France
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris and member of the Académie Française, who has made no secret of his Jewish origins, has recently published a book called “La Promesse ” (The Promise), in which he reviews the close relations between Christianity and Judaism. “It is inconceivable writes the cardinal that the Church should claim to substitute Israel. The Church does not represent another Israel, but the fulfilment, in Israel, of God’s plan”. Lustiger’s book draws on a spiritual retreat preached to a community of cloistered sisters in 1979, followed by four lectures given in Tel Aviv, Paris, Brussels and Washington between 1995 and 2002. “The theology of substitution recalls the archbishop of Paris, referring to the document ‘Nostra Aetate’ has long been condemned, but Christians continue to find great difficulty in admitting the close relationship between the two Covenants: the rite of baptism is not any old rite, but has a precise sense. It is the rite of belonging to Israel”. Wishing to substitute Israel represents a rejection: “the theory of the rejection of Israel seems an absurdity, since it claims that God is unfaithful to his own Covenant”. Taking this logic to its extreme consequences, the cardinal warns of the danger of anti-Semitism: “it remains a harrowing threat” in our time. Rejection, however, does not only come from Christians. Among Jews it is expressed in the form of ignorance: “the millennial tradition [of Judaism] has chosen to ignore the Christian experience, without even naming it”. Addressing himself to “Jewish brothers”, the cardinal tries to convince them that Christ, by proclaiming himself ‘Son of God’, “does not substitute Israel”, and hence does not represent a threat to their identity. In Lustiger’s view, the time is ripe for a rapprochement between the two faiths, in particular thanks to all the overtures that John Paul II has made to the Jews: “we have reached an historic moment in which a genuine dialogue, interrupted almost two thousand years ago, could begin anew. Dialogue won’t of course remove the oppositions or differences between Jews and Christians”. For the time being, dialogue exists only “ sottovoce, promoted by enlightened spirits too soon forgotten”, but the time has come for the “shared elucidation of the Word of God to make us understand with respect what the Spirit is trying to make each one of us understand and believe”.
