The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Israel and Judaism (1994)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated in 1992, represents the most authoritative modern synthesis of Catholic doctrine. Among its teachings are a set of passages that address the Church’s relationship with the Jewish people and Judaism — a relationship the Catechism insists is unique, living, and theologically constitutive of Christian identity itself. Taken together, these passages reflect the renewal of Catholic thinking inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council, particularly the declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), and they repudiate centuries of supersessionism and anti-Jewish polemic. The excerpts gathered here range across topics including the enduring validity of the Old Covenant, the irrevocability of God’s gifts to Israel, the rejection of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Christ, and the eschatological significance of the Jewish people. Each passage is preceded by a brief note identifying its central theme.

The Church’s understanding of the Jewish people is expressed in the present tense, not as a historical memory but as a living reality:

63 Israel is the priestly people of God, “called by the name of the Lord,” and “the first to hear the word of God,”¹ the people of “elder brethren” in the faith of Abraham.

Far from being superseded or rendered obsolete, the Old Covenant retains its full force; the Church affirms this plainly:

121 The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value,² for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.

The Church explicitly rejects the ancient Marcionite temptation to set aside the Hebrew Scriptures. The Old Testament is the true Word of God, never abrogated by the New:

123 Christians venerate the Old Testament as true Word of God. The Church has always vigorously opposed the idea of rejecting the Old Testament under the pretext that the New has rendered it void (Marcionism).

While Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures through the lens of Christ, typology and fulfillment are not the only valid approaches. The Old Testament retains its own intrinsic worth as divine revelation, and the two Testaments must be read in light of each other:

129 Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the inexhaustible content of the Old Testament; but it must not make us forget that the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation reaffirmed by our Lord himself.³ Besides, the New Testament has to be read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of the Old Testament.⁴ As an old saying put it, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.⁵

The feast of the Epiphany reveals a striking theological truth: access to Christ passes through Israel. Gentiles cannot reach Jesus except by turning to the Jewish people and receiving from them the messianic promise:

528 The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Savior of the world. The great feast of Epiphany celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the wise men (magi) from the East, together with his baptism in the Jordan and the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.⁶ In the magi, representatives of the neighboring pagan religions, the Gospel sees the first-fruits of the nations, who welcome the good news of salvation through the Incarnation. The magi’s coming to Jerusalem in order to pay homage to the king of the Jews shows that they seek in Israel, in the messianic light of the star of David, the one who will be king of the nations.⁷ Their coming means that pagans can discover Jesus and worship him as Son of God and Savior of the world only by turning toward the Jews and receiving from them the messianic promise as contained in the Old Testament.⁸ The Epiphany shows that “the full number of the nations” now takes its “place in the family of the patriarchs,” and acquires Israelitica dignitas⁹ (are made “worthy of the heritage of Israel”).

In one of its most direct repudiations of a long and destructive tradition, the Catechism explicitly rejects the charge of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Christ. Drawing on Nostra Aetate and on the Gospel accounts themselves, it insists that responsibility cannot be extended to the Jewish people as a whole, then or now:

597 The historical complexity of Jesus’ trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles’ calls to conversion after Pentecost.¹⁰ Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept “the ignorance” of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders.¹¹ Still less can we extend responsibility to other Jews of different times and places, based merely on the crowd’s cry: “His blood be on us and on our children!” a formula for ratifying a judicial sentence.¹² As the Church declared at the Second Vatican Council:

… [N]either all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion.… [T]he Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture.¹³

The Jewish people hold an irreplaceable place not only in the past history of salvation but in its future consummation. The return of Christ in glory is presented as mysteriously bound up with the recognition of Jesus by “all Israel”:

674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel,” for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus.¹⁴ St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”¹⁵ St. Paul echoes him: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”¹⁶ The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles,”¹⁷ will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” in which “God may be all in all.”¹⁸

Among all non-Christian religious communities, the Catechism accords the Jewish people a singular place. The bond between the Church and Israel is not merely historical but theological, rooted in a covenant that God has never withdrawn:

839 “Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.”¹⁹

The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People,²⁰ “the first to hear the Word of God.”²¹ The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews “belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ”;²² “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”²³

The Catechism acknowledges both the deep kinship and the real difference between Jewish and Christian hope. Christians and Jews share a forward-looking expectation, yet they await different things. This tension is held with honesty rather than erased:

840 And when one considers the future, God’s People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.

The Jewish roots of Christian worship are not merely historical curiosities but living resources. A deeper knowledge of Jewish faith and religious practice — as it is observed today, not only in antiquity — illuminates the meaning of Christian liturgy:

1096 Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy. A better knowledge of the Jewish people’s faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy. For both Jews and Christians Sacred Scripture is an essential part of their respective liturgies: in the proclamation of the Word of God, the response to this word, prayer of praise and intercession for the living and the dead, invocation of God’s mercy. In its characteristic structure the Liturgy of the Word originates in Jewish prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical texts and formularies, as well as those of our most venerable prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, have parallels in Jewish prayer. The Eucharistic Prayers also draw their inspiration from the Jewish tradition. The relationship between Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy, but also their differences in content, are particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, such as Passover. Christians and Jews both celebrate the Passover. For Jews, it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future; for Christians, it is the Passover fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, though always in expectation of its definitive consummation.

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1. Deut 28:10; Roman Missal, Good Friday, General Intercession VI; see also Ex 19:6. ↩
2. Cf. DV 14. ↩
3. Cf. Mk 12:29–31. ↩
4. Cf. 1 Cor 5:6–8; 10:1–11. ↩
5. Cf. St. Augustine, Quaest. in Hept. 2, 73: PL 34, 623; cf. DV 16. ↩
6. Mt 2:1; cf. LH, Epiphany, Evening Prayer II, Antiphon at the Canticle of Mary. ↩
7. Cf. Mt 2:2; Num 24:17–19; Rev 22:16. ↩
8. Cf. Jn 4:22; Mt 2:4–6. ↩
9. St. Leo the Great, Sermo 3 in epiphania Domini 1–3, 5: PL 54, 242; LH, Epiphany, OR; Roman Missal, Easter Vigil 26, Prayer after the third reading. ↩
10. Cf. Mk 15:11; Acts 2:23, 36; 3:13–14; 4:10; 5:30; 7:52; 10:39; 13:27–28; 1 Thess 2:14–15. ↩
11. Cf. Lk 23:34; Acts 3:17. ↩
12. Mt 27:25; cf. Acts 5:28; 18:6. ↩
13. NA 4. ↩
14. Rom 11:20–26; cf. Mt 23:39. ↩
15. Acts 3:19–21. ↩
16. Rom 11:15. ↩
17. Rom 11:12, 25; cf. Lk 21:24. ↩
18. Eph 4:13; 1 Cor 15:28. ↩
19. LG 16. ↩
20. Cf. NA 4. ↩
21. Roman Missal, Good Friday 13: General Intercessions, VI. ↩
22. Rom 9:4–5. ↩
23. Rom 11:29. ↩