Walter Kasper on Christians and Jews

From Against the Grain, a translation of a recent article by Cardinal Walter Kasper on relations between Jews and Christians, and the controversy over the recently revised Good Friday prayer for the 1962 Roman Missal.

Kasper affirms that Christian teaching must confess Jesus as savior of all. He notes that the New Testament is clear that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” There are not multiple plans of salvation. Despite this, Catholicism doesn’t have organized missions and agencies targeting Jews for conversion. Nevertheless, Christians are obligated to witness to all. Christians can’t be silent about their faith, let alone deny it, just to avoid giving offense. But this witness can be done tactfully, rooted in the common confession of the God of Abraham and belief in his faithfulness to his promises.

Limits to Tolerance

Jill Carroll comments on the goings on involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the century old Mormon offshoot that still adheres to early Mormon teaching on polygamy.

Catholic Miscellany

1. In the Diocese of Portland, ME, Bishop Robert Malone says he’s happy to establish a Latin Mass Chaplaincy as his way of conforming with Pope Benedict XVI’s instruction to free up the traditional mass. But there’s a price–he’s telling those who want it that they’ll need to pay $72,000. (Fr. John Z. thinks this reasonable.)

2. In Vienna, there’s blasphemous art on display at the cathedral. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn ordered one picture taken down that depicted the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy. But there’s still one up of a Roman soldier masturbating Jesus on the cross.

Curator Martina Judt said the exhibition was meant to prompt this kind of balanced reaction. The museum wanted to show that controversial works inspired by religious imagery can be discussed without taboo.

“People have said the Catholic Church has become a lot more liberal,” she said. “But in the end, the reactions show this perhaps isn’t the case.”

3. In San Francisco, meanwhile, some Catholics are withholding their support from Catholic Charities. One man explains:

In 2005, we learned that CCCYO was facilitating adoptions by homosexual persons. Vatican teaching clearly states that such adoptions are unacceptable and the Vatican insisted this stop. CCCYO didn’t agree, so in consultation with openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, they came up with a “compromise” that they claimed allowed them to continue to do adoption work (and accept public funding) while remaining faithful to the teachings of the Church. Instead of doing adoptions themselves, they provided paid staff (actually doubled the staff) to “Family Builders by Adoption,” who call themselves the “gayest adoption agency in the country.” This was termed “remote cooperation.” That is: CCCYO provided staff, but would have no say in where, or to whom, the adoptive children go. On the “GLBT Youth and Families” page of the “Family Builders” web site, we find this sentence: “In the state of California, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have the same rights as anyone to adopt a child.”

Remember, CCCYO and the archbishop, guided by theologians, justified CCCYO’s staffing Family Builders only in so far as they had no knowledge as to where the children go. So now, “Family Builders” is facilitating not only gay and lesbian, but also transgendered” persons to be adoptive parents. They are using staff paid, in part, from special collections taken at Masses. And by the terms of their own “compromise” — the compromise the archbishop declared he was “very happy with” — the archbishop, the theologians and CCCYO can say nothing about it.