Sandro Magister, the authoritative Vatican watcher at La Repubblica, last week noted one of the most significant and under-reported facts about Christian life in the Middle East: Christian numbers are growing in only one country in the region, namely the State of Israel. Elsewhere, Muslim hostility is smothering Christian life. Hebrew-speaking Catholics, Magister reports, form seven communities in Israel, in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva, Tiberias, Latrun and Nazareth. I called attention to Hebrew-Speaking Catholics in an essay entitled “Zionism for Christians,” in the June-July 2008 issue of First Things.
According to the pastor of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic congregation, Fr. David Neuhaus (no relation to the founder of First Things), the largest contingent of Israeli Catholics are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In the great wave of immigration to Israel that followed the collapse of Communism, up to 300,000 Christians arrived along with about a million Jews.
In addition, some 200,000 foreign workers now reside in Israel, including Africans, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, and Filipinos. They are overwhelming Christian. Many have settled in Israel. Their children attend Israeli public schools and speak Hebrew.
Jewish media have reported on the new and strange phenomenon of Catholic priests in Jerusalem intoning “Shalom MaMashiach” in stead of “Pax Christi” at Mass. The Jewish Forward last year quoted Fr. Neuhaus, “We see ourselves rooted in Israeli society with a real respect for Jews as they see themselves, and we follow the Jewish liturgical calendar and observe many of their holidays, like Sukkot and Hanukkah.”
Magister observes that the Synod of Middle Eastern bishops being held at the Vatican, which began yesterday and end October 24, will focus on the destruction of Christian communities in the Middle East. As Magister reports, Israel is the standout exception: The number has risen from 34,000 in 1949 to 150,000 in 2008, about two percent of the population, most in Galilee though 15,000 live in Jerusalem. The immigration numbers suggest that the pool of prospective Christians is two or three times as large as the official count, probably because many of the immigrants take no part in religious life.
Magister concludes that “The exodus of Christians that has set off alarms therefore does not regard Israel, but rather the Holy Land, a geographically flexible term that extends to the Palestinian Territories and parts of the neighboring Arab countries, all the way to Turkey and Cyprus.”
A thriving Hebrew-speaking Christian congregation presents an opportunity to Jews and Christians. From the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 until 1993, the Vatican did not recognize the Jewish state, among other reasons because it feared reprisal against Arab Christians in the Middle East. Appeasing Muslim sentiment has not helped, and the destruction of Christian communities in most of the Muslim-majority Middle East seem inevitable. Christian life flourishes, though, in Israel, and in immediate proximity to the holy sites.
A vibrant Christian presence in the birthplace of Christianity benefits the State of Israel as a living link between the Jewish state and Christians around the world, as I wrote last year in “The closing of the Christian womb” in Asia Times Online. Unfortunately, short-sighted governments have not given enough attention to Christian concerns, particularly regarding the holy places, though Prime Minister Netanyahu made the wise gesture of meeting the pope in Nazareth during his May visit to the Holy Land in 2009, and the ultra-orthodox community’s antagonism towards Christians has also been a problem.
The diversity of Israel's Christian population is a positive sign for the long-term viability of Christian congregations in the Middle East. Increasingly, they will speak Hebrew more than Arabic. In the long term, the State of Israel will be viable if its inhabitants bear children and stand their ground, unlike the unfortunate Christians of Lebanon.
Israeli short-sightedness is one part of the story; neglect from the Vatican is another. As Magister observes, seven years ago the pope “appointed as head of the vicariate of Jerusalem for Hebrew-speaking Catholics a bishop and Benedictine monk of great ability, Jean Baptiste Gourion, Algerian by birth and himself a convert from Judaism.”
The appointment was bitterly criticized by the pro-Palestinian circles of the Catholic Church. In the magazine of the New York Jesuits, America, Fr. Drew Christiansen, the current editor, called it "a campaign to divide the church in the Holy Land." Unfortunately, Bishop Gurion died shortly afterward, prematurely. And his successors were not made bishops.
There are deep sources of discomfort on both sides with respect to the Hebrew Catholic presence in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) minority in Israel vehemently dislikes any Christian presence at all, especially one led by a converted Jew like David Neuhaus. The prospect of Christian proselytizing of Israeli Jews, however remote, offends many Israelis.
For the Catholic Church, the prospect of permanent minority status within the Hebrew-speaking population is troubling. Catholicism is a majority by construction, for the Church as we know it arose from the Christian recreation of Europe after the collapse and depopulation of Rome. To exist as a minority sect in a part of the world that it ruled for three centuries and which contain its holiest sites is a strange position for the Catholic Church; in some ways it is more comfortable for the Church to identity with the misnamed Latin Patriarchate (which speaks Arabic) in opposition to the Jewish state.
Nonetheless, the Hebrew Catholic presence in Israel may offer a lesson for both sides, all the more so because it is a source of discomfort.
For Jews, to live in a majority-Jewish country is like breathing pure oxygen. Even under the most favorable of circumstances, life as a small minority in Christian-majority countries is stifling for Jews, in a way that Christians cannot imagine. Life in post-Christian Europe, which is far less hospitable to Jews than the United States, is not only stifling, but sometimes dangerous.
It is easy for Israeli Jews in the glow of Jewish-majority existence to forget that the Jews still are a tiny minority in the world's population, and that Israel's existence depends on friendship with the Christian world, above all (but not only) the United States. A thriving, indigenous, Hebrew-speaking Christian community should serve as such a reminder, and the Israeli government would be wise to foster its growth.
For Catholics, minority existence in a Jewish State is an opportunity to learn about Jews and Judaism in a way that Christians often resist. The Church's turn towards its Jewish roots since Vatican II, and the continuing outreach towards Jews on the part of such Church leaders as Walter Cardinal Kasper, are one of the most encouraging things to happen in my lifetime. The Church wishes to refresh its Jewish roots.
But these Jewish roots are not so much a matter of doctrine, as the lived religious life of the Jewish people. Judaism is rooted in the daily life of the Jewish people, in a way that can be perceived only by sharing some part of their lives, and Jewish life best flourishes in the Land of Israel. The more Catholics who daven the Sukkot liturgy in Hebrew in Jerusalem, the more likely we are to make sense of each other.
David P. Goldman is a senior editor at First Things. His “Zionism for Christians” can be found here.
RESOURCES
Sandro Magister’s column.
Hebrew Catholics Follow Their Own Church from The Jewish Forward.
David P. Goldman’s The Closing of the Christian Womb.
Comments:
However, while it's a small point in the general drift of the essay, it is simply not true to say that the "Catholic Church as we know it came from the Christian recreation of Europe etc." or that the Catholic Church is a majority by construction.
Basic Christian spirituality, common to all denominations, was formed during the centuries of persecution under the Romans. To this day, the experience of persecution is still viewed as normative, despite the fact that most Christians are not persecuted.
To retain its collective identity under those circumstances, the Church developed an organizational structure of bishops, priests and laity which remains its basic structure to this day. The word diocese comes from the political language of Diocletian, c. AD300.
It is a Protestant conceit that the Catholic Church was an aberration of the Middle Ages. No historical evidence supports that view. The Roman Catholic Church is Roman. The liturgy, the scriptural canon, the primacy of the Pope, the Fathers of the Church, the central doctrines, the rise of monasticism, all predate Charlemagne -- most of these developments predate AD 473.
It is likely that Christians were still a minority in the Western half of the empire when the Goths invaded. In any case, the Goths were Arians, and for several centuries, the ruling class in many areas of Europe belonged to an heretical church that opposed the Catholics. In other parts of Europe, the Pagans took over, or had never been converted in the first place. The continent had to be converted all over again.
... Not to mention the position of the Church following the rise of Islam ....
After the Reformation, Catholics were a minority in England and out of power in Ireland. Catholics have always been a minority in the United States. They are minorities in India and other Asian countries as well, at times very small minorities.
In the greater scheme of things, the experience of Catholic Europe will probably be seen as an anomaly in the history of the Church, despite its revolutionary consequences for the world at large -- invention of the printing press, creation of the universities, discovery of America, etc.
On another issue, I think we need a fact check for the statement that the Vatican did not recognize Israel between 1948 and 1993. The Holy See (that's what the state is called) and Israel did not have full diplomatic relations during that period, for reasons having to do with the political priorities of both sides. However the Holy See never "failed" to recognize Israel in the way that, for example, the US refused to recognize Communist China or that the Palestinians still refuse to recognize Israel.
And as a Canadian, let me say, happy Thanksgiving!
Catherine
Thanks for this interesting article. You give me the chance to ask you where I go to learn what the Jews say about the Garden of Eden story.
The fact that Christians became Arabized had major consequences for Jewish-Christian relations in the MidEast, because it became natural for these Christians to side with the Arab Muslim side in the conflict. This became true especially with the spread of secular Arab nationalism in the 1930's, which emphasized the overarching Arab identity of these Christians, rather than their Christian identity.
The growth of a Hebrew-speaking Christian population that identifies the State of Israel as its main protector and ally, and some of whom have relatives who are Israeli Jews, portends a major shift in the allegiance of the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land. The official Christian population now consists of Arab Christians plus Hebrew-speaking Christians. The Arab Christian population was growing until recently, but at this point is probably around zero growth, due to low fertility combined with high emigration. In all probability, this population will start to age and shrink in the near future, and the Hebrew speakers will become dominant. This would take us back, really, to the situation at the beginning of the Common Era, when Jews and Christians lived side by side in the Holy Land, with Jews in the majority, and both spoke Aramaic.
Covenant & Conversation, A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, Genesis: The Book of Beginnings by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592640206/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0826428258&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0FYHX7KYQSK6Z7RPKWT8).
I refer you to the linked article, "The Closing of the Christian Womb." The Lebanese Christian community is under siege and is failing. The Vatican is doing its best to help, but the outlook is grim. The hope of some Arab Christians, prominently Fr. Samir Khalid Samir SJ, that Christians yet will provide the leaven for a cultural Renaissance in the Middle East, is vain in my view. Such people imagine that if only Israel weren't there, Arab Christians would flourish. I don't believe that. The point is not that the Israeli Christian population is the largest i the Middle East, but that it is the only one that is growing.
From the standpoint of Jewish law, any child of a Jewish mother, or a person converted to Judaism by a duly-constituted rabbinical court, is a member of the Jewish people regardless of their beliefs. Michael Wyschogrod published a famous essay urging the late Cardinal Lustiger (a convert from Judaism) to observe Jewish law (Sabbath, kashrut, phylacteries, and so forth). Judaism does not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God and considers it wrong to worship him, although the vast majority of Jewish authorities acknowledge that Christians do worship the God of Abraham, the creator of the universe. Some rabbinic sources make the distinction that it is forbidden for Jews to worship Jesus of Nazareth but not necessarily forbidden for Gentiles. The Jewish position regarding so-called messianic Jews is that they are misguided and that they engage in "avodah zarah," worship of that which is not God (which is not necessarily the same as "avodah p'selim," or idolatry). A very tiny number of Israeli Christians are converts from Judaism--perhaps a few hundred. The vast majority are either Arab Christians, or immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Philippines, or Latin America.
Size (small, medium, large) About 15 million Jews, About 1.5 billion Muslims, About 2.5 billion Christians
Chronology will obviously remain intact and Christians will unite much sooner than Muslims. In the play Jew of Malta, the ending refuses to allow any group to emerge blameless. Nonetheless, Muslims have a much greater struggle ahead than the other two. Christians are fortunate that Jews and Muslims have not gotten along just as the elite are fortunate that capital and labor have not gotten along. Yet, there is a strange uneasiness and some hysteria between the two groups in the lead, Christians and Jews. What would righteous confidence bring to the situation?
Knowledge of three-man chess certainly helps to visualize the shifting options. If we were to agree that there have been only about a dozen or so significant moves on that chessboard over the past two millennia then we should consider ourselves fortunate if we will get to witness one of those moves within our lifetime. One could argue that from a Machiavellian point of view, Christians and Muslims should together confront Jews and then confront each other. But that ain’t gonna happen. Am guessing that Christian unity will occur before solidarity with Jews but I could be wrong. In either case, Obama is playing this specific chess game well. He is wisely perpetuating the silly notion that the Christians could side with either the Jews or Muslims. Fortunately for him, fools are a plenty.
The thesis of the book "When and How Were The Jewish People Invented?" by Shlomo Sand that the Palestinians are descendants of Jewish Christians rather than Arabs may be disturbing but perhaps it also presents an opportunity to strengthen Israel by incorporating them.
1) Would they be willing to think of themselves as Jewish Christians?
2) Would Israel be willing to accept them as Jews even though they are Christians?
3) Would they be willing to accept all the responsibilities of being an Israeli, a citizen of a Jewish state?
4) Would there be enough of them to matter?
There are a lot of ifs here but certainly the present attempts at a solution do not seem to be bearing fruit.
In a twist on an old saying: If you can't lick them get them to join you.
All Glory to Almighty God, the God of Israel and my God.
