Fearful that Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" will revive age-old tension between Christians and Jews over the death of Jesus Christ, U.S. bishops are issuing strict instructions on how Catholics should view the crucifixion.
A 150-page booklet, "The Bible, the Jews and the Death of Jesus," will be released this week to every diocese in the United States, instructing Catholics on the Vatican's position: that Jews were not collectively responsible for Christ's torture and death.
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Seems awfully strange to me that a Bishops' committee has the money and time to create a 150 page booklet to "remind' us that all of us are culpable for Christ's suffering and death.
The booklet is being issued by the Committee for Ecumenical Affairs of the Bishops' conference.
We must remember that most of these things are not from the Bishops but from internal committees. I am reminded of several documents that come out of these committees: "Environment and Art in Catholic Worship", "Always our Children", and the recent document about our not having to evangelize our Jewish brothers and sisters.
Why don't we contrast this with Archbishop Chaput's thoughts:
"I hope every adult Catholic in northern Colorado sees it," Chaput said, "as well as the general adult public."
Chaput said he got the idea for the forum after seeing mounting evidence of anti-Semitism during his work on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
"For Catholics, anti-Semitism is more than a human rights issue; it's a form of sacrilege and blasphemy against the people God chose for his own," Chaput said.
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