Crucified by prejudice

This Good Friday we will not hear the account from Matthew’s gospel of Jesus’ arrest, trial and execution, but that of John. Writing in the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy, published in March, Pope Benedict proposes that Matthew’s Passion narrative must not be read as a historically account, but as a scriptural metaphor.

Where in John’s Passion account, the Jews blamed for Jesus’ crucifixion are the temple authorities, Matthew seemingly holds all Jews, across the generations, culpable. That one line, “His blood be on us and our children”, has served as the basis for a terrible history of anti-Semitism in the Christian church. That history culminated in the Holocaust, perpetrated by the quasi-pagan Nazi regime, but with the enthusiastic help from many individual Christians.

Pope Benedict points to the absurdity of a logic that would hold Jews through the generations responsible for deicide on account of Matthew’s passage. “How could the whole [Jewish] people have been present at this moment to clamour for Jesus’ death?” he asks. Rather, the pope proposes, the lynch mob outside Pilate’s palace represents the whole of humanity which is “in need of the purifying power of love which is [Christ’s] blood”.

Alas, for centuries Christians opted for an interpretation that facilitated the persecution of Jews for their supposed deicide, disregarding that Jesus, his mother and his followers were Jews themselves, and therefore, by the absurd logic of the deicide theory, were equally culpable for killing Christ.

Some fundamentalist churches continue to believe that Jews are guilty of deicide. The objectionable Westboro Baptist Church, a militant Christian sect in Kentucky, even pickets synagogues while chanting slogans and holding signs accusing Jews of being “Christ-killers”.

The Catholic Church has changed its ways in relating to Judaism. The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, Nostra aetate (1965), dismissed all grounds for anti-Semitism, including those founded in scriptural accounts.

More than that, the Council fathers recognised the Church’s Jewish origin: “The Church draws sustenance from the root of that good olive tree, Judaism, on to which have been grafted the wild olive branches, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by his cross Christ…reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in himself” (7-8).

The surprised reaction to Pope Benedict’s “acquittal” of Jews in his new book suggests that the clear teaching of Nostra aetate has not penetrated the public consciousness. The secular media—rarely up to speed with 40-year-old developments in the Church—seemed to regard the pope’s writings as a new Church policy.

Jewish leaders involved in dialogue with the Church pointed out that most Jews have not known of the Catholic Church’s postconciliar approach to Judaism; many are still under the impression that the Church holds anti-Semitic views. Pope Benedict’s book, and the secular coverage it has received, will help reshape that perception.

One might even ask to what extent Nostra aetate has reached Catholics. With anti-Semitism still rife in Western Europe—one Jewish body claims that anti-Judaist prejudice is now at the highest level since the Holocaust—one may well suppose that some Catholics are engaged in spreading the hate.

The Church cannot relegate its engagement in fighting prejudice against Jews, and others, to printed documents and small groups involved in dialogue. Issues of prejudice must be an explicit part of every Catholic’s formation.

The Church’s tragic history of fomenting anti-Semitic sentiment (and, at times, even legislating for it) places upon Catholics a special calling to protect those vulnerable to prejudice and persecution on grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, sexuality or political ideology.

With every act of anti-Semitism and every act of bigotry, Jesus is condemned and crucified again. The Church must be seen to always stand in opposition to the mobs of prejudice.