The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Yesterday's visit by the Holy Father to the Great Synagogue of Rome was a great success. The Vatican website has an English translation of his address . The Holy Father spoke sensitively about the Shoah "that tragically reached as far as Rome" and about the Bible. He highlighted the ten commandments as "a common ethical message of permanent value for Israel, for the Church, for non-believers and for all of humanity." Pope Benedict made particular reference to the family, highlighting an area of concern both to the Church and to Jews: The "Ten Commandments" call us to preserve and to promote the sanctity of the family, in which the personal and reciprocal, faithful and definitive "Yes" of man and woman makes room for the future, for the authentic humanity of each, and makes them open, at the same time, to the gift of new life. To witness that the family continues to be the essential cell of society and the basic environment in which human v...

Jonathan Sacks (Lord Sacks of Aldgate), the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, has caused a stir with his lecture last week to Theos , the "Public Theology think Tank". Here are links to two articles from the broadsheets: Telegraph Jonathan Sacks's solution to family breakdown Falling birth rate is killing Europe, says chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks The complete text of the lecture has been posted as a Word Document: Lord Sacks 2009 . Here is the passage that drew most attention, I think: Parenthood involves massive sacrifice: of money, attention, time and emotional energy. Where today, in European culture with its consumerism and its instant gratification ‘because you’re worth it’, in that culture, where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born? Europe, at least the indigenous population of Europe, is dying, exactly as Polybius said about ancient Greece in the third pre-Christian century. The ...

Rabbi Irwin Kula has written about the extreme reaction to the Williamson affair. At the Washington Post you can see the full text of the article . (H/T Fr Z ). Rabbi Kula concludes: Finally, when the Pope as well as key Vatican officials said within a day that Williamson’s views are "absolutely indefensible" and that in the Pope’s own words, the Church feels "full and indispensable solidarity with Jews against any Holocaust denial" where was a little humility in response? Wouldn’t it have been interesting, yet alone ethically compelling, for those who initially lashed out to have acknowledged that perhaps they did overreact and that they do know that the Church and specifically this Pope are very sensitive to these issues. But that we ask the Pope and church hierarchy to please understand that, whether fully justified or not, we are still very very raw and very vulnerable regarding the Holocaust and so we are sorry if we did over react and we are deeply grateful fo...