Zagadnienie misji do Żydów w świetle Vaticanum II

Abstract

The second project of the future Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions „Nostra Aetate” (discussed by the Conciliar Fathers on 28-29 September, 1964) states that „the union of the Jewish people with the Church is part of the Christian hope. Accordingly, and following the teaching of Apostle Paul (cf. Rom. 11,25), the Church expects in unshakable faith and with ardent desire the entrance of that people into the fullness of the people of God established by Christ” Although the Conciliar Fathers expected and hoped for the conversation of the Jews with the Church, many of them demanded the change of that passage because they emphasized that the document should invite the Jewish people to the dialogue with the Christians. The Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, which had prepared the project, changed the controversial part of the document, but notwithstanding it added the phrase, which said that the Church must proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love. The proclamation of the saving truth in Jesus Christ is the essential duty of the Church, which is missionary by her very nature. Actually the Catholic Church rejects the possibility and she does not engage in the mission to the Jewish people. The mission to the Jews is also rejected by the theologians, who, inspired by Ac. 3, 25, Ep 2,11-12 and Rm 9,4, stress that the God’s covenant with the Jewish people endures forever. From the Christian point of view the Jewish people are in an eternal covenant with God, but nevertheless it reaches its fulfilment in the one of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to state that the Jesus Christ came only to the non-Jews. The reasons of the firm rejection of the mission to the Jews could only be understood in the light of the „post-Auschwitz” theology which emphasizes the special importance, the interminable value and the vitality of the Jewish people and the Judaism for the whole world and for the life of the Church.