April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
OUR NEIGHBORS' FAITH
Talking and healing 25 years later
"You are beloved brothers; it can even be said that you are our elder brothers."
Two weeks before Pope John Paul's historic visit to the synagogue in Rome, Jews and Christians in the Capital Region were also making history.
Twenty-five years ago, on March 23, 1986, more than 1,000 people gathered on Palm Sunday at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany for a prayer service of reconciliation and healing called "From Fear to Friendship."
As we celebrate its silver anniversary, we recall the history that made it possible.
Everything has a beginning. Vatican II, the Church council that met in the early 1960s, and especially the 1965 document "Nostra Aetate" ("Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions"), helped to pave the way for interfaith dialogues in living rooms in the Albany Diocese in the late 1960s - with local Catholic Audrey Hughes at the forefront - and resumed again in the mid-1970s.
However, the watershed mo-ment for "From Fear to Friendship" was an interfaith trip to Israel in 1983, a goodwill mission with Christians and Jews that sealed friendships.
The trip, among the first in the nation, was led by two respected spiritual leaders in the interfaith community: Rabbi Martin Silverman, of blessed memory, and Bishop Howard J. Hubbard.
The interfaith trip to the Holy Land, especially the emotional experience at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusa-lem) was the motivational spark for Joan Dunham, of blessed memory, and other Roman Catholics to apologize to their Jewish brothers and sisters for the Church's history of sinful religious bigotry, violence, persecution and discrimination.
Yad Vashem laid bare the implication of the long and tragic history of Christian teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. Thus, "From Fear to Friendship" was born in the sanctuary of their hearts.
The prayer service was deliberately scheduled for the first day of the Christian Holy Week because of its history of anti-Jewish pogroms. During it, Bishop Hubbard publicly asked "forgiveness of God for the wounds inflicted on the Jewish people through selfishness and blindness" and Roman Catholics present in the Cathedral stood to pray the "Confiteor," a prayer of confession and contrition, with their bishop.
The Jews sitting among them met their heartfelt prayer with affection and tears. One Jewish man said, "I am 80 years old and I never thought I would live to see this day."
"Portal," a sculpture by Robert Blood, was erected on the property of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception to commemorate the "From Fear to Friendship" prayer service. The plaque below the sculpture reads, "On March 23, 1986, at this Cathedral, Jews and Christians of this Capital walked through the portal of reconciliation, From Fear to Friendship, to build together a New Com-munity, created in atonement, in love and in peace."
With the 25th anniversary of "From Fear to Friendship," we are reminded that the prayer service was more than a moment in time. Its ripples continue to reverberate beyond that Palm Sunday.
The Jewish/Roman Catholic Dialogue Committee would not be possible without role models, visionaries and leaders among giants, such as Bishop Hubbard, Rabbi Silverman, Joan Dunham and Bernice ("Bunny") Kahn, to mention only a few. They helped to keep the light of respect and collaboration illuminated.
Today, we continue to tell the story of "From Fear to Friendship."
(The authors are co-chairs of the Jewish/Roman Catholic Dialogue Committee.)[[In-content Ad]]
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