he would often have at the back of his mind when conducting a service that such an atrocity could very well happen at any time. In America guns for such atrocities are readily available yet President Trump refuses to see any connection between the gun laws and such shootings. He even suggested that had the Jews in the Synagogue been armed such a think might not have happened. Does he really think that people of faith should go to their places of worship armed against such atrocities? It puts another dimension on religious communities as citadels and fortresses.  The notion of locking themselves into a place of worship is shocking – and yet it happens, even here in Scotland.
 
This incident, the culmination of the worst fears of the Jewish community, will have made Jews throughout the world very nervous and anxious. It’s the worst anti-semitic attack in America but such incidents are not confined to the States and there have been anti- Jewish terrorist attacks throughout Europe. Anti-semitism is one of the evils of our time.
 
It so happens that our local branch of the Council of Christians and Jews had a public event this week on anti-semitism. It’s a topic of public concern in Britain, principally because of the controversy over Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, who is so very pro-Palestinian and not hard enough on the anti-semitism within his party. There is real consternation among Jews and the publicity around it has made many of them insecure about their future in Britain. About 40% of the community have confessed to considering emigration to Israel as the only surety of safety. 7,000 Jews went to Israel in 2015 after the French attacks. 
 
At our meeting we heard how anti-semitic attacks were part and parcel of Jewish life and were often exacerbated after trouble between Israel and Palestine and how synagogues and Jewish events had to be strict on security. Jews feel under threat and one respondent to a consultation on Jews in Scotland admitted to not acknowledging her Jewishness on the census form because “ then they would know where to find me”.  Anti-semitism is an evil, a sin and we Christians have to be aware of our past history in relation to the Jews and how that and our theology has contributed to it.
 
But in saying that, I think understanding and talking about anti-semitism can be difficult. Sometimes our way of expressing ourselves can be interpreted as anti-semitic but not necessarily so. It was suggested, for example, that ‘Christianity is all about supercessionism’ in that it sees itself as the fulfilment of Judaism – is this meant to suggest Christianity is inherently anti- semitic? Does calling the Hebrew scriptures the Old Testament mean discarding them and belittling their importance. At one time I used to use the term ‘ Hebrew Scriptures’ for the Old Testament but not anymore. The Old Testament is very similar to the Hebrew Scriptures and for Christians they are venerable, the foundation of our faith and the significant difference in their order means  that for Christians they reach fulfilment in Jesus which is not so for Judaism.  From where Christians stand to talk of the Old Testament is not in any way to discredit the Hebrew Scriptures or to see them as second class in any way. In interreligious dialogue Christians must be allowed to express themselves and be understood on their own terms.
 
Another example was of a member of the Jewish community feeling attacked because a teacher in a rural school had pointed at her and told her ‘you killed Jesus’.  What am I as a Christian to do with such a remark?  I cannot deny it was made and it certainly expresses a theology that might still be prevalent in some circles. It would now be seen as anti-semitic. What am I to do with those Christians whose theological development belongs to another age and can the Jewish community recognise that for Christians theology develops, that such a remark might not be the dominant one within the Christian community – and certainly not of those engaged in dialogue.
 
Perhaps it gets especially difficult when it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Sometimes criticism of the policies of the State of Israel is seen as denying Israel’s existence to survive and I often hear it asked why Christians are more critical of Israel than they are of other countries. I think the criticisms of other countries might just not be heard by Jews. I sometimes wonder if Jews understand that for Christians Israel is not just one nation among many nor can it be. It is the land of Jesus, it is our Holy Land. We love it and care for it. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem and hear in our scripture readings that Israel is called to be a light to the nations. We care for its future and have a concern for justice and peace within its borders. It must be possible to criticise the policies of a government that many Jews also criticise without it being seen as anti-semitic. Before this happens, however, there is a need for  dialogue.
 
 Anti-semitism is not just something we must abhorand denounce as sinful but something we must also dialogue about. 

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Love Another as Your Own

14/10/2018

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All religions have their saints and martyrs but not many have the complicated procedure that the Catholic Church has for trying to determine the heroic virtue of individuals that allows them to be proclaimed and recognised as saints throughout the Church. This weekend five people were proclaimed saints, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and Pope Paul VI.
 
Archbishop Romero got most publicity because of his commitment to the poor of El Salvador. He was murdered while saying Mass in a convent in San Salvador in 1980 at the hands of a US backed Government death squad. His death resulted in 12 years of civil war and his murderers were never brought to justice. He reminded the death squads that they were killing their own brothers and sisters and that no soldier “is obliged to obey an order against the law of God”. The day before his death he said “ In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise up to heaven each day more tumultuously, I plead with you, I pray you, I order you, in the name of God: Stop the repression.”  It’s no wonder he was murdered. Power and injustice do not face up to Truth.  
 
Paul VI was a more controversial figure because of the encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’ which forbade the use of artificial methods of contraception at a time when many people in the  Church expected the reverse. But he was a great Pope.  He took the Catholic Church forward  into the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, spoke at the United Nations, visited Jerusalem and began the long process of friendship and reconciliation with the Orthodox Church.  He established the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, now called the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.  Dialogue was the hallmark of his pontificate.  For him the Church was not to stand aloof from the world or see itself as separate but to enter into dialogue with it, to love it. As the Pope who promulgated the document, ‘Nostra Aetate’, which began the Church’s journey into the world of interreligious relations,  he is for me a champion of interfaith dialogue.
 
For Paul VI dialogue and love went together.  Engaging in interfaith relations does lead to genuine friendship and love between people of different faiths but recently I was challenged to consider the possibility of loving another’s faith as my own. It came at an event on the Politics of Unity during which we listened to a speech that Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement, had made in Innsbruck in 2001. It was essentially about politics and was addressed to politicians. In this speech Chiara suggested that brotherhood between politicians could be a source of unity and that “we should live brotherhood so well that we reach the point of loving the party of the other as we love our own, knowing that neither party was born by chance, but each as the answer to an historical need within the national community”.

This could be quite a challenge for interfaith practitioners. There’s no doubt that some do love another religion as their own to the extent that they claim dual identity.  Paul Knitter, a Catholic theologian, has written a book, ‘Without Buddhism I couldn’t be a Christian’ setting out how much he has appreciated the wisdom of Buddhism that has illuminated his understanding of Christianity.  I think this could be quite common and I know a number of people who claim it but Knitter has taken the additional step of taking refuge in the Buddha, the Sangha and the Dharma, which would normally make him Buddhist but, at the time of writing his book, he also claimed to be Christian. I don’t think I could do that. I appreciate Buddhist teaching, I can even say that I love it but I couldn’t make that kind of commitment to another. It’s like having a home base in my own religion from which I can relate to others and certainly appreciate aspects of them.  I can feel at home in other faiths but it’s always been a bit like being at my auntie’s – familiar but not quite my own home.
 
There are also some people who would find it hard to say they loved another faith as their own, seeing it as a kind of betrayal.  To love another as our own is to suggest that the other might be as good as, or even better, than our own. It might even suggest approval of aspects of another religion that we don’t like.  As someone once said at an interfaith meeting, surely we all think our own is right and the best.  I’m not sure I do. I know there are truths within my own religion and that it’s been a good force in my life but I also recognise its faults and drawbacks, especially the institutional aspects of it. Sometimes it can be quite a challenge to love it in the face of scandals which within Catholicism seem to be so dominant at the moment.  I have to learn to love my faith in its weaknesses as well as its strengths.  So with another faith, I can recognise its strengths, draw on its wisdom and beauty, appreciate how life-giving it has been to its members and yet not agree with some aspects of it, realising that all religions have institutional aspects that can be oppressive.
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In this way then it's certainly possible to love another faith as I love my own

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    Author

    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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