c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) In today’s world, religion is frequently employed as a potent weapon of conflict. Tragically, God’s name is invoked to theologically bless violence and terrorism. It is a shameful profanation of the divine.
In the face of such abuse of spiritual values and traditions, critics hasten to condemn all religions, especially their schools, as hothouses of hatred and bigotry. Often overlooked in this broad assault is the growing number of Jewish-Christian study centers in the United States, Canada and Europe that are building positive relations between two ancient faith communities.
Today, 27 centers, most of them located on university and college campuses, focus on developing mutual respect and knowledge _ qualities urgently needed after nearly 2,000 years of alienation, stereotypes, caricatures, and in the case of many Christians throughout history, the “teaching of contempt” for Jews and Judaism.
The centers develop courses of academic study, offer educational programs for clergy and lay people, set up Web sites, provide internships for students who hopefully will become future interreligious leaders, and publish important journals. The centers act cooperatively with one another as members of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations.
The current council chair is the Rev. Dr. Peter Petitt of Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania.
Each center was established during the past four decades following the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 when the world’s Roman Catholic bishops adopted the historic “Nostra Aetate” declaration on Catholic-Jewish relations. Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians, with different church structures than Catholicism, have also begun the vital work of strengthening positive relations with the Jewish community throughout the world.
The establishment of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College reflects the remarkable odyssey of one man, the late John M. Corcoran, who moved in his lifetime from prejudice to reconciliation. Dr. Philip Cunningham, the BC Center’s director, told me that Corcoran, as a young man in the 1930s, distributed anti-Semitic material in the Boston Commons. Corcoran was influenced by the widely heard anti-Jewish radio broadcasts of Father Charles Coughlin of Detroit.
During World War II, Corcoran was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, and parachuted into France on D-Day. While in the service, he met many American Jews who also served in the American military. Indeed, it is estimated that 600,000 Jews were in uniform between 1941 and 1945, and Corcoran’s views on Jews underwent a profound change as a result of his Army experience.
After World War II, like millions of other veterans, Corcoran used the GI Bill of Rights for his college education and graduated from BC in 1948. For many years, he was a prominent member of Boston’s real estate and construction community.
Before his death at age 80 in 2003, Corcoran contributed more than $5 million to establish the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at his alma mater, a gift he viewed as an act of repentance and his hope for the future.
That interreligious future will be highlighted March 26 when the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University presents its Eternal Light Award to Cardinal William Keeler, the archbishop of Baltimore, at a gala dinner in St. Petersburg, Fla. The center, a collaboration of SLU and the American Jewish Committee, was founded in 1998 and each year it honors a prominent leader in Catholic-Jewish relations.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have personally known Keeler, a chief architect in creating mutual trust between Catholics and Jews, for over 20 years. We have worked together on a host of projects in the U.S., Israel, Poland and at the Vatican. A former president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Keeler was also the conference’s moderator for Catholic-Jewish relations.
Just two days before Keeler receives the Eternal Light Award, he will be in Rome on March 24 when Pope Benedict XVI gives newly appointed cardinals their red hats. But to underscore his commitment to building human bridges between Jews and Catholics, Keeler is hurrying back to Florida in time for the center’s dinner two days later.
John Corcoran and William Keeler are but two of the many Christians and Jews who have changed history. May their tribe increase.
MO/PH END RNS
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
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