In Rome and Jerusalem, proposals have been made to divide the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and to establish alongside it a church Jurisdiction for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel. This new jurisdiction would be directly dependent on Rome and independent of the local Latin (Roman Catholic) patriarch.
In Rome and Jerusalem, proposals have been made to divide the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and to establish alongside it a church jurisdiction for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel. This new jurisdiction would be directly dependent on Rome and independent of the local Latin (Roman Catholic) patriarch. Like most issues in the Middle East, this one is a complicated mix of ecclesiastical and secular politics, both local and international. Most remarkable is the anomaly of the Israeli government advocating a Hebrew-speaking church in the Jewish state.
The Work of Saint James
The Church of Jerusalem traces itself back to James, “the brother of the Lord.†Today the Work of Saint James is an association of Catholics, within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (patriarchates are churches founded by the Apostles), committed to strengthening ties between Christians and Jews. According to its statutes, the Work of Saint James “will combat anti-Semitism in all its forms and will work to develop mutual understanding, sympathy and friendly relations between the Catholic world and Israel.â€
The members of the Work of Saint James call their community the Kehilla (Hebrew for community). It is popularly known as “the Hebrew- speaking community,†because since its founding in 1956, the community has celebrated the Eucharist in Hebrew. In fact, only a handful of its members speak fluent Hebrew, and few are Israeli citizens. The Work of Saint James has always been a small community. Today it probably consists of no more than 250 persons, both lay and religious.
Although they are part of the patriarchate (which includes Israel and Palestine as well as Jordan), members of the community, for the most part, live and work in a largely Israeli milieu. The two-year old al-Aqsa intifada has brought to a head tensions in the church between the community and the Palestinian majority in the patriarchate. This strain reached its peak over the last several months in proposals to establish a special ecclesiastical jurisdiction for Hebrew-speaking Christians in Israel.
Supporters
Support for the proposal came from three sources. First, some members of the Work of Saint James advanced the idea in alliance with Sympathetic elements in the French church. But the community itself was not united; other members see the proposal as a painful source of division in a poor, humble church. These latter members believe that as a small minority in a Jewish and Islamic environment, the Holy Land’s Catholics badly need cohesion and charity toward one another and especially toward their Palestinian co-religionists.
Second, the proposal had support from personalities in Rome with close ties to the Jerusalem church. This second group, which claims primary authorship of the idea, is motivated by pastoral concern for the growing numbers of non-Arab ! Catholics among Israel’s immigrants and guest workers.
A third party backing the idea was the government of Israel. It is indeed ironic that Israeli officials support the plantatio ecclesiae (establishment of a church), as the Roman party describes it, within the Jewish state. Israeli interest, however, is overtly political. Israeli support for the proposal is one more attempt to undercut the standing of Palestinian Christians, and especially of Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, as intermediaries between their fellow Palestinians and Christians in the West
Initially the proposal to establish an apostolic administration or personal prelature made some progress. George Cottier, O.P., the papal theologian, and other French churchmen supported the idea with vigorous attacks on Patriarch Michel Sabbah in the French Catholic press. Cardinal Moussa Daoud, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, voiced openness to the idea in the interest of giving greater visibility and voice to the community’s work within the Jewish/Israeli milieu. Since then, he is reported to regret that he spoke so hastily. The nuncio to Israel, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, believes some such innovation will be pastorally necessary in the long term, but not now.
Pastoral Need?
That pastoral need does not seem to be mature. Demographics explain why. The largest single group in the St. James community consists of about 80 Polish-speaking immigrants in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The next subgroup consists of 50 to 70 members in Jerusalem, most of whom are expatriate French-speaking religious. This group has the strongest philo-Judaic commitments. The parish in Bersheeva claims 30 to 40 parishioners, including several Indian and Russian families. Ethnically and linguistically, the community is diverse. It is not, as many claim, united by the Hebrew language.
Roman champions of a distinct jurisdiction contend that the Franco-Israeli proponents have hijacked a proposal intended not for the community of Saint James, but for Israel’s immigrant Catholics. Under the Roman plan, they say, the kehilla would be supplanted by the prelature/apostolic administration. David Maria Jaeger, O.F.M., a long-time consultant to the Holy See on Holy Land issues, says, “There is an ecclesial imperative…to have a local church that would correspond to, and speak to, the civil community, from within a shared civil and cultural experience, rather than having the church perceived not only as of a different faith, but also as foreign in its nationality, culture and language.â€
Immigrants and guest workers, Father Jaeger explains, “have made Israel their home for many years, set up families, have children whose first language is, in effect, Hebrew.†He continues, “Their experience is totally different from that of the Arabic-speaking Catholics in Israel.†There is a need to defend “the oft disregarded rights of the many ‘migrant workers’ who are victimized by employers and demonized by certain xenophobic circles, but who are members of the household of faith.â€
Critics point out, however, that most Filipino guest workers participate in English-language, not Hebrew, liturgies, and English-speaking chaplains serve their needs. It is unclear how they would be better served by a Hebrew-language jurisdiction. Many guest workers, moreover, do not plan to make Israel their permanent home. What about those who do plan to stay? Proponents of a Hebrew-speaking church build their appeal by relying on a vague category in the Israeli census, “non-Jews.†The largest immigrant group is Russian, of which an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 are listed as “non-Jewish.†Of these, only 27,000 to 30,000 acknowledge being Christian, and for the most part these are Orthodox. The Orthodox hierarchy would surely regard any overt steps to open the Catholic Church to Russian immigrants as hostile proselytism.
Moreover, as one correspondent in Jerusalem reports, the State of Israel, for demographic as well as religious reasons, “considers the large non-Jewish population as a vast, fertile mission field for converting non-Jews to Judaism.†The government, he reports, “has already founded an official institute to promote this goal.†Thus any move to establish a Hebrew-speaking church for immigrants has problematic inter religious as well as ecumenical implications.
Father Jaeger also argues that existing church structures prevent the church from articulating “adequately in the most influential forums the concerns and needs of its older Arab-speaking faithful.†Critics respond that it is counterintuitive to think that Arab Catholics in Israel would feel that their interests would be better represented by someone other than the patriarch, who ! is, after all, a native of Nazareth. Nor, as Arabic speakers, would they readily welcome a Hebrew-language ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
For all of these reasons, a Hebrew-speaking jurisdiction serving guest workers, immigrants and “older Arab-speaking faithful†seems pastorally unnecessary, if not counterproductive. Certainly it is no improvement on the status quo. Establishing an apostolic administration or personal prelature to serve guest workers and immigrants in an area where a local church already exists would be unusual. Currently there is only one personal prelature in the world—Opus Dei. Would such an entity become a model for serving guest workers and immigrants in other countries?
The Israeli Role
For the Israeli government, the effort to set up a special ecclesiastical status for “the Hebrew-speaking community,†however it is defined, was not intended to assist in meeting a pastoral need. Rather, it was ! aimed at de-legitimating Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 1988, as part of a broader effort to discredit the Palestinian cause. Sabbah is the first Palestinian to be named patriarch, and he has spoken out for Palestinian rights and national aspirations and against the Israeli occupation and human rights violations. As the leading Catholic churchman in Israel, his views are taken seriously throughout the Catholic world. So the Israeli government has regarded him as a public relations problem.
Nor is Sabbah the only Catholic prelate to come under fire. In the mid-90’s, the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to intervene directly in the appointment of the Melkite archbishop of Akko. When the Holy See appointed Boutros Mouallem, who had been working in Brazil, the prime minister’s office found him too pro-Palestinian, threatened to deny him a visa and put forward its own candidate. After weeks of public dispute, the episode ended when the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Father Jaeger had observed that if the Israelis persisted, the church would have no choice but to identify Israel as a country where bishops could not freely exercise their ministry.
In the case of Hebrew-speaking Catholics, the political intent of the Israeli government appears to be once again to undermine the standing of the Latin patriarch by using the proposed Hebrew-speaking jurisdiction to divide the church in the Holy Land. The motives of the Israeli government became clear during a meeting in January with a delegation from the U.S.C.C.B. headed by the conference’s vice president, Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane. Ambassador Gadi Golan, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Department of Inter religious Affairs,declared that the establishment of “a Catholic church in Israel†would make it clear that Michel Sabbah is “the Islamic patriarch.†From the perspective of the Government of Israel, therefore, promotion of a special status for Hebrew-speaking Catholics appears to be an effort to assert that the Hebrew- speaking community would be the church in Israel, so that the patriarch could be dismissed as head solely of a Palestinian church.
When I questioned a well-informed Israeli official about the ambassador’s denigration of Sabbah, he told me, “This
Sabbah, Judaism and Israel
Patriarch Sabbah is not an anti-Semitic rabble-rouser. He has taken seriously the church’s engagement with Judaism since the Second Vatican Council and has paid a price for it. On an extended visit to Jerusalem two years ago! I met moderate, basically secular Palestinian academics with Muslim backgrounds who avoided the patriarch because he had met with Israel’s chief rabbis. The patriarch participates in regular Scripture study with rabbis and priests of the patriarchate. Sabbah also led the diocesan synod that in 2000 produced a General pastoral Plan that included a six-page reflection on “Our Relationship With Jews.†Among the decisions taken on relations with Jews and Muslims were: making schools and institutions places of encounter and mutual understanding, promoting dialogue “as a fundamental Christian priority†and encouraging personal relations “constructed upon respect for the other and acceptance of them as they are.†Sabbah’s Israeli critics fail to acknowledge these positive contributions.
What troubles some in the Work of Saint James, the Israeli government and philo-Judaic Christians abroad, it seems, is the patriarch 217;s defense of Palestinian rights. Many appear to have difficulty distinguishing between criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitism. Most Christians make the distinction and feel justified in doing so; but viscerally, and sometimes vocally, many Israelis do not. Sabbah has condemned terrorism and even visited Sheikh Yassin, the spiritual head of Hamas, to plead, unsuccessfully, for an end to suicide bombings. But that is not good enough.
Because he finds fault with Israeli occupation, Sabbah ! 217’s defense of Palestinian rights. Many appear to have difficulty distinguishing between criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitism. Most Christians make the distinction and feel justified in doing so; but viscerally, and sometimes vocally, many Israelis do not. Sabbah has condemned terrorism and even visited Sheikh Yassin, the spiritual head of Hamas, to plead, unsuccessfully, for an end to suicide bombings. But that is not good enough. Because he finds fault with Israeli occupation, Sabbah’s critique of Palestinian violence counts for nothing. Father Cottier, for example, complained in Proche-Orient Info (12/10/02) that Sabbah presents the Israeli occupation, but “never Palestinian terrorism†as a cause of violence. The accusation distorts Sabbah’s position. Sabbah has often condemned terrorism, but allows that one must also condemn the violence of the occupation. He insists, as a condition for resolving the problem, that it must be understood that the occupation is an underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, it seems, to assuage Israeli feelings, one must condemn Palestinian violence—period, full stop. Truth-telling to both peoples is unacceptable. Last Christmas, Sabbah declared that if the current leaders could not make peace, they ought to step down. He took a lot of heat from the Palestinian side, who perceived him as abandoning Yasir Arafat at a time of weakness, but no one on the Israeli side credited the remarks to his impartiality.
A quiet, thoughtful man, Sabbah has taken the lead in addressing the hard questions about Catholic-Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli relations. He has insisted that just as anti-Semitism and the Holocaust set the context for Jewish-Catholic relations in the West, in the Holy Land the dialogue’s agenda ought to be set by a century of Zionist nationalism, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians at the ! time of the creation of the State of Israel and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Sabbah recognizes the deep suffering of the Jewish people and the depth of their collective anxiety, but contends that it should not obscure the suffering of the Palestinian people. Sabbah’s stand is regarded as a threat, it appears, because it reminds people too keenly of Palestinian suffering.
Sabbah may also be perceived as a threat because he has helped unite the historically divided churches of the Holy Land, giving them a common voice on public issues. For the time being, that common front is in abeyance, because Israel has refused, for political and economic reasons, to recognize the election of Patriarch Ireneios as Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, thus hampering Orthodox participation in common undertakings. For the interim, Sabbah has joined the Anglican bishop, Riah Abu Assal, and the Lutheran bishop, Munib Younan, both Palestinians, in common initiatives like the visit to Sheikh Yassin. He persists in being a source of Christian unity.
Prospects
The proposal to create a special jurisdiction, whether for the community of the Work of Saint James or for the broader non-Arab Catholic Population of Israel, is said to be stalled, prudently frozen until a more opportune time. But with the new Israeli government being led once again by the Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party, one should not expect pressure on Sabbah to relent for long. Two other major church-state crises in recent years, the Mouallem appointment and the Nazareth mosque (see “Nazareth Journal,†Am., 2/12/00), arose during Likud-led governments.
Sharon’s first government, it must be acknowledged, brought the mosque controversy to an apparent halt, and the new government has worked quickly to resolve another problem, the nonrenewal of visas and residency permits to Catholic clergy, religious and seminarians.But hostility to the patriarch in government circles runs deep, so renewed efforts to discredit him may be expected.
Whatever develops, the Work of Saint James “[to] combat anti-Semitism [and to] develop mutual understanding, sympathy and friendly relations between the Catholic world and Israel†must be sustained. It must be sustained, however, in conjunction with the whole church in the Holy Land, united with the patriarch, and in a dialogue that comprehends the depth of Palestinian as well as Jewish suffering.
Drew Christiansen, S.J., is an associate editor of America and counselor for international affairs to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, with special responsibility for the Middle East.
