Even as international Jewish-Catholic relations were strained...

Even as international Jewish-Catholic relations were strained this month by published remarks of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s chief monitor of doctrine, the Los Angeles Priest-Rabbi Committee published its latest amicable reflections on the respective beliefs of the two faiths.

Ratzinger’s comments, published in an Italian magazine, drew Jewish ire because he appeared to say that Judaism finds its fulfillment in Christianity, a belief that has been abandoned in church and papal statements of the last two decades.

But in Los Angeles, the new, 16-page booklet titled “Salvation/Redemption” is a primer on the similar religious concepts of Catholicism and Judaism. Also, it mirrors the mutual respect of the participants. The same committee issued earlier booklets on its respective understandings of “Kingdom” (1982) and “Covenant” (1979).

In contrast to the apparent meaning of Ratzinger’s comments, the Catholic position stated in “Covenant,” according to committee Co-Chairman Msgr. Royale Vadakin, is that Judaism is a complete and valid religion irrespective of Christianity’s advent.

“Our clear statement is that God’s covenant with Israel has never been abrogated,” said Vadakin, who directs the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Ecumenical and Interreligious Commission.

Rabbi Joel E. Rembaum of Temple Beth Am was co-chairman on the priest-rabbi committee. Another group of priests and rabbis have worked on ethical issues from the two faith perspectives. It will issue a joint statement on drug abuse and dependency next month, Vadakin said.

PEOPLE

The Very Rev. Alan W. Jones, one of five nominees for Episcopal Church bishop of Los Angeles, says he dropped out of the race for the Jan. 8-9 election last week after returning to San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, where he has been dean for two years. “I got the call too soon. I had the awful image of an abortion. I would have left so much unfinished here and wouldn’t have come to L.A. with a clear conscience,” Jones said in a telephone interview. He had just completed with other candidates a 1,000-mile, eight-day trek visiting parishes in the six-county Los Angeles Diocese. “I told some people down there that maybe I should be the diocese’s sixth bishop and not its fifth,” said Jones, who at 47 was the youngest of the nominees.

CONVENTION

Before the Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese elects a bishop at a special January convention in Los Angeles, its clergy and laity will conduct other business at its annual convention next Friday and Saturday at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel. The featured speaker Friday night is Pamela Chinnis, who chairs the denomination’s Committee for the Full Participation of Women in the Church and is one of three Episcopal delegates to the worldwide Anglican Consultative Council.

STATEMENT

California’s 21 Roman Catholic bishops released a 2,500-word statement this week objecting to public school-based health clinics that recommend “safe sex” methods in the light of rising instances of teen-age pregnancies. The study, titled “Parental Primacy in the Raising of Children,” covers some of the same ground as the statement adopted by the U.S. bishops’ meeting last week in Washington. But the statement issued in Sacramento also suggests that requiring teen-age fathers, married or not, to assume some financial responsibility for their children might “foster greater sexual responsibility.” The bishops also suggested that guaranteed jobs, with child-care provisions, should replace welfare payments and thus perhaps provide incentives for family formation.