08-13-2002, 05:10 AM
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Contributor
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Posts: 13,699
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Catholics say Jews are saved too
<a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/225/metro/Catholics_reject_evangelization_of_Jews+.shtml" target="_blank">Catholics reject evangelization of Jews</a>
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''A deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of a divinely-given mission to Jews to witness to God's faithful love, lead to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church,'' declares the document, ''Reflections on Covenant and Mission.''
The declaration, which was negotiated by the bishops and an organization representing Conservative and Reform rabbis, demonstrates the dramatic changes in Catholic thinking about Jews and Judaism in the wake of the Holocaust. In the decades since Hitler's attempt to exterminate Jews during World War II, the church has rejected its longtime position that Christianity superseded Judaism and instead has embraced Judaism as a legitimate faith both before and after the life of Jesus.
''The significance is far more than theological, because for centuries it was the refusal of Jews to embrace Christian teachings that legitimized the persecution, and often murder, of Jews in communities throughout Christendom,'' said Robert Leikind, New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. ''What the bishops have done here is decisively separated themselves from that history and indicated once and for all that Jews have an authentic relationship with God and an authentic mission in the world, and therefore there is no reason for, or logic in, trying to evangelize Jews.''
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Of course, the Southern Baptists don't agree.
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At the time, the Southern Baptists decried ''an organized effort on the part of some either to deny that Jewish people need to come to their Messiah, Jesus, to be saved; or to claim, for whatever reason, that Christians have neither right nor obligation to proclaim the gospel to the Jewish people ... we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.''
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