Catholic Students to Learn About Judaism : Lesson Plans Designed to Eliminate Negative Teaching About Jews

An experimental curriculum designed to eliminate negative teaching about Jews and their religion is being prepared for Roman Catholic high schools in 10 dioceses and archdioceses, including Los Angeles.

The new lesson plans will be completed this June and available to parochial schoolteachers by early 1988, said Rabbi Leon Klenicki, a chief architect of the program.

“This will make a unique contribution to the Catholic-Jewish relationship and deeply influence and change the presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic catechetical education,” Klenicki said in an interview. He is director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Joint Project

The pilot program is being prepared jointly by Klenicki’s interfaith department, the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Education Department of the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Locally, Klenicki is working with Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, who heads the Los Angeles Archdiocese Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, and Father Lawrence Caruso, associate superintendent of archdiocesan schools.

Klenicki said the new curriculum “will present ideas that have not been heard before. . . . It will show the Jewishness of Jesus . . . and help overcome 2,000 years of prejudice.”

Vadakin agreed that the program is “a very good and positive incremental step.” But he said there have been “all kinds of cooperative study guides and textbooks for Catholic-Jewish dialogue presented during the past 20 years.”

“I’m very pleased we’re going to cooperate . . . but it’s a step within a whole process, not a quantum leap,” he said.

The new lesson plans are an outgrowth of Vatican guidelines published in 1985 for Catholic teaching on Jews and Judaism and are in keeping with Catholic-Jewish dialogue guidelines implemented in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles 10 years ago, Vadakin said.

Lesson Plan’s Theme

The theme of the five-page lesson plan, which will supplement existing curricula for teaching religion in Catholic high schools within the three-county archdiocese, is “the prayers of Jesus and how they relate to the theology and central ideas of Judaism,” Klenicki said following a recent meeting with Catholic educators in Los Angeles.

Materials to be introduced in the other nine dioceses will have separate themes. Within several years, the literature is expected to be expanded into a book to be used nationwide as well as in Germany and Latin America.

“The bishops there have already asked permission to translate it,” Klenicki said, adding that he is also working with Southern Baptist, United Methodist and Lutheran Church in America representatives to develop similar material for denominational schools and seminaries.

The cooperative curriculum project is the first of its kind, according to the rabbi, who edits the interreligious bulletin, Face to Face, and teaches Jewish theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.

General guidelines for the classroom presentations have already been written, stemming from the work of 12 Catholic educators, New Testament scholars and publishers who met last January at the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute in Garrison, N.Y. The specific lesson plans for Catholic teachers will not be drafted until next spring, according to Klenicki.

‘Accurate Appreciation’

The general guidelines say, “Fostering a positive and accurate appreciation of the Jews as God’s people still today and of Judaism as a living witness to God’s name in the world should be an essential and not merely occasional goal in all program planning. . . .

“School texts, prayer books and other media should, under competent auspices, continue to be examined in order to remove not only those materials that do not accord with the content and spirit of the church’s teaching, but also those that fail to show Judaism’s continuing role in salvation history in a positive light. . . .

“This is not meant to diminish the uniqueness of Jesus’ message or that of the church, but rather to deepen that message with an appreciation of its interrelatedness with the ongoing witness of the Jewish people.”

The guidelines call for “a proper context” for teaching and understanding the death of Jesus.

“Any explanation which directly or implicitly imputes collective responsibility on the Jewish people for Jesus’ death not only obscures this central truth, but can also lead to anti-Semitism,” the guideline draft says.

Klenicki said another example of combatting prejudice is evident in the background materials being developed for use when the Gospel of John is taught in parochial high schools in the Archdiocese of Miami.

“Without this contextual background, one might consider he (the Gospel writer) is anti-Semitic. But actually, he was reflecting a family fight of 2,000 years ago,” Klenicki said.

Trial of Jesus

Vadakin believes that one of the most significant curriculum topics is the theme on the trial of Jesus being developed for the Archdiocese of New York.

“This is a major issue that needs to be looked at,” Vadakin said. “On Good Friday (the day Christians observe the crucifixion of Jesus) it is a very powerful thing” in Jewish-Catholic relations.

Klenicki said the unprecedented official visit of Pope John Paul II to the chief synagogue in Rome last April had provided a “needed sign of friendship” between the two faiths and a “symbolism that goes beyond words.”

The Pope said at the synagogue that Jews and Christians together “are the trustees and witnesses of an ethic marked by the Ten Commandments, in . . . which humanity finds its truth and freedom. . . . The Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us, but in a certain way intrinsic to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers. . . .”

The specific lesson plan for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles will be drafted here in May during a two-day meeting of about a dozen Catholic education specialists. Klenicki and Vadakin said two presentations will precede the writing, one on the prayers Jesus prayed, given by a Catholic, and a lecture by Klenicki on Jewish liturgy at the time of Jesus.

In addition to Los Angeles, New York and Miami, other participating dioceses and their curriculum themes are Brooklyn, the Apostle Paul and the concept of law; Boston, the Jewishness of Jesus; Chicago, the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jews and Judaism; Houston, the Passion of Jesus; St. Louis, rabbinic theology; Denver, the Holy Land at the time of Jesus, and San Diego, a theme to be announced.