c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) The recent deaths of Cardinal Johannes Willebrands and Sister Rose Thering, two religious giants who were also my personal friends, closed a remarkable chapter in the story of how the Roman Catholic Church changed its often prejudicial 2,000-year-old relationship with Jews and Judaism.
Willebrands and Thering were leaders of the generation that made positive Catholic-Jewish relations mainstream Christian teaching. The cardinal died in his native Holland on Aug. 2 at age 96. Thering, an 85-year-old Dominican nun, died in May in her native Wisconsin.
Ironically, Willebrands died during the same week Mel Gibson’s ugly anti-Semitic remarks became big news. Gibson’s obscene personal beliefs about Jews and his venomous portrayal of them in his film, “The Passion of the Christ,” are worlds and centuries apart from the beliefs and teachings of Catholics like Willebrands and Thering.
The cardinal was a key leader during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) that adopted the historic “Nostra Aetate” declaration that deplored anti-Semitism and repudiated the odious charge that Jews are responsible for Jesus’ death; the deicide canard has been used for centuries to justify the persecution and deaths of Jews.
Thanks to Willebrands’ strong leadership, the Nostra Aetate also called upon Catholics to develop dialogues of “mutual respect and knowledge” between themselves and the Jewish people.
At the time of the council, Willebrands publicly declared: “The Jewish people preserve special values, very important and precious. … the Jewish people and Judaism have a permanent mission in the world, and we (Christians) must work side-by-side to serve God’s people.” It was a position shared by the two popes who presided over the council, John XXIII and Paul VI.
But even with the support of both popes, Willebrands and his like-minded colleagues had to overcome the resistance of some bishops, including those from Arab countries, who opposed the changes regarding Jews and Judaism. Willebrands was always pleased with the final vote on the Declaration: 2,221 bishops in favor and 85 against.
In 1974, he was appointed the first president of the Vatican commission that interacted with the global Jewish community, a position he held until his retirement in 1990.
I cherish my meetings with him at various Catholic-Jewish conferences held at the Vatican. He was highly intelligent, extremely gracious and deeply committed to building a new relationship between the spiritual children of Jerusalem and Rome.
In the early 1960s, Thering, in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee and Saint Louis University, conducted a ground-breaking study of textbooks used in Catholic parochial schools in the United States. As a direct result of her efforts, many positive changes were made.
Thering’s extensive study documented how Catholic teaching materials often inaccurately and inadequately treated Jews, Judaism, the Hebrew Bible, the Holocaust and the State of Israel.
Thering led 54 Christian missions to Israel, and she taught graduate students at Seton Hall University for more than 30 years. She participated in a host of human rights campaigns, including hunger strikes in support of Soviet Jewry and Israeli military personnel who were missing in action.
During a visit to Vienna, she denounced then-President Kurt Waldheim for covering up his World War II Nazi record in the Balkans. The angered Austrian authorities strip-searched Thering at the Vienna Airport, but the nun turned the tables on her tormentors and made the humiliating experience international news that damaged Waldheim’s public image.
In addition to her teaching duties and social justice activism, Thering served as the executive director of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, a broad-based group that seeks public support for the security and survival of the Jewish state.
A moving 38-minute film about her life, “The Passion of Sister Rose,” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004. That same year, I presented Sister Rose with the American Jewish Committee’s Moral Courage Award to honor her commitment to Christian-Jewish relations, her support for Israel and her opposition to anti-Semitism.
Willebrands and Thering are the stuff legends are made of. Unlike Gibson, they are role models for Christians and Jews who seek to overcome the tragic history of past centuries. Both leaders defined their generation of Catholics, and most of all, they changed history, something few of us will ever achieve.
KRE/JL END RUDIN
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.
