Contending for the Faith: Catholicism Negates Jesus’ Death, New Birth
From an article by Alan Cooperman in the Washington Post, and published in the Houston Chronicle, (8/18/02, 4A), it appears that "a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has negated the death of Christ, and invalidated his declaration, "Ye must be born again" (Jn. 3:3-7).
"Campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity ‘are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church,’ a committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has declared.
"Summing up a series of Vatican pronouncements since 1965 that has reversed the church’s historical approach to Judaism, the bishops said last week that the Old Testament covenant between the Jews and God is valid and that Jews do not need to convert to Christianity to be saved. While the Roman Catholic Church ‘must bear witness in the world to the Good News of Christ…this evangelizing task no longer includes the wish to absorb the Jewish faith into Christianity and so end the distinctive witness of Jews to God in human history,’ they said.
"….Eugene Fisher, director of Catholic-Jewish relations for the bishops’ conference, said the document contains ‘no new doctrine’ but ‘distills a lot of things that have been said and steps that have been taken’ since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Fisher noted, for example, that in the 1970s, the church changed its official prayer for the Jewish people, which used to call for their conversion. Now the prayer, recited on Good Friday, asks God to help Jews intensify their faith in their covenant, he said.
"While the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical groups run campaigns to convert Jews, the Catholic church gradually has abandoned such efforts. ‘If an individual Jew wants to convert to Catholicism, that can still happen,’ said Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, spokesman for the bishops’s conference. ‘But the point is that proselytizing campaigns are not compatible with the respect with which we hold Judaism.’
"The document makes clear that this attitude is unique. ‘Though the Catholic Church respects all religious traditions…and though we believe God’s infinite grace is surely available to believers of other faiths, it is only about Israel’s covenant that the Church can speak with the certainty of biblical witness,’ it says.
"Although he played no role in drafting the document, Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, hailed it as ‘groundbreaking,’ Some Catholic leaders have renounced proselytizing among Jews in the past, but ‘this is the first time the Catholic leaders of a whole country have stated it officially,’ he said."
Old Testament Not Nailed To The Cross?
The law of commandments, contained in ordinances, has not been "nailed to the cross if those bishops are correct; but, they are not, and it has been (Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:14). Though the Hebrew writer argues that God has taken away the first covenant that he may establish the second, this committee of Catholic bishops says "that the Old Testament covenant between the Jews and God is valid." Do these bishops read the book of Hebrews?