Mahony Stresses Brotherhood in Talk to Valley Jews

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, speaking at a Sabbath service in the San Fernando Valley’s largest synagogue, praised the establishment of diplomatic relations this year between Israel and the Vatican, saying Jews and Catholics can now truly call each other brothers and sisters.

“We are no longer strangers to one another, but you are our elder brothers and sisters,” Mahony said Friday night to 1,200 members of Valley Beth Shalom and guests, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who read a portion of Scripture in the service.

“No longer does the lack of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the state of Israel divert us from other important areas of dialogue,” said Mahony, who has led the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese since 1985.

Rabbi Harold Schulweis of the host synagogue said that Jews take heart from Pope John Paul II’s formal remembrances of the Holocaust and his declared intention, despite poor health, to travel eventually to the Holy Land.

“We pray for the health of the Pope, who enters the annals of Jewish history as a man of compassion, conscience, vision and reconciliation,” said Schulweis, responding to Mahony before the Conservative Jewish congregation.

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The visit by Mahony, which was not his first to a Los Angeles synagogue worship service, focused on the steadily improving relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and recent Popes’ repudiation of anti-Semitism and recognition of Judaism as a vibrant faith in its own right, not merely a precursor to Christianity.

But, as the cardinal noted, given the painful history of Christian persecution of Jews in centuries past and controversies surrounding the Catholic church’s actions during the Nazi-era Holocaust, “it is no wonder that many American Jews viewed with suspicion the Holy See’s seeming reluctance” to recognize the state of Israel by establishing diplomatic ties.

Last December, however, Israel and the Vatican announced their intention to exchange ambassadors, which they did several months later.

Mahony emphasized in his Friday night talk that the primary obstacle to recognizing Israel was not religious or theological, but a practical matter of protecting the rights and safety of Arab Catholics living in and near Israel.

“Up to now, the issue of full diplomatic relations . . . has been seen by many American Jews as solely a matter of the Catholic Church accepting Judaism and the Jewish people as a continuing valid response to God’s covenant made with them through Abraham,” the cardinal said.

“But, in fact, it has been the precarious plight of Palestinian Catholics both within and outside Israel which has preoccupied the pastoral concern of the Vatican,” Mahony said.

He said that many Arab Christians on the West Bank were being pressured from one side by Arab Muslims to support certain political positions and from the Israeli side to accept school and university closings and a bleak economic outlook under Israeli occupation.

Only when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signaled the start of peace negotiations last year “did it become ‘safe,’ as it were, for the Holy See to move closer to full diplomatic ties,” Mahony said.

Another sticking point in relations between Catholics and Jews in the past was the longtime insistence by the Vatican that Jerusalem become an “international city” rather than fall under the government of Israel alone. Mahony said the Vatican has quietly abandoned that notion “and sought rather ‘international guarantees’ to the city.”

Told of Mahony’s comments that the Vatican had been worried about Catholics in Israel, Moshe Benzioni, Israeli deputy consul general in Los Angeles, said he was surprised by the cardinal’s emphasis on those points in his speech.

However, Benzioni added, “Relations with the Vatican are good; there are really not outstanding issues anymore. We are quite flattered that the cardinal sought to address a Jewish audience on this.”

Msgr. Royale Vadakin of Los Angeles, a local pioneer in Catholic-Jewish relations, said the Vatican’s non-recognition of Israel was always raised at otherwise cordial interfaith dialogues in Southern California.

“By his presence (at Valley Beth Shalom), Cardinal Mahony signals locally that this is now a resolved issue,” Vadakin said.